Stop the militarisation of Space

Written by: Nick G. on 12 November 2025

 

Not content with their domination of the surface of the Earth, imperialist powers are determined to seek domination of cislunar Space – the area of space between the Earth and the moon.

True to form, US Empire loyalists in Australian political and military circles are determined to spend billions of dollars to ingratiate themselves with their masters and develop military interoperability across their respective Space Commands.

All of this flies in the face of the UN Declaration on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space in 1963, subsequently ratified as the Outer Space Treaty in 1967.

The Treaty was a response by the nations of the world to US and Russian nuclear weapons tests in Space.

Amongst its provisions were:

• outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States;
• outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means;
• States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner

At the time, the emphasis was on blocking the use of Space for nuclear weapons. It implied that Space should be used for peaceful purposes but did not explicitly ban all weapons.

US-EU contradictions over Space domain

Inter-imperialist rivalry for domination of the Space domain is in full swing. The fear among US military circles is that the Chinese are currently winning the race for Space.

The US is also concerned that the European Union is not as compliant as Australia.

A draft EU Space Act, released in June, has three key pillars: safety, resilience and sustainability.

At the beginning of November, the US State department made a stinging attack on the draft EU Act, claiming it would establish restrictive market barriers, impose costly environmental protection requirements, and create regulatory hurdles for US commercial firms.

According to the State Department, “The United States does not believe the provisions are sufficient to protect national security equities, assets, and operations because the Act threatens U.S. and EU development of commercial space capabilities, introducing doubt about interoperability of systems and the ability to use collaboratively developed or owned space assets for national security purposes.”

“Such unfair and unwarranted regulations are unacceptable to the United States and must be removed,” the document states.

The online US Breaking Defense website notes that the contradictions between the US and the EU reflect “widespread European government concerns about the direction of US policy, ranging from the Trump administration’s about-face on Ukraine support in war with Russia to the president’s punitive tariffs on European imports. The push for EU security independence includes the planned move by the European Space Agency, for the first time in its 50-year existence, to take on projects in support of European defense ministries.” 

Australia to bolster Space ties with US

With US-EU relations not working out as the US would wish, more will be expected from its Australian lackeys. 

The Defence Department last November made a commitment to invest $9 to $12 billion over the next decade to military space programs.

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) last year put together Concept SELENE, a framework for space operations, the details of which have not been made public. However, passing reference to it in online military journals reveal that it seeks to “enable freedom of action by temporally assuring access and disrupting or denying an adversary’s use of the space domain, as required.”

On October 8, Army Brig. Gen. Christopher Gardiner, space and cyber attaché at the Australian Embassy in Washington, said “...we don’t have enough resources to build that resilient architecture in a sovereign sense, we need to partner and we need to cooperate to generate the resiliency effect.”

In other words, Australia will fall in behind US efforts to dominate Space. “Thus,” he said, “Australian Space Command is taking a page from the US Space Force’s approach to acquisition by first focusing on what commercial activities it can leverage, then looking to partners for capabilities it can share, and only lastly building its own space systems.”

In an article selected by the Australian Commander Space Command as the winner of a writing competition, Royal Australian Army Signals officer Chris Maclean wrote that “RA Sigs personnel should be embedded with allied space commands and commercial satellite operators acting as the conduit to facilitate coordination, threat response, and best-practice sharing.”

He defined Space as a “as a contested, congested, and competitive domain” and said that “to fully prepare for the unique challenges of space warfare, RA Sigs must incorporate emerging space-specific training content into its existing courses.”

These and similar ideas about how best to become part of US imperialism’s drive to dominate and control Space will inform the update of the Defence Department’s 2024 National Defence Strategy. 

According to Brig. Gen. Christopher Gardiner, “the country’s Space Command is considering its options for gaining ‘space control’ capabilities” as part of the update. “With space control, looking at … how do we as Australia best contribute not only to the defence of Australia and our immediate region, but then also a credible capability, cooperatively within a partnership?”

All of this violates both the letter and the spirit of the UN Outer Space Treaty to which Australia is a signatory.

We must demand that all weapons are banned from Space and that any developments there are done for purposes other than “colonisation” by any state or nation on earth.

 

 

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