Space Operations Summit

An authoritative joint defence space forum designed for NATO and its partners to build mutual understanding and awareness of the evolving space landscape, benchmark their space strategies and doctrine, and outline their plans for future capabilities for operations from and for space.

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The Space Operations Summit is designed to bring together the international military space enterprise to identify new opportunities for joint collaboration, overcome new and emerging threats, and enhance allied space resilience, intelligence and decision-making in support of global security objectives.

Ahead of the publication of NATO's first Space Policy, we are pleased to host a forum that strengthens coordination between allies and commercial and civil partners for global defence operations, enabling us to enhance our collective space capabilities and build decision-advantage across multiple domains.

Conference Objectives

• Enable NATO and its partners to benchmark their defence space policies to develop coherent approaches to emerging operational threats
• Develop clearer understanding and articulation of joint doctrine to plan, execute, and assess joint space operations
• Encourage closer collaboration between government and both traditional and non-traditional defence contractors
• Stimulate dialogue about the evolving space landscape, emerging threats to space assets and the growth in opportunities for the military to leverage the commercial space revolution

Supporting the Space Enterprise

The space landscape is undergoing a revolutionary transformation. The rapid development and proliferation of space technology, led by a vibrant and diverse global industry made up of traditional defence contractors, philanthropists, new space companies and start-ups, gives NATO and its partners new opportunities to enhance their individual and collective space capabilities to support and enhance global and theatre multi-domain operations.

However, the space domain is no longer benign as it once was. The exponential growth of civil, commercial and military space actors has created a highly congested and, now, contested environment which presents global allies with myriad strategic, operational and tactical challenges not just in space, but in air, at sea, and on land.

At the precipice of this technological space revolution, and against the backdrop of new threats that threaten national and global security, military and government leaders are developing new strategies that will enable them to outpace their adversaries and build a innovative, sustainable, resilient space enterprise for the future. The inaugural 'Space Operations Summit' will provide the vehicle through which these issues can be explored, within and across political, military and industrial alliances, and assist the decision-making process by engaging subject matter experts in this dynamic defence space community ahead of the publication of NATO's first Space Policy in the June 2019.

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Speaker Faculty

• Lieutenant General Brian Beaudreault, Deputy Commandant for Plans, Policies and Operations & Director Space Operations MAGTF, US Marine Corps
• Lieutenant General Luiz Fernando de Aguiar, Chairman, Space Systems Coordination and Implementation Committee
• Major General E. G. Whyte, Chief, Nigerian Defence Space Administration
• Air Commodore Philip Lester, Head Doctrine, Air Space and Cyber, DCC
• Brigadier General Eliot Benavidez Gonzalez, Chief of Aeronautical Education, Colombian Air Force
• Brigadier General Jean-Paul Mochin, Chief of Staff, Strategic Development of Forces, NATO SHAPE
• General Philippe Steininger (Ret), Military Advisor to the President, National Centre for Space Studies (CNES)
• Colonel Stig Nilsson, Head of Space, Norwegian Ministry of Defence (tentative)
• Lieutenant Colonel Giovanni Sembenini, Chief, NATO and non-European Countries R&T Programs, Italian Secretariat General of Defence and National Armaments Directorate
• Lieutenant Colonel John Patrick, Staff Officer, Space Ops, NATO SHAPE
• Major Geoffroy Beaudot, LUX Space Policy, Directorate of Defense, Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs
• Dr Christian Anrig, Chief of Doctrine, Swiss Air Force
• Dr Tomas Kopecny, Director of Industrial Cooperation Department, Czech Ministry of Defence
• Dr Thomas Cooley SES, Chief Scientist, Space Vehicles, Air Force Research Laboratory
• Dr Kestutis Paulauskas, Defence Policy and Planning Division, NATO International Staff
• Laryssa Patten, Aerospace Engineer, NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA)
• Scott Van Sant, Deputy Branch Chief, Space Policy, USSTRATCOM
• Dr Michael O'Callaghan, Space Programme Manager, Dstl
• Dr Bleddyn Bowen, Lecturer in International Relations, University of Leicester
• Dr Nick Wright, Affiliated Scholar, Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics, Georgetown University

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