According to German media reports, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will announce on Thursday (Oct. 22) the establishment of a space center at the air base in Ramstein, Germany, whose role will be to monitor and protect friendly satellites as well as serve as a coordination center for space observation. At the same time, NATO allies are increasingly concerned about the use of anti-satellite weapons by countries such as China and Russia to cause harm on the ground and in space.
NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg said in an interview with Deutsche Welle that fast and secure satellite communications are vital for NATO forces. The space environment has fundamentally changed in the last decade, with hundreds of new satellites appearing every year, space is becoming more crowded and competitive, and satellites are becoming more vulnerable; some countries – including Russia and China – are developing anti-satellite systems that can shoot down or disable satellites and bring dangerous debris into space orbit, he said. We must increase our understanding and capacity to address these space challenges, he said.
Stoltenberg expects NATO defense ministers to unanimously agree to the plan on Thursday. He also reiterated his warning about the “militarization of space.
Last December, Stoltenberg said, “NATO has never experienced a more complex security environment than it does today. In order to maintain NATO’s security, he said, it needs to be more flexible in responding to threats from all sides, including space and cyberspace.
The space center will gather information about possible threats to satellites and will further develop into a command center for defense initiatives in the future, Reuters reported.
There are currently some 2,000 satellites orbiting the Earth, more than half of which are operated by NATO countries, and these satellites serve a variety of purposes, from securing cell phone signals to banking services to weather forecasting. NATO commanders in places like Afghanistan or Kosovo also rely on a number of satellites to provide them with information for navigation, communication, intelligence sharing, and missile launch detection.
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