Manchester — Military space operators worldwide need to more quickly identify aggressive actions on orbit and be more closely integrated with their counterparts in the air, land and sea domains if they hope to deter threats in the near future, a panel of space leaders said. 

The 1942 book “Victory Through Air Power” changed modern warfare by contending that air warfare needed to do more than support other theaters.

Now, the same needs to be true for space: worldwide military leaders speaking at the Chief of the Air Staff’s Global Air & Space Chiefs’ Conference 2025, held in London on July 16, said space should be considered on the same footing as air, land, sea and cyber. 

“Across our respective forces today, we have integrated space capabilities into the other domains: operations, air, land and sea power,” said United States Space Force Lt. Gen. Shawn N. Bratton, deputy chief of space operations for strategy, plans, programs and requirements. All are enhanced by space power through factors such as communication and navigation, he said. “But we can and should continue to increase that integration.”

Bratton added that an integrated approach will prove critical to ensuring countries’ inherent right to self-defense.

Bratton listed several steps for the joint force to increase that integration:

  • The space domain needs to be “demystified and normalized” by using the same terms and terminology as air, land and sea.
  • Space needs to understand what the other domains need, and air, land and sea must also understand what the space domain needs, including planning processes, timelines and synchronization of efforts.
  • The military must develop its doctrine for space, including conducting training exercises that incorporate space into air, land and sea operations.
  • The joint force must be protected from space-enabled targeting.

“Space capabilities, tactics, techniques and procedures must be woven into planning at all levels,” Bratton said. “The aviator should be able to speak to space operations as well as the space operator.”

This requires more than technology, he said. “It needs a continued shift in the mindset and the doctrine in our operational concepts for space to deliver integrated space power to the joint force.”

“If you’re zero in one domain, you’re zero in all domains,” said Lt. Gen. Susan Coyle, chief of Australia’s Space and Cyber, Joint Capabilities Group. “All five need to get attention, and they may not be equal, but all five need to have that dedicated, focused attention.”

Treating space as an equal partner also requires a layered approach to defense, Bratton said. “It includes the ability to absorb an attack, the use of passive defense measures such as maneuver and minimizing exposure to the threat, the hardening of our spacecraft against attacks.” 

But passive defense is not enough, he said. “We have a right and a responsibility to defend our space assets.”

One problem that remains is determining what constitutes a hostile intent in space, Bratton saidThat means rules of engagement “must be rigorously tested in war gaming, and exercises become part of our routine training,” he said. Just as they are for airmen, soldiers and sailors, they must become second nature to space operators, he said. “We cannot debate what constitutes a hostile act or what authority a commander needs. Our operators must be thoroughly trained and understand what is acceptable and also what is unacceptable in the space domain. This enables them to act decisively and effectively to protect the joint force.”

For example, “in the early days of U.S. Space Command, the Russians were maneuvering a satellite close to a U.S. asset that made us uncomfortable,” Bratton said. “We actually called NORAD and talked to the air domain folks. ‘Hey, when they put a bomber off the coast of your country, how do you think about that? How do you respond? What do you talk about publicly vs. not publicly?’”

The United Kingdom’s Strategic Defence Review, released in June 2025, called out space as a separate domain with air, land, sea and cyber for the first time, said Maj. Gen. Paul Tedman, Commander of UK Space Command. “It starts to elevate space to parity with the other traditional domains,” he said. 

The U.K.’s ambition is to be a competitive space power by 2035, meaning credible enough to deter threats, resilient enough to be able to endure first strike, and prepared, if necessary, to fight, he said. 

“My conviction is that if major conflict starts somewhere, it will start in space, probably in cyber as well,” said Maj. Gen.jor General Philippe Adam, Space Commander of the French Air and Space Force. “We need to be ready for that.”

This could extend to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as well, which generally relies on the military capabilities of its members. “The role of NATO is exactly the one that has been described,” Adam said, adding that France is already discussing this with NATO. “We need to make sure that they include space.” That could also extend to expanding the Golden Dome missile defense system to Europe, he added.

Also, during the conference, the U.K. Space Agency awarded £4.5 million ($5.98 million) to four projects: MDA Space U.K.’s SkyPhi for 5G and 6G connectivity to devices via low Earth orbit satellites; Orbit Fab’s Radical project developing in-orbit refuelling systems for telecommunications satellites; SSTL’s lunar communications system for deep-space communications and Viasat’s hybrid GEO-LEO network for global 5G Direct-to-Device coverage. The organization awarded an additional £1.6 million to the U.K.’s 15-member space cluster network “to stimulate innovation and economic growth.”

Adam also sounded a cautionary note. “If we start fighting in space, there is a big danger that space will be hard to exploit in the future,” he said.