Australia appoints female air marshal to tackle China's space threat

The Australian government led by Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison has effectively given life to the Defence Space Command. It is a new step agreed with President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to try to counter China's growing presence and influence in the Indo-Pacific region and in outer space. 

Defence Minister Peter Dutton, 51, and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Chief of Staff Air Chief Marshal Mel Hupfeld, 60, have agreed that the most suitable military officer to lead the new organisation is a woman, Air Vice-Marshal Catherine Roberts. An aerospace engineer by training, she joined the military in 1983 and in her previous positions has headed the Aerospace Systems Division and RAAF capability planning.

Deputy Marshal Roberts' responsibilities as head of the new space component include developing, maintaining and defending Australia's government and industry space-related priorities. She is also responsible for reviewing space strategy and policy, guiding science and technology priorities, and defining a resilient space architecture in cooperation with Canberra's AUKUS alliance partners, Washington and London.

The Australian Defence Space Command was activated just a few days ago, on 22 March, although its creation dates back to 18 January 2022. Complementing the Australian Space Agency created in July 2018, its purpose is to ensure that the great Oceanian country fulfils its strategic ambitions and leads the effort to secure Australia's free access to space, "essential for our security", stressed Minister Dutton.

The decision by Premier Scott Morrison - 63 years old and in power since August 2018 - comes in line with initiatives taken by major world powers to preserve their orbiting spacecraft and the defence of their ground facilities. Russia and China formed their respective Space Forces or Commands in 2015, India in 2018 and the United States in 2019, all with a full or partial degree of independence from their Air Forces.

Keeping outer space safe and not a theatre of conflict

Following Washington's lead, several regional powers have also established military space organisations. The Paris government established its Space Command in 2019, Tokyo in 2020, and Berlin and London in 2021. All have created structures similar to those of the US Pentagon, but much smaller and located under the umbrella of their respective air forces.

This is also the option that Australia has just taken. The head of the RAAF, Air Chief Marshal Mel Hupfeld, has pointed out that the Defence Space Command is joint in nature and is made up of personnel from the Army, Air Force, Navy and civilian officials, but is attached to the Air Force, which he himself commands.

The HQ is "organised and sized to sustain and operate existing space capabilities and generate new forces". It is also designed to understand the space environment and determine whether the country's orbiting assets are "subject to accidental interference, under threat or under attack," says Marshal Mel Hupfeld.

If necessary, or "if an aggression is confirmed", Space Command's activities will be placed under the authority of Joint Operations Command," stresses the head of the RAAF, which is ultimately responsible for the space domain. Under his guidance, the current Defence Space Strategy has already been drafted, which sets out Australia's roadmap and efforts through to 2040 in the outer space domain.
 

Defence Minister Dutton has already stated that Australia and its allies want outer space to remain "secure and stable" and not become "a new area of conflict". He wants Australia to take its rightful place in the outer space framework, "but to share it and not as other countries do - in a veiled reference to Russia and China - who see it as their territory".

Australia and Spain, key to tracking extraterrestrial missions

With an area of more than 7,741,000 km² - more than 15 times the size of Spain - Australia is heavily dependent on space infrastructure. That is why Deputy Chief Marshal Catherine Roberts has expressed "fears" that intentional action by Beijing or Moscow on important ground-based reception, monitoring and control facilities or platforms deployed in space could "degrade, neutralise or even disrupt" the vast country's National Regional Broadband Network.

The RAAF chief of staff believes that Australia is "3-4 years behind in space defence compared to the capabilities it should possess". That is why the Canberra government plans to invest around $7 billion over the next 10 years to develop new national or cooperative programmes and expand its civil and military fleet of satellites, including spy satellites.

The Australian commercial communications operator Optus has three large spacecraft linking the great nation to the rest of the world. The Armed Forces have only two small maritime reconnaissance and surveillance platforms called RAAF M2 A and B. Launched in March 2021, both complement the imagery provided by the US Department of Defence. 

Military communications are covered by the Optus C1 and WSG-6 satellites. The latter is a Boeing-built, nearly 6-tonne spacecraft. It belongs to the Pentagon-led WSG constellation, was launched in August 2013 and transmits in the X- and Ka-band frequencies. The Optus C1 is about 5 tonnes, was manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric Co, and serves Ku, Ka, X and UHF bands. 

Australia is not a newcomer to the space field - on the contrary. In collaboration with the United Kingdom, it was a pioneering nation in equipping itself with a missile and atomic weapons testing centre at Woomera, 1,300 kilometres from Canberra. And in the mid-1950s and at the same time as Spain, it was chosen by Washington to install the large antennas that, together with those at Goldstone in California's Mojave Desert, were to track NASA's manned Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions.

Today, NASA and also the European Space Agency (ESA) continue to use Australia to track probes travelling through the solar system and beyond. ESA's Deep Space Network antenna complex is in Perth, on the country's southern Indian Ocean coast. NASA's is located near Canberra, on the Pacific, some 3,100 kilometres from Perth. In Spain, the ESA site is in Cebreros (Ávila) and the NASA site is in Robledo de Chavela (Madrid).