The United States isn’t the only country establishing a space force. Months after President Donald Trump announced the creation of the United States Space Force, French President Emmanuel Macron began laying the foundations for his country’s own space force.

The goal of this force, known as the Space Command, is the development of spacecraft that can protect French satellites against Russian and Chinese space vessels.

“To assure the development and the reinforcement of our capacities in space, a high command for space will be created,” said Macron, who said that the renewed focus on the militarization of space is a “true national security issue.”

French government plans for the Space Command involve using satellites as part of the country’s active defense strategy. It will develop a small fleet of “bodyguard spacecraft,” which they are scheduled to begin deploying by 2023. These space bodyguards will have cameras, and according to French Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly, machine guns and lasers. This “vast and ambitious” satellite defense program is expected to reach full capacity by 2030 at the earliest. (Related: Russia just launched a secret military satellite into orbit from its new Arctic base of operations… the “high ground” for planet Earth.)

French Space Command will focus on satellites capable of self defense

Currently, the French military operates three satellites, known as Syracuse satellites, that are used for communication between military officials in France and troops deployed abroad.

The French Space Command’s first task is to launch a series of next-generation Syracuse satellites. These new satellites will be equipped with cameras that can identify threats in space, such as anti-satellite weapons, which the United States, Russia, China and other countries are beginning to develop.

According to French newspaper Le Point, the bodyguard satellites will be armed with either submachine gun-style firearms or lasers, and their goal will be to disable or destroy enemy satellites.

The Space Command will comprise of 220 personnel recruited from different branches of the French Air Force, such as the now-defunct Joint Space Command, the Operational Center for Military Surveillance of Space Objects (COSMOS) and the Satellite Observation Military Center (CMOS).

The Space Command will be operating in the Air Force Space Operations Center, a new base in the city of Toulouse in southwestern France.

The new space race

France abides by the Outer Space Treaty, a treaty that acts as a basic framework for space law. The treaty strictly prohibits the testing of nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in outer space. Minister Parly has stated that France has no intention of violating the Outer Space Treaty or any other international treaty it is a signatory of. It does not even intend to initiate any space battles with Space Command’s satellites.

“We do not want to embark on a space arms race,” said Parly. “We will conduct a reasoned arsenalization.”

There are plenty of reasons to be concerned with France’s quest to join the United States, Russia and China in the new space race, which involves the rapid militarization of spacefaring vessels.

All the countries mentioned have increased both their interest and spending on their respective countries’ space capabilities.

Military experts and observers believe that future military activities will have an active space component, from cyber attacks and spy satellites providing accurate pictures of battlefields to communications satellites tracing or jamming enemy communications.

With France now putting its cards on the table and joining this new arms race, and with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) inching closer and closer towards weaponizing space, the idea that battles will also be waged in space is beginning to look more and more like a reality.

Sources include:

Space.com

SpaceNews.com

France24.com

PopularMechanics.com

DefenseNews.com