New NATO commercial space strategy seeks to prompt more investment

WASHINGTON — NATO’s just-released “Commercial Space Strategy” is aimed at helping the 32 alliance members to bolster both investment in the commercial sector and an expansion of their military capabilities by onboarding new technology from innovative companies.

“The strategy aims to create new opportunities for Allies to expand defence spending. With broader security-related spending, Allies have significant opportunities to expand investments in civil-military capabilities in the space domain,” a NATO official told Breaking Defense in an email.

The document was approved by allies in February, but only released Tuesday at the NATO summit in The Hague.

The US Space Force was a key player in the creation of the strategy, which cribs heavily from the service’s policies, strategies and practices. The strategy also was created with strong input from the Western alliance’s broad industrial base following the February 2024 creation of a commercial space group under the NATO Industrial Advisory Group called NIAG-SPACENET that sought advice from some 300 space companies.

While NATO doesn’t maintain a collective fleet of space assets, since the approval of the 2019 Overarching Space Policy that recognized space as an operational domain alliance leaders have been urging member states to find ways to improve their own capabilities and find more ways to cooperate.

Last October, NATO’s planning directorate launched an effort to identify what space capabilities each allied nation can bring to the collective fight with the goal of assigning national contributions of kit and people power. Key areas of need include space situational awareness and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

The commercial strategy is aimed at allowing the alliance to turn to the commercial sector to help fulfill some of those needs.

“This is particularly important for dual-use capabilities that currently do not fall under NATO’s defence expenditure definition (the new 1.5 [percent] goal) but are nonetheless critical in supporting defence-related services. Examples include space launch, logistics, and the protection of critical space infrastructure,” the official said.

The new strategy strongly echoes the US Space Force’s Commercial Space Strategy published in April 2024. It also copies some of the tools the service has put into place to move that strategy from paper into reality — for example, creating a NATO “Front Door” as a gateway for interested vendors, and an allied version of the Space Force Commercial Integration Cell.

For their part, the allies pledge to “map requirements across main operational and functional areas to assess which areas could be enabled and enhanced by commercial contributions — integrated with national contributions while considering ways to reduce risks and avoiding overreliance on any single provider or solution.”

The strategy also urges member states to seek out opportunities for multilateral cooperation, including in development of new capabilities.

“With the intention of seeking to avoid unnecessary duplication, the work will be informed by and take into account, through staff-to-staff contacts, relevant policies, developments and ongoing efforts in other international organisations including, in particular the European Union, as appropriate,” the strategy explains.

In yet another similarity to US Defense Department practices, the strategy encourages allies to find more “flexible” contracting methods to ease working with small- and medium-sized companies and to explore the concept of a civil space reserve via “agreements with pools of commercial providers to ensure rapid and persistent access to commercial services in times of peace, crisis and conflict for both NATO and Allies, including through multinational initiatives.”

Finally, NATO is planning a set of organizational changes to its civil and military staff structure to institutionalize commercial integration practices, such as creating a standards body to improve interoperability among allied space systems.

“NATO will offer a platform under its Conference of National Armaments Directors to bring together Allied standardization experts to advance space standardization activities, without stifling innovation or speed of adoption, based on Allied needs,” the strategy says.

NATO officials further are working to craft a more specific implementation plan for signature by defense ministers when they meet in October, the NATO official said.