The Bundeswehr gets a command authority for space.

For this purpose, Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) officially put a unit into service on Tuesday in Uedem near Kalkar, the beginnings of which she had already visited in a container at the same location last year.

Under the joint operation of the air force and cyber command, an “Air and Space Operations Center” / ASOC is to monitor events in the near and distant space there in the future.

Peter Carstens

Political correspondent in Berlin

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The Center for Air Operations (ZLO) is already located in Kalkar, with which flight movements over Germany are monitored and which also serves as a command post for air missions. If necessary, measures will be initiated from there if aircraft enter German airspace unidentified or with unclear intent. If necessary, interceptors are then also alerted.

Space is currently a dimension of rapid development - civil, but also military. According to current planning, more than 30,000 satellites will orbit the earth there in the foreseeable future, the average size of a small car. Because of the ever more intensive use of data connections over them - for example for cell phones, GPS data up to digital payment transactions and the monitoring of ATMs - the sensitivity to military threats is growing. Several states, including China and Russia, have the ability to attack satellites, via the Internet, but also with long-range weapons. Among other things, the Seydlitz barracks are about keeping an eye on their own satellites and observing the activities of third countries.

In addition, it should be monitored whether the increasing space debris is developing into a hazard. In space, unlike on Earth, the legal relationships are largely unclear. There is no such thing as “space law” that clarifies liability issues in the event of collisions. It is said that parts travel in space at a speed of 7.5 kilometers per second, which is five times the speed of an armored shell. Should the number of debris continue to rise, the risk of collision would increasingly restrict the usability of the space. Scrap parts can orbit for years, sometimes even centuries. Therefore, many states are interested in at least a code of conduct.

The Bundeswehr itself carries out military reconnaissance with satellites. She sees the monitoring of this system as her own task. The "SARSearch and Rescue-Lupe" is a separate German satellite reconnaissance system that consists of five small satellites and a ground station. According to the Bundeswehr, it can deliver high-resolution images from anywhere on earth, regardless of the weather and time of day.

This means that the company's own technical facilities are used, as well as the facilities of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) headquartered in Cologne. The minister described the new command as an important “step towards strengthening the ability to act in the space dimension”. The aim is "to bundle existing expertise and the capacities of the dimensions air and cyber while at the same time adding new capabilities". With the establishment of the command, the Bundeswehr is reacting to the increasing importance of space for the functionality of Germany, the prosperity of its people and the increasing dependence of the armed forces on space-based data, services and products.

After Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) had added another virtual space to the traditional dimensions of land, air and sea with the cyber command four years ago, shortly before the Bundestag election at the time, Kramp-Karrenbauer is now leading the Bundeswehr into one fifth dimension.

But the minister also takes into account the limited German options by not giving space to its own armed forces.

A space command has existed in the United States for around forty years; the former American President Donald Trump promoted the force to its own armed forces, the US Space Force, by decree in 2018.

A year later, NATO declared space to be another operational domain and defined space as a new operational area alongside air, land, sea and cyberspace.