"If I didn’t have air supremacy, I wouldn’t be here," General Dwight D Eisenhower reportedly said on the Normandy beaches in 1944. The piece that follows argues the same logic now applies to space: control there can be decisive, and the label a nation gives the domain matters for how it organises, resources and deters.
A strategic reclassification: the United States and the US Space Force
In 2018 the United States took a deliberate step: it announced work to establish a sixth branch of the armed forces, the US Space Force, and the first administration of Donald Trump defined space as a warfighting domain in the same year. That change marked a clear break from earlier descriptions of space as an "operational domain" or a "supporting domain" — labels that treated space primarily as an enabler for activity on sea, land and in the air.
General Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations for the USSF, underscored this shift when testifying to the US–China Economic and Security Review Commission in 2025. He described the move away from treating space as "a benign environment" used "as a strategic resource rather than a warfighting domain," and warned that adversaries’ space capabilities now posed "an incredible threat to the rules-based international order."
Tracking capabilities: the 2026 Secure World Foundation report
The influence of space has expanded beyond a handful of actors. The 2026 edition of the Secure World Foundation’s Global Counterspace Capabilities report tracked military capabilities being developed by 13 countries. Those capabilities, the report shows, range from electronic warfare and direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons to co-orbital spacecraft capable of grappling with other satellites.
That inventory reflects a broader point in the source material: space is no longer a distant frontier reserved for a small number of powers. It has become part of the infrastructure of modern life, and military activity in space has seen radical growth this century.
NATO’s language and Russia’s space-related actions
NATO began calling space an operational domain in 2019. Since then, the alliance has raised alarm at persistent space-related actions by Russia. The source cites a major cyber attack on civil and military space infrastructure that preceded Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and reports that Russian satellites jammed positioning signals.
Those incidents contributed to an uptick in information sharing and public disclosure of on-orbit activities among allies and partners — a practical response to the kinds of behaviour NATO highlighted.
Combined Space Operations initiative and information sharing
Responses to rising activity have not been limited to rhetoric. Increased disclosure and cooperation now take place in new and expanding forums. The international Combined Space Operations initiative, for example, has 10 partner nations and is focused on space security collaboration. The source identifies enhanced cooperation — among allies, partners, industry and media — as a critical step toward establishing credible deterrence.
Why the label matters: doctrine, resources and diplomacy
The source argues that classifying space as a warfighting domain does three concrete things: it helps coordinate capabilities, it provides a basis to resource those efforts and requirements, and it signals resolve that can underpin credible deterrence. Elevating space to the same status as air, sea and land recognises that conflict is already occurring in the domain, rather than treating space merely as an enabler for other domains.
Critically, the piece rejects the notion that the label itself creates militarisation. It frames the warfighting designation as a framework for understanding how conflict can be deterred, responded to and constructively bounded, and notes that a pragmatic reclassification would not prevent ongoing diplomatic engagement on space.
What this means for Australia, NATO, and the United States
- Australia: The source notes Australia still refers to space as an operational domain; the argument presented urges Canberra to consider a pragmatic shift to warfighting language to align doctrine with the realities of on-orbit activity.
- NATO: Having called space an operational domain in 2019, NATO has resorted to increased information sharing and public disclosure in response to persistent space-related actions, particularly those attributed to Russia.
- The United States (USSF): The US decision in 2018 to establish the US Space Force and to label space a warfighting domain is presented as a strategic move that others are being asked to match in nomenclature and posture.
Language, the argument concludes, matters. Ambiguity in calling space an "operational" or "supporting" domain, the source contends, no longer fits the reality on orbit. As the final observation puts it: ambiguity "has not prevented space from becoming a warfighting domain in fact if not in classification." Whether other nations follow the United States’ lead in name as well as practice is the policy decision that remains on the table.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/every-country-should-understand-space-as-a-wafighting-domain/
