Bruce Lemkin, the Air Force’s deputy undersecretary for International Affairs, announced yesterday that USAF’s leadership has approved the Air Force Global Partnership Strategy and the International Space Engagement Strategy, the two approaches that will drive the service’s outreach efforts with allies and friendly nations’ militaries. Air Force spokesman Capt. Mike Andrews told the Daily Report yesterday that the approval came in December. The AFGPS, which was unveiled last May, will provide the guidance for how the service organizes, trains, and equips itself so that it is able to establish mutually beneficial partnerships and interoperable capabilities, and increase the capacity of partner nations to provide for their own security. The space strategy supports AFGPS by prioritizing the Air Force’s efforts and focusing limited resources for space cooperation and partnerships. “The nature of space operations is global and space-enabled capabilities are essential to successful network-centric coalitions and enable interoperability and unity of effort across a spectrum of capabilities,” wrote Lemkin.
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…