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# 									Digital Press Briefing with General Stephen Whiting, Commander, U.S. Space Command							

Special Briefing

General Stephen Whiting, Commander, U.S. Space Command

April 24, 2024

https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Audio_Digital-Press-Briefing-with-General-Stephen-N.-Whiting-Commander-U.S.-Space-Command.m4a

**MODERATOR:**  Greetings from the U.S. Department of State’s Asia Pacific Media Hub.  I would like to welcome journalists to today’s on-the-record briefing with General Stephen N. Whiting, Commander of the U.S. Space Command.  General Whiting will discuss his ongoing travel to the Indo-Pacific region to meet with allies and partners to advance collaboration and information sharing on space security topics.

With that, let’s get started.  General Whiting, I’ll turn it over to you for your opening remarks.

**GENERAL WHITING:**  Hey, thank you, Natalie, and thanks to the Department of State for hosting the call, and I appreciate all the journalists who have dialed in from across the region.  I’m really pleased to be here in Tokyo and getting a chance to talk about the incredible partnerships we have in this region and in the role of U.S. Space Command here in the region and also around the globe.

I’m sitting in Tokyo right now, but I’ve been traveling over the last several days, starting in Hawaii, where I visited headquarters, United States INDOPACOM, and met with the staff there and their components.  And then we traveled on to the Republic of Korea, where I had a chance to meet with the U.S. embassy there but also the Republic of Korea chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and then some of the combined U.S. and Korean forces there in the ROK.  And then we’ll be traveling on later this week to visit U.S. military forces in Kwajalein Atoll.

And here in Tokyo, I’ve had a chance to meet with the minister of defense, with the chairman of the Japanese joint staff, with the head of the Japanese air – Self-Defense Forces as well as the Japanese Space Operations Group.

And it’s not my first trip here to the region, but it is the first since I’ve taken command of United States Space Command in January of this year.  And since taking command, I’ve been focused on articulating our unique responsibilities that impact not only our national defense and the national defense of our allies, but also how we live our modern way of life.  And we like to talk in terms of our moral responsibilities at U.S. Space Command to, number one, provide space capabilities to the Joint Force, our allies, and the nation; number two, to protect and defend our current space capabilities against the threats that we now see arrayed against us; and then third, to protect our Joint Force and allies from the potential space-enabled attack of others.

Now, while we’ve been traveling in the region, it’s been a great opportunity to discuss with our Japanese and Korean partners the importance of space to our shared alliances and the importance of space to how we defend our nations.  And we do that through a number of means – through shared exercises and tabletop war games, through collaboration between operational units, and we look forward to expanding those as we move forward.

Now, as the United States combatant command responsible for the space area of responsibility – and we define that as starting at a hundred kilometers above the Earth’s surface and moving upward from there – it’s important that we come out to Indo-Pacific and meet with U.S. forces here in the region, but also our allies.  And like USINDOPACOM, we are seriously focused at U.S. Space Command on our pacing challenge, which is the People’s Republic of China.  And we find that when we operate in a unified fashion with our allies and partners, that builds deterrence and ensures that there will never be a day without space for our militaries and for our national populations.

But frankly, the People’s Republic of China is moving at breathtaking speed in space, and they are rapidly developing a range of counter-space weapons to hold at risk our space capabilities, but they’re also using space to make their terrestrial forces – their army, their navy, their marine corps, their air force – more precise, more lethal, and more far-ranging.

As we have seen with the events that have transpired in recent months and years in U.S. – in the European theater of operations and also in the Central Command theatre of operations, the value of space is just foundational to all that we do in the military area now, and so we must protect and defend our space capabilities.

We also recognize that when we do protect and defend the space domain and ensure that it’s safe, stable, and secure, we allow it to continue to be used to support all of humanity economically but also in the science realm, and we’re excited about the recent announcement between Japan and NASA on how Japan is supporting the Artemis program and that NASA will take Japanese astronauts to the lunar surface in the years ahead.

Again, I thank you for all joining us today, and I’m grateful for your time and look forward to your questions.

**MODERATOR:**  Thank you, General Whiting.  We will now move to the question and answers – question-and-answer portion of today’s briefing.  And our first question goes to Brent O’Halloran, who submitted this question in advance from Sky News, based in Sydney, Australia:  “Can you provide details on discussions with Australian counterparts regarding collaboration in space defense?  How are you currently working with Australian entities in this area and how exactly would you like to improve this?  What specifically would you like to see in terms of collaboration – for example, bases, assets, training, positioning, etc.?”

**GENERAL WHITING:**  Yeah, thank you for the question.  We’ve had a deep and historic relationship with our Australian partners in the military space domain.  And in fact, just within the last two weeks I’ve had multiple in-person engagements with senior leadership from Australia, including the commander of the Australian Space Command, Major General Novak.  And so we’re moving forward from a very good base of cooperation.  In fact, there are places in the United States where if you go to our space operating locations, you will find Australians fully integrated into our structures there, and we just operate as a combined team.

We want to continue to grow those partnerships, and so we’ve been in discussions with the Australian space defense or, pardon me, the Australian Space Command on opportunities where we can continue to expand those relationships.  Today we have space domain awareness capabilities that we partner with our Australian teammates for, and we’re looking – always looking for opportunities to expand those moving forward.

So I think next time we get together, you’ll – I’ll have additional things to talk about there, but it’s a deep relationship and we’re looking at ways to expand it going forward.

**MODERATOR:**  The next question goes to David Rising, who put the question in the chat box here.  Dave Rising with AP.  “Do you have any specific examples of how you’ve addressed the pacing challenge of the PRC in your talks with Japanese and Korean counterparts?”

**GENERAL WHITING:**  Yeah, thank you for that question.  I mentioned that I had the opportunity to visit the Japanese Self-Defense Forces Space Operations Group that they’ve established, and they have grown that partnership – sorry, they’ve grown that capability significantly over the last few years with future growth plans, and all I’ll leave it to them to describe those for you.  But their focus on space domain awareness along with ours to keep track of those threats in space that we see – and many of those are emanating from China – has put an impetus on us developing improved space domain awareness capability.

So we are excited for the Japanese to bring on board their deep-space radar capability that they’ve been working for many years and that we’ve been partnering with them.  And when that achieves initial operational capability, we expect that will provide both of our countries an enhanced understanding of what China is doing in space.

And then I also had a chance to visit a Mitsubishi satellite factory here in the greater Tokyo area, where the United States is partnering with Japan to fly hosted payloads that will also conduct space domain awareness missions on orbit, which will help us, again, to maintain awareness of what is happening.

And so those are two ways that we are partnering in response to the threats we now see on orbit.

**MODERATOR:**  The next question will go to Seth Robson from the *Stars and Stripes*, based in Tokyo and the U.S.  “How many Space Force guardians are in Japan, South Korea, Australia, Guam?  What other locations in the Western Pacific have guardians?  How many?  What plans are there to expand in the Western Pacific?  How many guardians?  What kind of capabilities?”

**GENERAL WHITING:**  Yeah, I am a member of the United States Space Force, so I’m one of our guardians, but in my current job I’m the Commander of United States Space Command, which is a joint organization.  And yes, we have a number of guardians assigned to our command, but we also have members of our Air Force, our Army, our Navy, and our Marine Corps.  But so I’ll have to defer to the Space Force to give you the exact numbers of guardians, but I can tell you that there’s a contingent and a command of guardians in Hawaii that directly supports headquarters, United States INDOPACOM.  Here in Japan, an element of U.S. Forces Japan includes guardians, and guardians help facilitate much of that collaboration and cooperation that I just referenced.  And then in Korea, there is a command there that supports United States Forces Korea.  And again, I just don’t have that number but will help get you to the right people who can answer that.

And then I think there was a question about where are other space operating locations for the United States in the Western Pacific.  I’ll be traveling to Kwajalein Atoll here tomorrow, where we have a number of our U.S. Army soldiers who support our missions through space domain awareness.  There are United States space experts – guardians – who partner with Australia in Australia.  And so those are a couple of the other operating locations where we have space experts.

**MODERATOR:**  Thank you, General.  The next question will go to Andrew Beatty from AFP, based in Sydney, Australia.  You have your hand raised.  Andrew, you can unmute and ask your question now.

**QUESTION:**  Yeah, can you hear me okay?

**MODERATOR:**  Yes.

**QUESTION:**  Hello.  Yeah, thanks for this.  I was wondering what your assessment is of China’s progress towards establishing an international lunar research station, and whether you see any military applications for that project.  And secondly, whether you have anything to add on speculation about the Russians using nuclear weapons in space, perhaps as an anti-satellite weapon.  Thanks.

**GENERAL WHITING:**  Yeah, thank you for that question.  Obviously, we’ve seen the announcements of China’s ambitions to go to the Moon.  And those appear to be exploratory and scientific on the surface, but the Chinese aren’t very transparent with what they do in space, and so we hope there’s not a military component to that, but we would certainly welcome more transparency.

And then your question about the reports of what Russia might be doing in space, I would just say that Russia’s a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty just like the United States and most of the international community, and that treaty was signed in 1967 and it prohibits the placement of nuclear weapons or weapons – other weapons of mass destruction on orbit.  And we would certainly call on all nations to abide by the terms of those treaties.  And we welcome the partnership the United States has made with Japan in submitting a United Nations Security Council resolution that essentially asks member states to endorse the Outer Space Treaty prohibitions against nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction on orbit, and we look forward to that being passed in the Security Council.

**MODERATOR:**  All right, the next question will go to Seong Hyeon Choi from the *South China Morning Post*, who asks:  “How does U.S. Space Command perceive Chinese space force advancements and the PLA’s latest structural changes to establish information support force that now its space force is under?  What are some of the plans for cooperation with South Korea and Japan in space operation in response to advancing space challenges from China?”

**GENERAL WHITING:**  Yeah, thank you for the question.  As I said my opening comments, the People’s Republic of China has moved breathtakingly fast in space.  Over the last six years they have tripled the number of intelligent surveillance and reconnaissance satellites on orbit, and they have used their space capabilities to improve the lethality, the precision, and the range of their terrestrial forces.  And so that obviously is a cause for concern and something that we are watching a very, very closely.

I have seen the reports of their recent organizational changes, as you noted, and those – the statements I’ve seen come out of the Chinese Government is that they’ve made those changes to further enhance the importance of space and information warfare and cyber operations in the People’s Liberation Army.  And so, again, we’ll want to understand what that means long term and hopefully there’ll be some transparency there from the PRC.

I think I’ve already answered some of the ways that we’re partnering with our Japanese and Korean allies, but I think there’s a shared understanding of the threats that we now face and the importance of space to not only how we defend our nations, but also to enabling this modern way of life that we’ve become used to, and if we didn’t have space capabilities we would have to change how we live, our ways of life, and change our economies – and that’s something we certainly don’t want to do.

**MODERATOR:**  Okay, we’re going to pivot a little bit and go to Ken Sasaki from Kyodo News based in Makati City, the Philippines:  “How can the U.S., or at least your command, help the Philippines assert its sovereignty in the South China Sea using shared data or information gathered from space?  Are there other concrete plans aside from the proposed General Security of Military Information Agreement that the Philippines and U.S. are embarking on in this regard?  And what can the U.S. take from the Philippines under such data-sharing agreement?”

**GENERAL WHITING:**  Yeah, thank you for that question.  I think one of the real lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the importance of commercial space capabilities.  There’s such a robust international commercial space industry today that countries can often get the information that they need to support their defense requirements or their sovereignty requirements from commercial space.  And so I think that information could be helpful to the Philippines Government as they think about – keep monitoring their islands and features in the waters near the Philippines.

I think the question also asked about what actions could we take to further improve our ability to use space.  I would say from a U.S. perspective, every operation and exercise that we conduct with our U.S. Armed Forces is – includes space.  Space enables all that we do, whether that’s providing satellite communications, which allow us to operate untethered from terrestrial networks; positioning, navigation, and timing through our global positioning system allows us to always know where we are and be synchronized in time.  Space provides us so many advantages, and I know we’ve had some initial discussions with the Philippine armed forces about potential space collaboration, and we look forward to working that hand in hand with USINDOPACOM and the Philippine armed forces moving forward.

**MODERATOR:**  The next question goes to Adam Hollingworth from the Newshub, based in New Zealand:  “How integral is New Zealand to your space security plans?”

**GENERAL WHITING:**  Yeah, thank you for that question.  Again, within the last two weeks, I’ve had face-to-face meetings with a number of key leaders from New Zealand, including the minister for space, who’s also the minister for national defense there, and the minister for intelligence.  And we had a very robust discussion.  And I was also happy to announce just two or three weeks ago that we have invited New Zealand along with Germany and France to join Operation Olympic Defender.  That is a named operation that the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom conduct together where we operate together in space to create a shared understanding of space domain awareness and threats in space.  And we look forward to New Zealand, Germany, and France – to their consideration of our invitation.  And we hope we receive a positive reply to that invitation.  But New Zealand would bring a lot from not only the historic relationship we’ve had with them, but obviously the unique location of New Zealand in the world and the unique regional expertise that New Zealand brings with the relationship of the Kiwis to the Pacific Island nations in their neighborhood.

**MODERATOR:**  The next question will go to Brandon How from InnovationAus.com, based in Canberra, Australia.  Brandon, I think you also have your hand up, so if you want to unmute and ask your question, please go ahead.

**QUESTION:**  Oh, hi.  Thanks very much, General Whiting, for taking the time to update us.  My question is just around the Australia-U.S. Technology Safeguards Agreement.  A prominent Australian rocket manufacturer and launch pad operator has expressed fears that the agreement will have little economic benefit to Australia because it will not permit technology transfers, and they’ve also expressed some fears that the agreement may cede sovereign control over Australia’s access to space.  I was just wondering how – what do you make of concerns such as those?  Thanks.

**GENERAL WHITING:**  Yeah, thank you for the question, Brandon.  That is just not an area that I have been directly working with, technology transfer, so I can’t address that directly except to say that, for us, the partnership with Australia is just vital.  And there was a recent announcement about a deep-space advanced radar concept called DARC that the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom are partnering on to, again, give us an improved understanding of the space domain all the way out to the geosynchronous belt.  And that was recently announced under the AUKUS auspice, and I think it’s an example there of shared development and shared operations.

**MODERATOR:**  Okay, I think we have time for a few more questions.  Janis Frayer with the NBC News has posted a question in the chat.  I’m going to take the second part of that question because I think General Whiting has addressed a lot of the first part.  “With China about to launch another Moon rover, is the U.S. actively pursuing access to the lunar rock samples that China returned from the Moon in 2020?”

**GENERAL WHITING:**  Yeah, thank you for the question.  That’s probably better for NASA because NASA is our exploration arm in the United States.  But I will say we’re here cooperating with our Japanese allies, and I’m excited about the recent announcement between JAXA, the Japanese space agency, and NASA that now NASA will take two Japanese astronauts to the lunar surface, and Japan is going to build a pressurized rover for the astronauts on the Moon.  So I think we’re going to have access to a lot of our own space rocks going forward, and of course we have the space rocks that came back in the 1960s and 1970s during the Apollo mission.  But any specifics about the Chinese rocks, I would have to ask you to refer that to NASA.

**MODERATOR:**  Okay.  We have a hand raised by Eleanor Olcott from *FT,* based in Beijing.  Eleanor, if you would like to unmute and ask your question, please go ahead.

**QUESTION:**  Hi.  Thank you, General Whiting.  I just wanted to ask a question about China’s ambitions on the lunar south pole.  Has there been any coordination with the U.S. on that and what is the U.S. response to this plan?  Thank you.

**GENERAL WHITING:**  Yeah, thank you for the question, Eleanor.  Obviously, we’re interested in understanding what China’s plans are there, but that question is probably best for NASA.  I can say from a military perspective, we’re interested in having space domain awareness in the lunar orbit – we call that cislunar regime – because we want to make sure that any activities that happen on the Moon are indeed for science purposes and exploration and that no one is going to the Moon for military purposes.

**MODERATOR:**  Great.  And I think our last question today will be from Eunjung Kim with Yonhap News Agency, based in Seoul.  “How would you assess North Korea’s space capabilities and potential threats in the space domain?  Can you share the discussions focused on deterring and countering North Korean nuclear and missile threats within the framework of joint training and coordination during your visit to South Korea?”

**GENERAL WHITING:**  Yes, thank you for that question.  And obviously, we are keenly watching North Korea’s missile developments and their space aspirations.  Every time they launch into space or launch one of their ICBM or missile tests, they’re violating United Nations resolutions, because they are not supposed to use intercontinental ballistic missile technology.  So we call on them to stop.

We continue to see that they want to launch more satellites.  They’ve launched a couple into space.  And so we had a good discussion with Admiral Kim, the, Republic of Korea chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, about how we can better collaborate together.  I also had a chance to talk to the Korean air force commander of their Space Operations Squadron, how we could share space domain awareness information.  I also think we need to continue the excellent work in the trilateral agreement between the United States, the Republic of Korea, and Japan to share missile warning information so that that all three countries fully understand anytime North Korea launches a missile where that missile is headed, and we can provide warning to our national leadership, to our military forces, and to our populations.

**MODERATOR:**  And that is all the time we have for today.  Thank you for your questions, and many thanks to General Whiting for joining us.  We will provide a transcript of this briefing to participating journalists as soon as it is available.  We’d also love to hear your feedback, and you can contact us at any time at AsiaPacMedia@state.gov.  Thank you again for your participation, and we hope you can join us for another briefing soon.

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