Joint statement on the Combined Space Operations Initiative Principals’ Board meeting in Italy to advance space security

The Combined Space Operations (CSpO) Initiative Principals’ Board met from December 3-5, 2024 in Florence, Italy. Senior representatives from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States gathered for the annual meeting. The Principals emphasised the importance of the responsible and lawful use of space, discussed existing and emerging threats to space systems, and identified further opportunities for collaboration and cooperation. 

This year, the CSpO Initiative celebrates its ten-year anniversary. Over these years, the Initiative has pursued collaborative efforts to meet rapidly evolving challenges and opportunities. Space services are integral to everyday lives around the world. World economies, research and development, social activities, transportation, and life-saving emergency services benefit from continuous technological advances in, from, to, and through space. These services enable communications around the globe, help provide weather forecasts, deliver humanitarian aid, and support traffic navigation. These services also underpin national security and defense, helping to protect societies and the global economy.

The CSpO Initiative Principals shared perspectives on the current and future threats to the freedom of access to and use of space. Principals reiterated their national commitments to maintaining a peaceful, safe, stable, secure and sustainable outer space environment, and upholding existing legal frameworks. This includes the widely accepted Outer Space Treaty, and the obligation not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, the installation of such weapons on celestial bodies, or the stationing of such weapons in outer space in any other manner.

The CSpO Initiative Principals discussed the importance of international dialogue and cooperation to promote safe and responsible operations in space, to reduce the risk of misperceptions, and to pursue activities in ways that minimise the creation of long-lived debris. Principals reaffirmed national commitments not to conduct destructive direct-ascent anti-satellite missile tests. Further, Principals shared views on and support for other multilateral efforts, including at the United Nations, to foster international cooperation, transparency, confidence-building and verification measures, and norms of responsible behaviour and to ensure safety and security in space for all nations. 

Working together, the CSpO Initiative Participants are becoming more agile, resilient, and interoperable; ready to seize the opportunities of the rapidly evolving space sector; and able to address the challenges presented by a competitive, contested, and congested space domain. In looking to the future, the Principals committed to working together in pursuit of current and new opportunities for cooperation and collaboration; to preserve access and freedom to operate in space, and to promote responsible space behaviours in support of economic, scientific, commercial, and security interests.