NATO Investing in Space Capabilities to Enhance Multi-Domain Operations, Establish Deterrence
Air Marshall Stringer reflects on NATO’s journey since declaring space an operational domain in 2019
Since declaring space an operational domain in 2019, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has sought to reinforce its multinational alliance with space capabilities. Toward this end, NATO has released an Overarching Space Policy, founded the NATO Space Operations Centre and published a Commercial Space Strategy. Each element lays a foundation from which NATO leaders can acquire the space capabilities they need for a future conflict. But for Air Marshal Sir Johnny Stringer, the retiring Deputy Commander of NATO’s Allied Air Command, implementing these plans is more critical now than ever before.
“Strategies are great, but you’ve got to implement them,” Stringer said. “There is a real need and urgency for space capabilities, but we’re still playing catch-up even six years later. A few NATO nations have spending power to acquire space capabilities and that creates a fantastic environment for the commercial space sector to develop, sell and compete in. But for those nations that don’t have that spending power, space is a dual-use domain that offers one of the most vibrant, commercial-public alliance ecosystems we can still exploit.”
NATO’s decision to declare space an operational domain stems from an urgency to overcome what Stringer calls “the two long shadows” that loom over the military alliance today.
“The first long shadow began with the peace dividend, the conscious decision not to invest in defense after the Cold War,” Stringer said. “This led to the second long shadow: counterinsurgency operations against adversaries with little to no counter-air or space capability, electronic warfare or spectrum dominance. That is, until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. But even then, the rising threat goes back further to Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 and Georgia in 2008.”
Planning for space in a future conflict
Every four years, NATO follows a framework known as the NATO Defence Planning Process (NDPP), to align Allies’ defense plans with the NATO’s capability requirements. The most recent cycle began in 2023.
“We’re just now getting into phase four of the five-phase space domain implementation plan,” Stringer said. “The campaign plan sets a chart for us in three key areas: establishing a unified space command and control, enhancing our capabilities on space domain awareness and space based-ISR and developing the ability to deliver combat space effects. But the reality is that while some individual NATO nations have long-established combat space effect capability, those that don’t can now contract for it from commercial providers.”
The challenges NATO has in acquiring space capabilities, however, is not unique solely to the space domain. It parallels a broader, historical challenge in that the military alliance itself does not own warfighting capabilities.
This is a challenge Brad Head, Managing Director of International Partnerships at Elara Nova, witnessed firsthand during his time in uniform at NATO’s STEADFAST DEFENDER exercise a few years ago.
“General Christopher Cavoli, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe at the time, asked at the start of STEADFAST DEFENDER exercise about what space capabilities NATO had,” Head said. “But the Army lieutenant colonel who was leading the exercise’s space efforts told him, ‘NATO doesn’t have any space capabilities because member nations retain their sovereign space capabilities and will only provide it to NATO if it’s needed and available.’”
Assuring access to space capabilities
While this challenge is not unique to NATO’s space capabilities – the alliance itself doesn’t own assets like fighter jets, tanks or naval destroyers, either – today’s commercial space industry presents new opportunities for NATO to access the space capabilities it requires.
“NATO’s lacking physical ownership of space capabilities doesn’t worry me, but the assured access to those capabilities definitely does,” Stringer said. “But the commercial driver in space has been there for decades: satellite communications were being driven by commercial providers since 1991, and the cost per kilo of putting payloads on orbit is cheaper now compared to where it was ten years ago. What is changing for the better, though, is a better educated middle and senior echelon that recognizes not just our reliance on space, but also the different opportunities to get the space capabilities we need.”
That’s why moving forward, Stringer identifies two space priorities for NATO to continue building toward to ensure that NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), a role currently held by General Alexus G. Grynkewich, will have the space capabilities needed to accomplish a given mission.
“Our first priority is to rapidly develop the space cadre of our member nations because that means nations can put more people into the NATO space enterprise,” Stringer said. “That includes developing our overall space education and training capability in member nations to a multinational set of standards. The second priority is ensuring we continually refine NATO’s family of plans and making sure the space capabilities identified in those plans are assured to the SACEUR.”
Responding to a rising space threat
Preparing for a future space fight is not only necessary – it’s vital. There is greater competition in space today that threatens to undermine the relative homogeneity of Western military dominance over the past few decades. This is in part because rising competitors, namely Russia and China, have been able to study the West’s military playbook throughout that same period of time.
”We have enjoyed an unnaturally long period of relative peace in Europe, but we must prepare for war if we want to maintain that peace,” Stringer said. “We’re in an era of stealth technology, precision-guided munitions and the exploitation of space-based capabilities and militarized systems, which was first realized during the First Gulf War in 1991. Our combination of the 5 T’s – technology, thinking, tactics, training, and theory of victory – was phenomenal in 1991, but looked remarkably the same in 2021. Meanwhile, we disinvested in some key areas like integrated air and missile defense, and our competitors have now sought to turn our approach to warfare against us.”
As a result, NATO is making a renewed and greater investment into acquiring warfighting capabilities.
“NATO nations committed to spending five percent of their GDP on defense at The Hague Summit,” Head said. “This means nations are going to be investing significantly and space capabilities will be a key part of that conversation. That means NATO is now in a position to clearly articulate their priorities to their member nations and industry partners.”
One of the highest priorities will be taking the necessary steps to achieve not only space superiority, but the air superiority that will inherently come with it.
“All of NATO’s components must be able to exploit the freedom of access and freedom of maneuver that space-based systems and air superiority provides, but that’s also one of the key elements our opponents have sought to neutralize,” Stringer said. “This means one of our key missions is counter anti-access and area denial, which is not solely to free up access and maneuver for NATO’s air component, but to ensure freedom of access and maneuver for everybody.”
NATO’s imperative for multi-domain operations
This vital intersection of air and space superiority further reflects the multi-domain operations that will be critical to a future fight, but particularly challenging for a multinational alliance like NATO.
“Even with the recognition of space and cyber as being operational domains in their own right, there is more to multi-domain operations than just the three military domains of land, air and maritime,” Stringer said. “Multi-domain operations include all instruments of alliance power. This means fusing intelligence and economic warfare with both traditional military and non-military means across domains within a protracted campaign.”
According to Stringer, laying the groundwork for successful multi-domain operations requires a thoughtful approach that goes beyond acquiring the latest space technologies.
“Multi-domain operations places a premium on two things: how does your command and control system function across nations and how do you empower your commanders and their staff to excel?’” Stringer said. “If you don’t have those two things, all the flashy equipment you might have is not going to perform as you need it to. This is where the space workforce is really important, because otherwise you’re not going to get the maximum return on your investment.”
Establishing and maintaining deterrence
Now, looking ahead, it’s more than just creating an alliance that can deter a future threat, but defeat it.
“You don’t build forces to deter, you build forces to win,” Stringer said. “Therefore, you must have the military forces that can demonstrably win in all five of the operational domains recognized by NATO. Therefore, building the capabilities you need to assure deterrence is important, because if anyone that threatens you will end up significantly worse.”
Deterrence, established and reinforced by a multinational force like NATO, will be pivotal to keeping space open and free for countries around the world.
“It doesn’t matter whether you feel space should be preserved as a sanctified area,” Stringer said. “That decision was made for us when nations were going to space with the rapid expansions of military and commercial space technologies. Space has underpinned our way in warfare to a basic, tactical level. We come back to a classic: ‘Imagine a day without space,’ but now it’s a real challenge that we have to recognize.”
Elara Nova is a trusted guiding partner that builds tailored teams to illuminate unseen opportunities and deliver impact across every domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/.
Episode 33: NATO Investing in Space capabilities to Enhance Multi-Domain Operations, Establish Deterrence
The Elara Edge: International Insights Edition
Intro/Outro: Scott King (SK)
Host: Brad Head, Managing Director of International Partnerships, Elara Nova (BH)
SME: Air Marshall Sir Johnny Stringer, Deputy Commander of NATO Allied Air Command (JS)
00:02 – 00:57
(SK): Welcome to “The Elara Edge.” I’m your host, Scott King, and we have a new special edition series to present to you today: “The Elara Edge: International Insights Edition,” where the leading figures in international security share their insights and perspectives directly with you, our listeners.
Brad Head, Managing Director of International Partnerships at Elara Nova, will be your host today. And joining Brad as our inaugural guest is Air Marshall Sir Johnny Stringer, who at the time of this recording was retiring out of his role as the Deputy Commander of Allied Air Command at NATO.
Together, they’ll be discussing NATO’s evolving approach to space since the military alliance first declared it an operational domain in 2019, as well as how commercial space providers should be considering opportunities to support NATO in its space warfighting efforts.
With that, thank you for joining us and onto the show…
00:58 – 01:22
(BH): Welcome to The Elara Edge International Insight Edition. I’m Brad Head, Managing Director of International Partnerships at Elara Nova, where we specialize in strategic advisory for space, aeronautics and mission systems. Today, I’m honored to speak with Air Marshal Sir Johnny Stringer, the deputy commander for NATO’s Air Command, which includes command of NATO Space. Sir Johnny has been in his role since August 2022 and has served as acting commander since May.
Sir Johnny, it’s great to have you on.
01:23 – 01:24
(JS): Great to be here, Brad. Thanks.
01:25 – 01:34
(BH): All right, Sir.
Let’s start back at the beginning. Take me back to the Watford Grammar School where you went to school. What was it about the Royal Air Force that captured young Johnny Stringer’s imagination?
01:35 – 02:43
(JS): Yeah, I think, I think I just always have been interested in aircraft. I mean, I probably built an unhealthy number of Airfix models as a kid. I mean, I was lucky enough my elder brother was about five years ahead of me. He went into the Air Force and I go to see a bunch of things, which he was doing before I had to kind of make any substantial calls.
So I got a bit of a privileged ringside seat. I was able to go flying with a family friend on a couple of occasions. Once in a Chipmunk which was [fabulous] and it just kind of really struck me as something exciting and interesting and different.
And then I joined the Air Cadets when I was in school, which again gave me another set of insights into the Air Force. And when it came to the sixth form, sort of the last two years of school, school and off to university, I applied for sponsorship from the Air Force, and I was lucky enough to get it.
So I landed a flying scholarship for 30 hours, and then applied for sponsorship at University of the Air Force, as well. So I went on to university in 1987 as an RAF University Cadet at the hallowed rank of Acting Pilot Officer. But that was it.
02:44 – 03:04
(BH): Very cool. So it sounds like you’ve had a pretty remarkable career. Looking through your resume, you flew the Jaguars over Yugoslavia, the no fly zone in northern Iraq, you commanded a Squadron. You flew the Spitfire during the Battle of Britain Memorial flight. When you look back on your career… Was there a moment that stands out to you as kind of one of your key moments in your career?
03:05 – 05:15
(JS): I think you’re right. I have been really fortunate, I think. And there is kind of a series of moments, really, maybe that’s the kind of thing you come back to. I mean, I always say you never stop learning, and every day is a school day. And I’m aged nudging 56. I still think that is entirely true.
I was lucky enough to fly with and learn from some exceptional people. Jaguar Force is particularly dear to my heart because you had to work very hard to get every last ounce out of an aircraft that was great fun and very challenging to fly. But at the end of the day, a Typhoon Eurofighter had two and a half times the thrust, a much bigger wing, a radar, a whole bunch of other things.
But then [sic] was where I did just shy of 2000 hours. I met my wife there, kids were born there. And it was a great example, I think, of excellence in the Force, but one that didn’t shout about it. And anybody who ran any risk of getting above themselves really was politely but quite quickly brought back down to Earth.
So I learned a lot in those times and then, back to being fortunate, maybe even privileged of flying Spitfires and Hurricanes, which really resonated [with] my first degree was History. My background was single seat fighters. And then to get a chance to fly what our predecessors, our forebearers had done during World War II, and most obviously, of course, the Battle of Britain was phenomenal.
I mean, really very, very sobering and quite moving. And, but don’t get me wrong, I will [also] say a great challenge and fantastic fun. I was just playing down to 100ft, doing a lot of work-up for display season. And with less than six hours on a Hurricane. So it was great.
Very well supervised, folks, by the way. But it was immense fun. So all the way through not just my flying career but in staff, you learn all along the way, and I think anybody who doesn’t think that is kind of in denial, really. You learn automatically about leadership and approaches to problems and sort of approaches to people and those are some things you just cannot teach. You just have to develop through doing.
05:16 – 05:54
(BH): Very cool. Yeah, it sounds similar to an answer that I’ve heard from many people throughout my career that squadron command is the pinnacle of your life because that’s where you’re closest tied to the mission and the people that are doing that mission.
And then the farther along it goes, sometimes the more disconnected you get from that kind of tangible, everyday interaction. All right, so from here, let’s kind of fast forward to August of 2022. So you stepped in to become the Deputy Commander of Allied Air Command there at Ramstein and so you’ve come from a career of primarily national service in the RAF.
And now you get into a leadership role in a multinational alliance. So I guess what surprised you most about that transition? And then kind of the role that you find yourself in now?
05:55 – 09:00
(JS): Yeah, I don’t know if I’d quite use that term, but what I would do – back to people you learn from. So at that stage, NATO was 30 nations.
We are now obviously at 32 with the accession of Finland and Sweden during the time I’ve been out here. But learning from people, and I do mean this. I was privileged to be the UK Air Component Commander in the Middle East in October 2016 until October 2017. It was a period where we were conducting ops to retake Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria and a whole bunch of other [sic].
And who was my CFAC, my three star American Air Component Commander? “Cobra” Harrigian. And Cobra had just handed over to Scorch Hecker, here at Ramstein. And the reason I mention Cobra is every day I got a masterclass in how you run a coalition. And at that stage, I think it was 17 or 18 nations’ air forces within the overall Operation Inherent Resolve coalition.
And as I said, I just learned a whole load about the realities of coalitions and how you manage and bring nations along with you. The good and the difficult and the bad and the ugly. And I recognized at the time, and I reflected on that in August 2022, how much I’ve stored away from that year.
But then, of course, being what was I at that stage? 52. I’ve done a bunch of non-Air Force jobs. In fact, from leaving Squadron Command, I’ve spent, no, even the frontline before going back to Squadron Command. I’ve spent almost twice as much in joint and international appointments as I have in core Air Force ones. So I’ve been very lucky to have been engaged with, exposed to, nations [and the] realities working and the rest of it.
I think the bit which I would say, just broadly on things, which has always kind of been a thing I aim to subscribe to is it’s very easy when you are confronted with big alliances, lots of nations, and the rest of it, to drive for consensus in all things.
And at one level, of course you would. But really consensus, if you’re not careful, becomes the lowest common denominator, the thing which everybody will accept and you’ll never get to move things along. So as my team will know, I routinely say, ‘Look, guys, we may lose arguments because of positions, which we just can’t influence elsewhere or dynamics which were not cited on.
But we’re never going to lose an argument on multi-core analysis because at some point, it’s almost certain that you’ll come back to a discussion or a decision. So let’s just make sure that we are as objective and rational as we can be because context and circumstances change. And what we want to do is make sure that the position we set out was not swayed by anything but was the most objective advice we could provide.
09:01 – 09:20
(BH): Well, as you’ve kind of taken on that role. I’ve seen you speak in different forums and you’ve written a little bit about this, and you’ve talked about two “long shadows” that still haunt NATO’s military. And I wonder if you could kind of recount that metaphor for us today and kind of explain what that means to you and why specifically use the phrase ‘Shadows?’
09:21 – 12:12
(JS): Shadows is a metaphor that’s been used in many areas over things. And I think the reason it kind of appeals to me: long speaks for duration – back to that the moment – and shadow, of course, is the area that’s denying light being let in or indeed it’s the shade that’s been set by something that you may have done for many years, both of which I think are true here.
And so for me the first long shadow started in 1990 with we’ve won the Cold War. And, it is no surprise, is it? In fact, it was a conscious decision in so many nations to go “Fantastic liberal democracy has triumphed. It’s the peace dividend all round. I don’t need to invest in defense in the way I did.” And that leads to, in a way, a second long shadow: not quite as long as 32 years, from 1990 to February 2022 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But the second [shadow] is what was 15 to 20 years long. And that was counterinsurgency operations done at range against a particular type of threat, vicious but limited. For the air component in particular, no real threat, putting more threat to your operations on the ground than to you in the air because you were fighting people who had little or no counter air capability, if I can call it that.
Your biggest threats were running out of fuel or oil, and we benefited from an almost all-seeing permanent ISR stare. Sure, we never had enough of it, but we were not contested. We weren’t fighting for spectrum dominance. Electronic warfare didn’t really happen and we got very comfortable in the way of fighting that was also expeditionary.
And importantly for us, that means a long way away from home bases. There were spikes of deployment activity, and you came back to a safe home environment where you reset for the next go. And so that era of the two parts here: one ‘hey peace dividend, [we] don’t need to spend on things we did before.’
And the second of discretionary niche type operations at range, really got a bit of a rude wake up call in 2022, except, of course, it’s not just 2022, is it? It was 2014 in Crimea and it’s 2008 with Georgia before that. So I think it was a kind of natural human instinct to go elevate it to the grand strategic.
When it was being thrown in doubt by what our adversaries or competitors were doing, we applied a lot of optimism bias because it didn’t suit the happy picture, we told ourselves. And really, we are coming out of those two positions, I think, Brad.
12:13 – 12:31
(BH): One thing that I think about sometimes is that, you know, for over 30 years, NATO conducted operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places in full view of our potential adversaries who were watching and studying and learning how we do things.
So what does it mean strategically when you’re facing peer competitors who had three decades to study your playbook?
12:32 – 14:37
(JS): Yeah. So kind of 2 or 3 things here. I think the second offset strategy – this isn’t an exhaustive list, but this is the era of first era stealth technology, precision munitions, the real exploitation of space-based capabilities, and systems miniaturization.
Back to space: precision navigation, Satcom, ISR I mean, the whole lot. And of course the first time people really saw it was 1991. But the reality is you could almost date the kickoff to part one of that with the first use of the Paveway 1 in Vietnam in 1968. So that combination of technology, thinking, tactics, training and then overall theory of victory was phenomenal in 1991, but it looked remarkably the same in 2021.
We’ve taken it, polished, honed it. But the fundamental tenets of it were the same. But at the same time, we had conceptually as well as physically dis-invested in many areas, some of them very key. And I would say that amongst that list, for me, top of the tree is integrated air and missile defense.
That’s why there is so much focus on that now. Linking to your point, which is, our adversaries and competitors saw that model first shown to the world in 1991 and actively sought to not only neuter it, but to turn some of our approaches to warfare almost against us and we sat there and went, “Eh, it will be all right, because, you know, as I said, liberal democracy has triumphed.”
Well, no, it hasn’t. So, we have to now re-configure ourselves against that reality. And again, I hate to say it, we have enjoyed an unnaturally long period of relative peace in Europe and elsewhere and if we want that to maintain, then best we prepare – sadly, for war. Once again, the Romans had it right.
14:38 – 15:01
(BH): So, I think if we flip that around a little bit in the last three years, we’ve had an opportunity to watch Russia, in particular in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Neither side has seemed to have achieved air superiority and it’s kind of bogged down. You said if either side had this, war would still not be happening.
So how out of the long shadows that you’ve described in NATO, keep us unprepared for what we’re seeing right now, today, play out in Ukraine and Russia?
15:02 – 17:56
(JS): So back to 1991. And that was on one level, it was a recognition of that air superiority. But also, by the way, space superiority, ‘Who was threatening our space-based systems in 1991?’
We’re going to be fundamental to allowing all of the components to exploit the freedom of access and freedom of maneuver that air superiority was providing and space-based systems. And that’s one of the key things which our opponents have sought to neutralize in the decades that followed. There is a reason why one of our key missions is what we would call counter anti-access and area denial.
And this is not solely to free up maneuver, and access for the air component. It’s to ensure freedom of access and freedom of maneuver for everybody. So, air superiority continues to underpin joint operations. It is the way that you prevail. It is also, frankly, the thing which our adversaries look at and I think worry the most about when they look at, in this case, NATO capability and Western air power and what it provides.
But you have to fight for it literally and metaphorically. The metaphorical is you need to keep investing in back to those five T’s I set out from the U.S. experience after Vietnam and underpinning the second offset strategy, you got to make sure that your thinking allied to I mean, frankly, probably the fastest and most concurrent series of technological advances that I think any of us have seen. How that all comes together. How that with imagination and will applied to it, starts offering different ways in warfare to you, combine not just a single domain.
Then how do you practice for it? And I’m sure we’ll come on to it. But of course, one of the things is you don’t show in the real world what you might have to do – for real in the future. So that places, by the way, a real premium on synthetics. And then how does that map to a theory of victory?
Now, of course, in NATO a theory of victory for a defensive alliance sounds a rather strange phrase. Actually. It’s your theory of victory. And I know I’ve said this before, but I truly believe it – you need to build forces that can demonstrably win. And if you’ve done that, you will get deterrence as a byproduct. If you try to build forces that deter you already, I think, intellectually not in the right place.
17:57 – 18:16
(BH): That’s a great distinction. So you threw out a phrase there, and I want to pull on that thread for a second. You didn’t say it exactly, but “multi-domain operations” is a word we hear thrown around a lot in NATO discussions these days.
Can you kind of unpack that for the audience? What are multi-domain operations and how is that different from the way we thought about things previously?
18:17 – 21:27
(JS): Yeah, and it’s a really fair question. So when I was setting out on my frontline career, certainly in the first few years, you would have seen the move to the discussion of and this is a great non-word my apologies, but discussion of joint-ery and the fact that we were going to bring air, land and maritime and it would have been seen in these three domains: air, land and maritime, together.
And of course, you kind of go, ‘Well, you saw a lot of that in World War Two. You probably saw bits of that beforehand, [but any] bits in there might have been a couple of domains.
So we did get pretty good. We actually designed things like staff colleges around being joint and everybody came together. For the UK, it was a [sic]. But I think we always knew that it was actually done really well.
It was considerably more than just three military domains. But even with the recognition of space and cyber as being domains in their own right by nations or NATO – take your pick. There was something far more than that. And I think multi-domain operations, if we are really true to the term, have to include all instruments of national or for an alliance like NATO: alliance power.
So how do you, for example, fuse intelligence agencies with more traditional military means, with non-military means in the domains. Commercial space, a great example but not the only one. With in protracted campaigns, things like economic warfare, not just traditional military warfare. I mean, how do you fuse that all together, whether it is for specific operations or how it underpins a means of campaigning?
And again, I think back to some of the stuff which we did, led by the air component in the AOR in Iraq and Syria when I was out there. A lot of what we’re talking about now, we did. But we did it as a kind of episodic thing for certain events.
And I think if you’re really serious about multi-domain or all-domain operations, it’s a default. It’s not the thing you do occasionally and you do a kind of lower level of activity at all other times. But then it places a real premium I think on two things. So the first is: what does your command and control look like that fuzes all of this together? And that is way more than just tactical C2 in the moment. It’s even how do you share information and data of different classifications across different agencies in different nations? Always a challenge.
The second one, perhaps, which is the less obvious, which is how do you educate your commanders and your staff to flourish, to really excel in this space? Because if you don’t do those two things, you can buy as much flashy equipment as you like, but it’s not going to perform as you need it to.
21:28 – 22:42
(BH): That’s great. I know command and control in particular is one that, in my career, we struggled with, I know JADC2 and ABMS are some of those initiatives that the US Air Force and the US joint force have tried to get after that command and control and all that information and connecting that down to a commander, who’s got to make decisions and it’s been a challenge to build the systems that enable that and I assume NATO struggles with some of the same things.
Okay, so with that set as a broad context, I’d like to drill down. Our audience is primarily a space audience. So focused on just space for just a second and I’ll start with a little bit of a story.
Two years ago, in October of 2023, I was on a trip with a couple of, a handful of colleagues from the US space enterprise, including Deanna Ryals, who you know well. We were at Allied Command Operations on the first day of STEADFAST DEFENDER and General Cavoli, who was the SACEUR at that time, during the first commanders update briefing the first afternoon of the exercise.
Said at one point, ‘Hey, where’s my lead space guy?’ There’s an army lieutenant colonel there, who kind of raised his hand sheepishly and said, ‘Sir, I think that might be me.’ And he said, ‘Okay, cool. How much space stuff do I have?’ And so the guy said he thought about it for a minute and he said, ‘Sir, you don’t have any space stuff. The nations retain everything they’ve got. They might make it available to you on the day, if you ask nicely and they don’t have anything else going on.’
So how much of that has changed since that conversation two years ago?
22:43 – 26:52
(JS): Yeah. So in a way, one – an interesting conversation because NATO as NATO doesn’t own fighters, destroyers, main battle tanks and a bunch of other stuff. But by what its members provide to the alliance, it has access to a load of stuff.
And you could go down the route of chasing satellites with a NATO sticker on the side. By the way, we used to have a few satellites that were NATO-funded and owned.
And rockets. Now I don’t have rockets either, have I? But just look at my routes now to put payloads on orbit. And by the way, look at the cost, compared it per kilo compared to where it was even ten years ago. But the cost of physical ownership of the stuff really doesn’t worry me. The assured access to the capabilities I need definitely does.
So, okay, am I going to be able to get stuff from nations’ brackets and what can I get from nations or multinationals or alliances or the other, that’s commercial, and also provides what I need. And this is not, by the way, something that’s come out to the field since you had that chat two years ago. But the commercial driver in space has been there for decades. We all know that.
Back to 1991, look how much satellite communications was being born by commercial bearers even then. So there’s a bunch of things which had been absolutely underpinned by the commercial space contribution. I think, what is changing, I’m not going to say has changed.
What is changing from even two years ago, you are getting an increasingly better educated middle and more senior echelon, across the Alliance and therefore, of course, in nations. About not just reliance on space. I mean, that’s one thing, but the opportunities and how you can get the capabilities that you need. You don’t need to have, for example, unless frankly, you’ve got the need and/or the resources to do it – very expensive national-only military systems.
Some nations do for a bunch of reasons, but a number of spacefaring nations don’t need to be in that place. And in fact, some of the more imaginative ones don’t have anything there at all. But boy, are they very good at leveraging other options. So the continuing indeed probably slightly exponential rise in the importance of and provision of service from commercial is really, really important.
The second one, I think we’ve probably been less successful at squaring. And again, it may not be the most obvious thing to focus on which is even the youngest – air power – of the three traditional domains, is now about 110 years old in military air power terms, you could argue a bit longer ago if you go to balloons, but that’s a lot of time to develop capacity in numbers.
The Royal Air Force was at something like 1.3 million people at the end of World War II in it, we’re about 32,000 or so now. But the point is, we’ve had decades to devote to develop people and capacity in structures, space is still quite juvenile in this regard across a bunch of nations. So the one thing which I think we’ve probably not seen as much change as we would have liked in two years, although the arrows are going in the right direction, would be on our space cadre.
Our workforce, who are either in the early stages of or are developing nicely in their space component or space domain careers, because you can have as much stuff as you like. Again, if you haven’t got the means to exploit it, you’re not going to get the maximum return. So for me, the workforce is really important. Exploit commercial and get everybody on the same rising tide as well, because all of the NATO nations are or can play in this area.
26:53 – 28:38
(BH): And it’s interesting, you see nations like, I know Romania, has a couple microsats up monitoring the Black Sea. And then you see even nontraditional space players are now starting to get involved in the space game. I think that that gets back to the point you alluded to earlier, where commercial space, the price of launch has come down and the proliferation of commercial providers doing a variety of things that has made it more accessible, I guess, something to think about is.
NATO didn’t actually declare space an operational domain until 2019. Can you kind of help us think through like, what was it that got them to a point in 2019 that they thought, ‘Okay, now is the time to declare that.’ And then kind of a second part of that question, when I look at the space domain, it seems complicated because the systems tend to be very classified.
I know on the US side it’s hard to talk about sometimes. Even within the service, across mission areas, there’s classification issues. It seems to me that the space domain is kind of at this inflection point where it could go the way of nuclear or it could go the way of cyber, in the NATO construct. And what I mean by that is, NATO is a nuclear alliance.
They’ve got an HLG, you know, a high level group and a nuclear planning group, and there’s a handful of nations that have nuclear weapons. There’s some others that operate nuclear weapons. But the entire alliance is a nuclear alliance and has coherent conversations about the translation from conventional to nuclear.
And I would contrast that with the cyber domain, which is the other kind of newer domain. It was a little bit older than the space domain, and in here, we see this conversation where, where we say, ‘Okay, I’m not going to tell you what I can do, just ask me for an effect. And if you want the power to go off in that building from 10 to 2 on Tuesday,’ I may be able to do that or whatever the ask may be. But we really don’t talk about it.
And so, kind of how did we get to where we’re at on declaring space an operational domain and as we look forward, do you see it going kind of the way of going nuclear or the way of cyber, where we’re going to have a fulsome conversation and be able to talk about space coherently at the alliance level?
28:39 – 30:06
(JS): Yeah. So this is my assessment but I think it was probably two things. The first was 2019 is also about the same time, as you see the emergence of a revised family of plans in NATO. So deterrence and defense of the Euro-Atlantic area, the DDA family of plans, so that was genuinely a really important moment for the Alliance.
And of course, it did pre-date Ukraine. So there were people who were looking at the direction of travel, and going, ‘The trend lines here are not good.’ But our approach to planning and plans is fundamentally different. So I think that’s one key driver. The second is it was just becoming increasingly counterfactual, wasn’t it?
You could not [put] a hand on the heart and say, ‘Space is not an operational domain.’ When you saw the number of nations who were getting into the space game, the expansion of military, the rapid expansion of commercial, the fact that it absolutely underpinned our way in warfare from a very basic tactical level. We come back to a classic: ‘Imagine a day without space.’
But to then say, ‘Hey, but it’s not a domain, would have been, frankly, unsustainable.’ For fans of old Kings, this is Canute and his throne. That the waves of the tides have already gone well past him, so I think it was an overdue recognition. Now, of course, the challenge is what do you do with that statement?
30:07 – 30:34
(BH): All right. So, to drill down a couple levels of detail. You’ve got the NATO Space Center there, that’s working on a couple of different products that are going to help flesh out: how do you operationalize that domain? The first one is the Mission Essential Task List, and the second is a campaign plan. So if we can kind of talk through those a little bit.
So start with the Mission Essential Task List or METAL. What’s the process? What’s it designed to achieve? And kind of on a foundational level, is this an attempt to answer the question: how much space stuff do we need as an alliance?
30:35 – 33:08
(JS): So METALs as a concept has been around for some time. I think in a way, the Mission Essential Task List approach is a way of basically applying some rigor to what is it that we actually need to do? So rather than the whimsical, ‘Hey it would be quite nice to do this or it’d be quite nice to do that.’ It’s very much context threat based, mission based, right? Included in the title.
To discharge what we have been asked to do implied, as well as specified tasks. How do we aggregate that down to each individual task that supports what the component needs to do? And I think we were somewhere around 350 or so METALs for the NATO space component. And by the way, some of these are really, not binary, but singular. So some of these are very, very specific tasks.
But if you have properly unpacked your mission right down to the essential tasks to discharge it, you’ve now got the right framework to go, ‘All right, structurally and in process and in capability. What do I now need to deliver those METALs? But it doesn’t stop there. How do I now take that?
And of course NATO is not unique in this. How do I now take that to inform policy discussions about what it is that I need to do as a component, because on one level, it is defining what it is that you need to do and helping you do it better. On another, it is also providing the provenance when you go in to say, ‘Hey, here are my three priorities as the Space Component Commander.’ And by the way, I can track these all the way back to a set of METALs.
That when I aggregate into some functional areas, they tell me what I need to do. So it may sound very kind of angel on pinheads, boffins discussion, but actually it is absolutely about framing how we do our task. And it has been really, really helpful for us because you can trace back why you are making bids for more workforce, why you can set out the expanded mission set and the requirements that go with it, and how you then have, as should rightly be the case in an alliance of 32 that is a defensive alliance. How you then have what are some quite challenging policy discussions?
33:09 – 33:47
(BH): That sounds like a bottoms up approach to operationally defining your requirements that you then get to communicate out to the 32 nations and say, ‘Hey, we collectively need to have this much of these sorts of capabilities to come together in a coherent way so that we can execute the space mission that we know we’re going to have to be able to execute in the next fight.
Let’s pivot a little bit to the campaign plan. So, to me, this seems to be where the strategy meets execution. So if a METAL tells you what you need to do, a campaign plan. Well, I guess I’ll ask you, but I think a campaign tells you how and and kind of when you’re going to build the capability to do that.
So if you could walk me through the thinking on what does the space campaign look like as you guys are developing that now?
33:48 – 37:44
(JS): You’re absolutely right. Strategies are great, but at some point you’ve got to implement them. So the campaign plan seeks to bring together not only a number of lines of work which are underway, but also some stuff we know we’re going to have to do. And I’ll come back to the three priorities in a moment. The other point I’d make is we are kind of on the cusp of phase three and phase four, just getting into phase four of the five phase space domain implementation plan.
But that was derived in the late teens. And the context – back to just how rapidly some things are changing in the space domain. The real world has left some of that behind. So one of the things that the campaign plan also does is go, ‘Okay, how do we bridge from what was an effective implementation plan but has now been overtaken by events into something that is anticipating to the best extent we can future requirements whilst rooted – back to METALs – rooted in the mission requirements of now.
Who are the stakeholders in that? How do we bring everything together? And how do we make sure that that is properly scored against all of what military folk would call the lines of development, things like infrastructure, training, organization, doctrine, what NATO would call DOTMILPF-I or the British because they’re just being difficult would call tepid oil.
But the campaign plan really sets a chart out for us. It does it against three key areas. There’s other stuff, of course, but those three are: to establish what we’re terming unified space C2. The second is enhancing our capabilities on space domain awareness, but also space-based ISR. Which we’ve recently picked up the responsibility for, for NATO. And then the third area is how we embrace and develop the ability to deliver combat space effects.
And that is probably the most obvious one, which is a very live policy area of discussion in NATO at the moment. But as I said, back to my Conute example, the reality is not only do individual nations in NATO have some long-established combat space effect capability, you can now contract for it commercially, from some providers.
So, not only are you in denial, you’re just completely counterfactual. If you think somehow NATO can stay out of that bit, because the first two are softer and we’re kind of more happy with them. I’m sorry. The world and indeed, the space domain is just not like that.
One of the things, and to be honest, it’s probably overdue. But one of the things we’ve done this year is formalize a meeting of the key folk in the space component here at Ramstein, at HQ NATO and Allied Command Transformation, a couple of others and bring them together, around twice a year.
We’ve actually had three meetings this year, and we’ve had three because we’ve really wanted to put the burners on for the space campaign plan. And that will be, I think, one of the sort of really good, high level entities that ensures that we are staying true to not only the priorities we’ve identified, but the means of implementing them.
Because, as I said, some of this stuff is always challenging, as it should be in NATO, because you’re going to have to get agreement at the 32, i.e. you’re going to have to get all 32 nations to agree to some of it.
However, you also want to be able to inform national space capability activity and also commercial. So there’s a load of goodness out of this and having that better kind of small ‘g’ governance over it I think was probably overdue.
37:45 – 38:28
(BH): There was a summit in The Hague got together and amongst other things, committed to spending 5% of their GDP on defense.
3.5% of that in the kind of the way that it has historically been talked about it at the 2% level if we track back to the Whales summit in 2014. It seems like that creates an opportunity as nations are going to invest significantly as the space domain is unfolding and you keep referencing the commercial.
I think that’s absolutely a key player in a lot of this conversation. And so as we think about that, is NATO in a position to clearly articulate to the nations and their industries out there that are listening to this, as they think about what are the capabilities that they need to fill? What are the priorities that they should be getting after? And how they kind of connect all those dots together that you just mentioned?
38:29 – 40:45
(JS): Yeah, I think the scorecards are a bit uneven. I think there’s been some really good progress in some areas. I think the alliance’s persistent surveillance in space as a concept is a good thing. And I think, again, we are going to really learn through doing, certainly in the next 12 months or so. I think, elsewhere, if I’m being honest, we have probably been a bit slow, or indeed there are bits which have been missing.
So most obviously the NDP piece of the NATO Defense Planning process has not paid the attention to space that it should have done. And we’re actually going to address that in the imminent refresh cycle that repeats on this 4 or 5 year look in step one. The other thing is to come up with the space [sic] so that nations can actually commit against.
So all those things which, if we were discussing it in another domain, would be the bread and butter, but again, probably a little bit of a hangover from only really agreeing that it was an operational domain in 2019. It’s just, which I know sounds poorly, doesn’t it? Six years later and we’re still playing catch up. But the point is, I think there is now a real sense of need as well as urgency.
And for the commercial sector, I think there’s probably a few things that stand out. The first few nations have a shedload of spending power and they’re either going to do that individually and, or they’re going to do it through NATO. That creates a fantastic environment to both develop, sell and compete in.
And I think space may well be one of the most vibrant, commercial-public alliance ecosystems that we’ll find. And I think you only have to look at, for example, back to space domain awareness. Look how many commercial companies are playing in this area. And, there are so many providing some really good, niche stuff that when you fuse it all together, it provides a really helpful suite of capability.
So there’s kind of a great opportunity, alongside that requirement. And I’ve always thought that space is arguably the dual-use domain. So why don’t we just really exploit that for the benefit of everybody?
40:46 – 41:13
(BH): No, I think that’s right. And I think in the US context, we see in the Joint Commercial Office under Barb Golf, the building a commercial space domain awareness, which could be the core of a NATO space domain awareness picture that nations then layer on some sovereign national capabilities that kind of get to the exquisite, niche capabilities that you need above and beyond that core space picture that you’d want.
Rather than having 32 nations develop their own space picture, we just got the core of a commercial picture that we augment with national sovereign systems.
41:14 – 41:47
(JS): I think what Barb and the team have done with the JCO is phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. And if you want to advert for back again to imagination and will and innovation applied to a core area, the JCO is a fantastic example. And again, with how it’s mechanized or operationalized the space ops center here at Ramstein contributes to one of the three sequential eight hour watches in any 24 hour period. So JCO is really impressive.
41:48 – 42:35
(BH): Going back to the list that you expounded on during the talk about the campaign plan. I think you said something to the effect of, ‘We need to embrace and develop combat space.’ And so a couple thoughts here I’d like to get your kind of reaction on. So I was at a conference earlier this year in Toulouse, France at the NATO Space Center of Excellence.
And one of the allied space leaders said something to the effect of ‘you may not be interested in offensive space, but offensive space is interested in you.’ So I wonder if you could kind of unpack that and here I’d also like to kind of pull in China. We haven’t talked about China. We’ve talked a lot about the European threat.
But it seems to me that space is in the area because it’s global and astrographic, where I’ve heard some Allied leaders say that this is the one area where we can have a coherent conversation about the challenges that that China poses to us militarily and in other ways. So if you could kind of reflect on that kind of offensive space?
42:36 – 44:51
(JS): I would probably, for reasons you’ll understand. I mean, I won’t get drawn too much into nations other than to note that, of course, there are a bunch of vocab out there who I think we could accurately start now saying as being at least competitive. And therefore, you know, we need to be very much aware of what they are doing and what they are investing in.
One of the things I always say when they visit the space ops center is compare and contrast for the want of a better phrase, the orbital track graphic of Russian systems with the orbital tracks of Chinese ones. So in terms of the national strategic investment in the space domain by China being no doubt, as to what it looks like and it is multifaceted.
I think there is also something that is absolutely true in what you said. Any sense that you can delineate space as a domain is, I think, for the birds because, it’s all around us. And in terms of what it can actually provide, how it underpins normal life let alone military capability and operations.
And I think the quote from Toulouse and I was there as well. It is a truism. It comes back to my main point. It doesn’t matter whether you kind of feel uneasy about this or it feels a bit aggressive and not like, you know, and can’t we keep space as some sort of sanctity area?
The decision has already been made for us. And therefore to be in denial to that would be analogous for example, in the air domain to go, ‘Hey, they put a lot of offensive capability but I’d really rather not go there myself, in which case you just going to be walked over.’
By the way, and really important for NATO is back to something I was chatting about, you know, earlier that you don’t build forces to deter you build forces to win. And therefore you have got to in all five domains as recognized by NATO. You’ve got to show that you mean business. And then if anybody threatens you there, they are going to come off significantly worse and therefore building the capabilities you need to assure your deterrence is really important and space to me is no different than the other domains.
44:52 – 45:35
(BH): Yeah, I totally agree with that. So, I’m looking at the time and realizing that we’re running close here. And so I want to kind of give you a chance to kind of wrap up with any final thoughts. I’ve got a laundry list of other questions, and if we had more time, I’d love for you to go through them all. But I know you got, you’ve got to wrap up your job, exercises going on and household goods and making the transition back to the UK.
So I’ll ask one kind of follow up question and kind of give you a chance to [provide] any last thoughts. But, as you look out over the next 3 to 5 years, I mean, so it was declared an operational domain in 2019, and you’ve been with it since 2022, in your NATO capacity kind of helping guide and shape the space domain as you look out over the next three years, you know, where do you hope things are going? Where do we need to go? What are the priorities that we need to prioritize as we look forward over the next period of time?
45:36 – 47:15
(JS): You can always come up with an interesting shopping list, but I think by and large it comes down to two things. The first is we have to up the pace at which we’re developing our people.
That’s nations so that their own space cadre is developed, but that selfishly also means that they can put more people into the NATO space enterprise, because we’re going to need them and we need to be imaginative in how we do that. And that includes, for example, working out what our overall space education and training capability is in the nations.
Base-lining what a foundational series of courses looked like and then ensuring that every course, no matter where it is, is 100% filled because it can be multinational, because we’re educating and training to a set of standards. Loads behind that. But if you just took workforce numbers as number one.
And then the second is we need to make sure that as we continually refine the family of plans, the space capabilities that we are putting into those plans are assured to SACEUR. So he knows that he’s going to get what we promised him on the ten. I’m actually quite confident in that space because, again, where a number of them are being commercially driven, there is a logic and motive there anyway, but some of the other stuff will remain largely, if not exclusively, a military space requirement. We need to make sure the nations are funding that adequately.
So that as I said, you know, SACEUR knows that when he’s calling for forces, he’s going to get them. So those are kind of the two for me, Brad.
47:16 – 47:34
(BH): Thank you very much for that, Sir. That’s a great way to end the conversation. Again, I wish we could keep talking for a while, but I know you got bigger and better things to go do.
So I appreciate you taking time with us today. Again, this has been Air Marshal Sir Johnny Stringer, the Deputy Commander of NATO’s Air Command. And Sir, we wish you all the best as you make the transition back to the UK and whatever comes next for you.
47:35 – 47:37
(JS): Thanks, Brad. First beer on me.
47:38 – 48:23
(SK): This has been the inaugural episode of “The Elara Edge: International Insights Edition,” a special edition series of “The Elara Edge” podcast. As a strategic advisory firm, Elara Nova is the trusted guiding partner that builds tailored teams to illuminate unseen opportunities and deliver impact across every domain.
With the trusted insight to deliver your decisive edge, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in national security.
If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge.