U.S. Air Force Looks At European Space

Signal, Sep 2008 by Baddeley, Adam

Greater commercial and military cooperation is taking place across national borders.

As aerospace operations increasingly beckon, the U.S. Air Force is looking across the Atlantic as well as skyward. It has created a new liaison office designed to coordinate and boost space cooperation with Europe. This comes as both civil government and military entities across the continent are deploying new space-based systems that can complement or enhance U.S. capabilities.

The new director, European space liaison, is Col. Richard McKinney, USAF (Ret.), who has 25 years of involvement in space and missile programs. The newly formed post resides under the Office of the Under secretary of the Ak Force. "The Ak Force recognized within the last year or so that it really needed a greater presence and knowledge of space in Europe," explains McKinney. "The purpose of the job is several-fold, but the main one is to facilitate cooperation in space with our European allies."

Ron Sega, the former under secretary of the Air Force and the Defense Department's executive agent and milestone decision authority for space, drove this decision, according to McKinney. "In the past, there wasn't even anyone to discuss these issues with in Europe," McKinney notes. "You had to go to the United States, and we handled it on a needbe basis. I don't want to say ad hoc, because it was more formal than that."

The European space liaison position initially will last for three years. "What I am really hoping to achieve is that this position becomes an asset to use in terms of working with the United States on all matters regarding space, and to help facilitate and to provide better cooperation on matters of space where it makes sense for both parties to do so," McKinney declares. He concedes that it may not be a universal panacea, however. "Sometimes that makes sense, sometimes not."

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has had a similar position since 1964, but it mainly deals with civil space and the European Space Agency (ESA). ,Some overlap is inevitable between NASA's mission in Europe and that of the Air Force's European space liaison. "Even in the United States, the Air Force works closely with NASA," McKinney observes. "They use the same launch sites and rockets, and certainly some of the technologies are the same so there is a natural amount of overlap. I would go on to further say that [the European space liaison's role] is also to improve and to expand our relationship on space matters to include science and technology, defense development and civil applications for space where there is dualuse capability such as weather satellites and potentially access to space."

This new liaison also takes into account the many definitions of "European," McKinney acknowledges. "It's a new position, and the areas we are initially concentrating on are the European Union and NATO. Then we will move beyond that. Russia, however, is a completely different question because it has a significant space capability already in one country.

"I would say that Europe as whole has a very robust space capability," McKinney adds. "You have to look at the whole to look at the overall space capability because there are different capabilities in each country." The liaison position currently is based in Paris, which reflects France's investment in space. He notes that on an annual basis France spends more money in space than any other European country.

He observes that working with allies requires an understanding of capabilities on both sides. That cannot be done effectively in the final lastminute run up to future operations. It must be done on a long-term, ongoing basis, which is what he is actively pursuing as part of his remit. Col. McKinney compares this to international relationships among air forces.

"In the air, we have exchange pilots and we cooperate on exercises and we certainly deploy together. In order to operate together, you have to have some knowledge of each other's operational capabilities, techniques and limitations to get the most efficient use of our assets. Maybe someday we will be in the same position to do so in space. That will take a period of discussion to figure out the first steps and determine what would be mutually beneficial. Without having knowledge of those capabilities and ways to facilities those discussions, that will take longer. You could say that this new position is an integral part of that [effort]."

McKinney also identifies ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as instrumental in developing the broad thrust and details of that future relationship. "The more operational experience we get, the more that is going to shape how we do business in the future. As space becomes more important, the knowledge of how the systems work together and can be complementary becomes more and more important. It will help and it facilitates future discussion, but again it is a step-by-step basis. You take a step, see how you can improve it, and men you take the next step and follow on from there."