OMAHA, Neb. -- Nations with secondary space programs--some of which once joined China in criticizing U.S. space-control policy--are now promoting their own ideas of controlling space through advanced communications and networking. At the Strategic Space and Defense conference in Omaha (Oct. 9 to 11), military leaders from France and India were among those advocating a new role for nations operating in the United States' shadow.

Military space and communications officers met in the center of the nation near Strategic Command headquarters Oct. 10, even as an Atlas-5 rocket at Cape Canaveral launched the first Wideband Global Satcom satellite from Florida Wednesday evening. The original constellation of WGS satellites, formerly known as Wideband Gapfiller Satellite, has been expanded with a sixth planned satellite financed by the Australian government, another state on a mission to join in U.S. plans for keeping space lanes from emerging adversaries.

Lt. Gen. Patrick de Rousiers, commander of French air defense operations, provided a unique perspective on France's new efforts to work with European allies on controlling space lanes through joint sponsorship of imaging and signals intelligence satellites. He provided a rare glimpse into the links among France, Spain and Italy in managing the Helios photographic spy satellite, as well as France's nascent efforts to turn its Essaim communications-intelligence satellite into a Europe-wide operation.

While not a member of NATO, France has worked closely with the European Union to expand these efforts. It has used the three-way Helios alliance and expanded the effort to include Germany, Greece, and Belgium in the design of MUSIS, the Multinational Satellite-based Imagery System for Surveillance. A similar multi-nation program will be launched for signals-intelligence satellites, dubbed Ceres.

These efforts are not meant to create an alternative to a U.S.-centric space control program, Rousiers said, but to allow European nations to work on their own satellites to integrate information sent to ground forces.

Lt. Gen. Kurt Ebbe Rosgaard of the Royal Danish Air Force had a similar observation on U.S. efforts to promote missile defense. Expansion of missile defense has been a growing controversy since early 2007, when the U.S. Missile Defense Agency announced a planned radar installation in the Czech Republic and planned interceptor missiles in Poland. Since Gordon Brown took over as prime minister in England, his administration has announced its willingness to station U.S. missile-defense missiles in the UK, perhaps at Lakenheath Royal Air Force Base.

Rosgaard said that the latest five-year defense agreement of the Danish government specifies a potential new role for missile-defense support. Denmark's entire military budget of approximately $3.3 billion a year is only a third of the budget of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency on its own. The most visible element is the upgrade of the Thule radar in Greenland, though Rosgaard said that smaller tactical radars, including Smart-1 and APAR phase-array radar, could be upgraded to support layered theatre missile-defense.

"There is a small state dilemma: with a small budget, how can security be optimized to include missile defense?" Rosgaard asked. "Is it possible to play an active role in a network without actively investing in and managing large systems?"

U.S. officers did not reveal any sudden new space theories at the conference, but they did discuss existing concepts, such as "operationally responsive space" (ORS) and "global strike," showing the way they could be used in existing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. ORS, which is intended to allow specialized spacecraft to be fielded in weeks, is winning new proponents and new funding in Washington.

Last summer, a dedicated ORS Office was created at Kirtland Air Force Base, in Albuquerque, and will spend between $100 million and $150 million a year in coordinating military space missions for rapid response. The office gets support from some uniformed services--NASA, the National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency, and National Space Architect--though OSR Office associate director Joseph Rouge said its talent was "spending other people's money, finding ways to get all these agencies to work together on rapid and reliable space use."

Routers in space

An interesting sidelight of the Strategic Space conference was the effort to show efficient cross-linked satellite technology for routing Internet Protocol traffic in space. Cisco Systems Inc. and Intelsat General Corp. held a soiree to celebrate early trials of its IRIS (IP Router in Space) program, described by Intelsat vice president Kay Sears in a panel discussion.

IRIS, to be designed with the aid of Seakr Engineering and Space Systems/Loral, will be launched into geostationary orbit in 2009. While the program is getting Defense Department funding, its operations will be available for commercial use after tests.

But Northrop-Grumman and Juniper Networks Inc. could claim a unique role in the upcoming Transformational Satellite, or Tsat. The first tests of the on-board Router Processor, based on a Juniper IPv6 design, were completed in early October by Northrop-Grumman and Tsat prime contractor Lockheed Martin. Tsat has been touted since early in the Bush administration as the ideal satellite system for broadband IP services, though it has faced funding cuts for several years running from Congress, pushing launches of the complex network to 2013 or beyond.