RNZ Phil Pennington

New Zealand has agreed to put almost $24 million into a military satellite the United States is building.

It is one of 10 international partners helping expand the Pentagon’s 11-strong Wideband Global SATCOM network (WGS).

The 12th satellite is scheduled for launch in 2028 at the earliest at a total cost of over half a billion dollars.

Like the 11th satellite, it will have tech that protects “communications for tactical warfighters operating in close proximity to jammers”, said the US Space Force.

The NZ Defence Force said maintaining the network allows it to receive the military communication capacity it needs.

“In exchange for financial contributions, partners continue to receive a proportional allocation of bandwidth from the WGS constellation.”

The $23.7m spend is split over two years.

Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and the UK are putting money in.

NZ earlier put $15m towards WGS-11. It had been due for launch this year but been pushed back to next. The 12th had been due to launch next year but been pushed back.

The US Space Force said its international partnerships were “one of our greatest strategic advantages”.

“This agreement demonstrates that when we invest together in shared capabilities, we realize a level of global coverage and mission assurance that no single nation could achieve alone.”

In New Zealand, the government and the military are on track to spend more on space-related defence capabilities.

The NZDF has long said that “if our satellite communications become unavailable, NZDF’s military capability will be severely diminished” and that it had been working since at least 2014 to diversify communication channels.

Another initiative is a national space mission to put up the country’s first sovereign satellite, though how far advanced plans are for that is unclear.

Internationally, New Zealand is in an elite US-led group Operation Olympic Defender that has been working on a joint plan for how to protect and defend space assets from threats that should be done by the end of the year, Space Force said earlier.

Work was going on to determine how to “challenge the posture” of would-be adversaries viewed as threatening the peaceful use of space.

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