OTTAWA — The Canadian Forces are finalizing plans for a Canadian version of the U.S. Space Force, converting a directorate-general in the Royal Canadian Air Force into a full military unit.

“Recognition of the increasingly critical importance of space in all of the military’s operations is driving the slow but steady growth and evolution of the organization,” Maj. Jill Lawrence told The Logic. Converting an administrative and support unit into an operational one “will be an important step forward in protecting Canadian interests in space.”

Planning for the change is well along and approvals are underway, she wrote in an email.

“The size of the division would initially remain unchanged from our current structure for DG Space, which is approximately 150 civilian and military positions,” she wrote. “However, the vision is to eventually grow the organization to approximately 250 personnel over the next five to six years.”

The U.S. Space Force was a pet cause of former president Donald Trump, and at first even the Pentagon opposed it. Some of the people behind the American version of “The Office” made it the premise of a workplace comedy.

But the force became a distinct branch of the U.S. military, akin to the Marine Corps, in 2019, and President Joe Biden has kept it.

This week, six of the U.S.’s close allies, including Canada, released a pact promising to follow the American lead. Among several shared “lines of effort” meant to keep outer space safe, they agreed to “professionalize space cadres and training to energize shared, common understanding of the space domain, share best practices and increase our collective expertise.”

Canada’s involvement in military space operations dates to the 1950s, when it formed the North American Air Defense Command with the U.S. to prepare for the possibility of Soviet attack, pointed out Charity Weeden, a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and an air-force veteran. She did a stint at NORAD and as an attaché in Washington, D.C., where she helped lay groundwork for the space-cooperation agreement.

Canada launched its first military satellite in 2013, to track orbiting debris, and that’s when the Forces’ interest in space accelerated, she said in an interview.

“Where once the United States focused on national-security space alone, perhaps with Canadian contributions through NORAD, it’s now grown to a combined space-operations concept where these seven players have a single vision and are contributing and synchronizing efforts. That is huge,” Weeden said in an interview from Washington, where she now works in the civilian space industry.

One of the allies in the space pact, the United Kingdom, formed a “space command” in April 2021. Housed at a Royal Air Force base and currently commanded by an air force officer, it’s a joint command—made up of elements from the air force, army and navy.

Lawrence said the Canadian “Space Division” would remain under the commander of the RCAF. That’s roughly what the French did, though they renamed their air force to the “Armée de l’Air et de l’Espace,” emphasizing the importance of its space component.

Matthew Overton, who spent 39 years in the Canadian army and is a former executive director of the Conference of Defence Associations, said in an interview that it’s past time for Canada to give space operations their due. Space operations do more than support action on land and sea and in the air, he said, and definitely demand a unit that can do, not just think and plan.

Interfering with or destroying opposing states’ GPS, surveillance and communications satellites is an obvious military tactic, Overton said—like the U.S., Russia and China have practised shooting out satellites already—and being able to defend Canada’s presence in space is an equally obvious necessity.

“It doesn’t have to be what we call the traditional view of fighting, to conduct operations,” he said.

In Overton’s view, though, Canada’s military capacity in space shouldn’t be under the air force’s supervision. Mixing space expertise with pilot training and air-base management doesn’t make obvious sense, he said, any more than it’s wise to build an elite cyberwarfare unit by first making recruits go through basic army training.

“Electronic warfare or electronic operations were seen as being supportive of the physical realm of operations in land, sea and air. [Cyberwarfare] has pushed that discussion, which was always there, further along towards the idea that it is actually a separate domain of operations like operating on land or operating at sea. And space is exactly the same way. It is not like operating in any of the other domains,” he said. “There’s nothing about flying an aircraft or learning operations in the air that provides any special expertise for working in space.”

There will be bureaucratic fights over whether and how to transfer space-oriented assets from the army and navy to the revamped air force unit, not to mention the personnel, he said.

“I just don’t think Canada or the Canadian Forces is big enough, personnel-wise or budget-wise, to have its own separate space force, as the U.S. has,” said Weeden. It also doesn’t procure military goods in the same way; part of the reason for separating the American space force from the air force was to protect its budget from bureaucratic processes Canada doesn’t have, she said.

Also, the administrative space unit currently in the RCAF used to answer directly to the vice-chief of the defence staff, she said.

“You would pull in from other services; you would have plenty of army, navy, air force officers that would be interested in space,” she said. The trouble was that to get promoted in their own branches, they’d have to leave. “So it was essentially a dead end for one’s career to go into the space element.”

Within the air force, she said, the space unit can at least be part of a path to higher command. On the flip side, given the Forces’ shortage of soldiers, sailors and aviators already, even finding 100 more people for the unit could be difficult—especially if they’re all to come from the air force.

Nevertheless, it’s a capability Canada needs, she said.

“I think it’s good to be able to move with the changes that are happening in space and recognize those changes and those threats and be able to be prepared,” Weeden said. “Whether it’s in operational capability or your own cadre—getting them prepared [and] getting the right level of cadre in place to be able to protect and defend Canada and her allies.”