COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. –
As part of the Space Foundation’s Space Symposium week of programming, April 7-10, 2025, U.S. Space Command leaders represented the command’s critical mission through speaking events, panel discussions, and engagements with international partners spanning the globe and organizations representing all facets of the national security space sector.
Recognizing the Symposium’s 40th year with the theme, “building partnerships to secure our future,” the command’s robust participation sought to elevate an understanding of space’s foundational role in not only military operations, but in the modern way of life. As the combatant command responsible for protecting and defending the space domain from increasingly evolving opponents and threats, USSPACECOM’s perspective contributes to greater integration and synchronization across the space enterprise.
Gen. Stephen Whiting, U.S. Space Command commander, kicked off the agenda as a featured speaker, providing a keynote where he stressed the importance of peace through strength by ensuring U.S. interests in space. He outlined his Elements of Victory during his remarks, which provides a warfighting framework to deter, and if required, achieve war-winning advantage in space.
He also highlighted the efforts USSPACECOM has made over the past year to operationalize the command’s relationships in space with its most capable Allies. He announced that the U.S. and France recently conducted its first ever bilateral Rendezvous and Proximity Operation to demonstrate combined capabilities in space, in the vicinity of a strategic competitor spacecraft.
Additionally, he announced that
Multinational Force-OPERATION OLYMPIC DEFENDER has reached “IOC at seven,” meaning, it has achieved Initial Operational Capability with seven member nations–the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, and the U.K.
Read more about his keynote.
Joint Partners
Throughout the week’s engagements, USSPACECOM personnel reinforced the importance of assured access to space to the entirety of modern joint military operations. Speaking on a panel entitled, “Space Communications to Enhance Information Advantage at the Tactical Edge, Rear Adm. Heidi Berg, deputy commander of the U.S. Navy service component to U.S. Space Command, stressed that we must strive for true integration rather than just de-confliction.
“Taking the most realistic and complex environments and exercising with the Joint Force and with the Navy allows us to do reps and sets to build that understanding of space as it relates to cyber, electronic warfare, maneuver, and kinetic effects” she said. “You can’t do space in isolation – it has to be in interaction with all of this.”
Echoing Whiting’s comments from earlier in the week, she said, “to put it simply, without space-based capabilities, the Joint Force cannot shoot, cannot move, and cannot communicate. We rely on space for everything we do, and we have to have the same level of understanding of the space domain as we do for the undersea domain, the maritime, domain, for the land, and for the air.”
Ensuring the uninterrupted availability of capabilities upon which the Joint Force relies is a core mission for the Space Force, according to Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess, the commander of the Space Force’s service component to USSPACECOM.
Describing his command’s lines of effort to “protect, defend, deliver, and connect,” in a fireside chat on April 9, he said, “we need to protect our joint warfighters from space-enabled attack,” and deliver to “our joint warfighters in those other domains what they need to be able to get the mission done.”
During the week’s ’s closing fireside chat titled “Securing our Future -- honoring Joint warfighters,” Chief Master Sergeant Jacob Simmons, USPACECOM’s senior enlisted leader, spoke about the need to move faster to sustain the advantage over adversaries and competitors.
“We have to have the right kit in order to be effective and to be credible,” he said, outlining key focus areas like dynamic space operations, sustained space maneuver and tactically responsive space. “In the next five to 10 years, we have to have these capabilities fielded because our adversaries are not waiting for us to decide now is the right time … we are not behind, but we had better put on the accelerator so that we can widen the gap and create more uncertainty in their calculus.”
Allies and Partners
In addition, Whiting, Maj. Gen. Brian Gibson, USSPACECOM director of strategy, plans and policy (J5), and other J5 leaders met with Allies and Partners across the globe, further reinforcing the command’s commitment to strengthening bilateral cooperation in the space domain.
Whiting held bilateral engagements with Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Peru and Slovenia.
Gibson met with representatives from NATO Air Command; African partners from Angola, Kenya and Nigeria; European Allies from Finland, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland; and Indo-Pacific partners from Singapore.
Learn more about these engagements.
On Friday, USSPACECOM hosted the Multinational Force-OPERATION OLYMPIC DEFENDER Coordination Board, its first formal gathering since Whiting announced the achievement of initial operational capability earlier in the week. As part of the day’s agenda, Whiting approved and signed the MNF-OOD campaign plan, marking another historic milestone for the multinational force.
Commercial Partners
Whiting emphasized the “asymmetric advantage” commercial partners provide during his keynote and how USSPACECOM is maximizing this advantage. This sentiment was echoed on the four panels USSPACECOM Capability and Resource Integration Directorate (J8) leaders participated in alongside commercial partners.
Thomas Lockhart, director of J8, provided his insights on the “Space Nuclear Propulsion & Power: Enabling Unparalleled Capabilities in Space Operations & Exploration,” alongside commercial partners from Ad Astra Rocket Company, L3Harris and the Universities Space Research Association.
During the panel he emphasized the importance of nuclear propulsion for future space operations to enable sustained maneuverability and resilience in an increasingly contested space environment. He called for a national imperative to support on-orbit testing, infrastructure development, and a shift in mindset to accelerate progress.
“I think this fits really nicely in what we’re trying to talk about with sustained space maneuver, dynamic space operations, and where we’re going into the future,” he said.
The panel discussed two types of nuclear-powered space engines, agreeing on the concurrent development of nuclear electric and thermal propulsion systems, to meet future space exploration and national security needs.
Lockhart also joined Berg on the “Space Communications to Enhance Information Advantage at the Tactical Edge” panel, alongside speakers from Space Systems Command, the President of Amazon Kuiper Government Solutions, and the President of Communications Systems at L3Harris.
The panel discussed the United States progress and challenges in integrating space capabilities with tactical operations, emphasizing the need for greater interoperability with commercial systems, prioritizing technology for warfighters, and the need for continuous innovation.
One emerging technology both Lockhart and Berg said they see as critical to enabling space communications to enhance the information advantage was quantum sensing, quantum Position Navigation and Timing, and quantum encryption.
Berg highlighted the threat from China as the reason for this need.
“That is significant, and how quickly we are able to ensure that we’ve got quantum resistant encryption … this is a race that we must win,” she said.
Sarah Winfrey, Space Domain Awareness branch chief for J8, sat on the panel, “Securing Satellites and our Safety and Security from Space Weather,” alongside representatives from NASA, John Hopkins University and USRA where they discussed the importance of resilient space systems for mitigating the impact of space weather.
During the discussion she shared USSPACECOM’s role in integrating space weather forecasting into operational planning and highlighted the important collaboration with the 557th weather Wing, 2d Weather Squadron; and agencies like NASA and NOAA, which provide products and services that contribute to the command’s understanding of the space environment.
“Contributions from these products and collaborations will inform our decisions, forward launch windows, mission duration, orbit selection, contingency planning, collision avoidance, communication strategies and safety of operations in all orbital regimes.”
Col. Eddie Ferguson, chief of USSPACECOM’s Advanced Warfighter Capabilities and Resources Analysis Division, shared his thoughts on the “Bridging the Gap: How to Actually Integrate Commercial Services into Space Operations” panel.
He said that USSPACECOM is leveraging commercial partnerships, dual-use technologies, and modeling and simulation to identify capability gaps and quickly integrate solutions into operational planning. He emphasized the critical role of industry collaboration in defending space assets and ensuring space-based services remain resilient and available throughout crisis and conflict.
“We cannot execute our plans the way they’re formed today without our commercial partners going together with us, and we don’t question their ability to do that,” he said.
Academic Partners
At the end of the week, separate from the Space Symposium, USSPACECOM’s
Academic Engagement Enterprise hosted its Spring 2025 Symposium. Academic partners from the University of Texas; United States Military Academy; University of Central Florida; University of Texas Medical Branch; Universities Space Research Association; Arizona State University; University of Colorado at Boulder; and the University of Colorado - Colorado Springs participated in the event themed, “Year of C2–Building a Common Understanding of Space.”
Maj. Gen. Samuel Keener, director of USSPACECOM’s Joint Forces Development and Training Directorate (J7), emphasized the vital role of each institution in his opening remarks, and cited the command’s partnerships – including those with academia – as a source of innovation and technical expertise that contributes to the command’s strategic advantage.
The 40th annual Space Symposium provided a forum for the command to build partnerships and hold integral engagements and conversations. Whiting’s final thoughts during his keynote expressed the reason engagements like these are important.
“This incredible future won’t happen on its own. It’s one we must safeguard, shape, and defend together. To not only protect our interests in space today, but also protect that future,” he said.
USSPACECOM, working with Allies and Partners, plans, executes, and integrates military spacepower into multi-domain global operations in order to deter aggression, defend national interests, and when necessary, defeat threats.