Ensuring American Space Superiority

Superiority. That's the word that jumped out when Trump signed his latest space executive order on 18th December 2025. Not leadership. Not cooperation. Superiority.

Language matters in policy documents, and this one doesn't hide what it is: a declaration that cislunar space, from very low orbit to the Moon, is strategic terrain that America intends to hold, shape, and defend. For everyone else - allies included - this is the clearest signal yet that the US is done treating space as a commons to be managed cooperatively. They're treating it as a domain to be won.

If you're in Europe, Japan, Australia, or anywhere in the allied ecosystem, you need to understand what just changed. Because this executive order doesn't just set timelines for lunar bases and nuclear reactors. It rewrites the terms of partnership, shifts the economics of orbital services, and accelerates the militarisation of cislunar space, whether anyone else is ready or not.

What the order actually does

Strip away the rhetoric, and you've got four core pillars. First, Artemis gets anchored to a hard political timeline: boots back on the Moon by 2028, permanent outpost construction starting by 2030. Second, the national security space architecture is tasked with spanning LEO through cislunar space, with an explicit mention of detecting and countering nuclear weapons in orbit. Third, commercial space becomes a strategic industry target, with a $50 billion investment goal by 2028 and a commercial ISS replacement by 2030. Fourth, space nuclear power gets elevated to a National Initiative, with deployment timelines for reactors on the lunar surface and in orbit - the surface reactor specifically tagged for launch readiness by 2030.

The implementation schedule is tight: 60, 90, 120, and 180-day deliverables across NASA, Commerce, Defense, and the intelligence community. Acquisition reform. Security strategy. Allied burden-sharing frameworks. Standards leadership plans.

The strategic subtext: what actually matters

The big picture moves are obvious enough. But the real tells are in the details, and there are five that matter more than the Moon landing dates.

Cislunar space is now operational space. The phrase "from very low-Earth orbit through cislunar space" isn't decorative language. It formalises an expanded security perimeter that treats LEO, MEO/GEO, and the Earth-Moon volume as a single connected operational arena. The US Space Force has been developing cislunar space domain awareness concepts for years; this order forces the strategy to align with the capability roadmap. For allies, the implication is uncomfortable: cislunar isn't "deep space" in policy terms anymore. It's near abroad, and if you rely on space for anything critical, which Europe absolutely does, you now have interests there whether you've planned for them or not.

Missile defence is being pulled directly into the space portfolio. The order ties space systems to next-generation homeland missile defence prototypes by 2028, building on the earlier "Golden Dome or Iron Dome for America" executive order. That matters because missile defence is where space policy and strategic stability collide hardest. Space-based sensors are already foundational to tracking, but space-based intercept concepts, even if not explicitly spelt out here, are where escalation risk and treaty debates come roaring back. The US is positioning space as part of a homeland defence stack, not just a support layer for expeditionary operations. Russia and China will respond accordingly.

The "nuclear in space" problem is being treated as imminent. The order singles out "any placement of nuclear weapons in space" and mandates a technology plan to detect, characterise, and counter it. You can't read that in isolation. Since 2024, US officials have been raising alarms about Russian development of a space-based nuclear ASAT capability. Russia denies it, but the strategic effect is already here: the prospect is shaping Western planning and public narrative. The Outer Space Treaty's Article IV is clear on nuclear weapons in orbit, but if the US starts building a dedicated detection and counter programme, the centre of gravity shifts from arms control to operational competition. That's a problem for everyone because it lowers the threshold for actual deployment, not raises it.

Space traffic management is being marketised. The order revises Space Policy Directive-3 by removing the commitment that basic space situational awareness and traffic management services be provided "free of direct user fees." The new language shifts toward being "available for commercial and other relevant use." This looks like a technicality. It's not. If the US is signalling that government-provided STM services can be priced, rationed, or turned into a product, it changes incentives across the entire ecosystem. Commercial operators may face new costs or new dependencies on US data. Private STM providers get a stronger market case. And other governments get a reason to accelerate sovereign SSA/STM capabilities so they're not price-takers in a US-dominated market. If you're in Europe, Japan, India, or Australia, this is a quiet nudge: build your own orbital utilities, or accept dependency.

Alliance politics is industrial strategy now. The order calls for strengthening ally contributions through spending, operational cooperation, basing agreements, and investments in the US space industrial base. That's not burden-sharing. That's a bid to make allied space security structurally reliant on American production capacity and standards, while widening the geography of US operations. For allies, it creates a negotiation space, but the terms aren't subtle: you can gain access and influence, but you may be asked to pay twice - once through higher national spending, and again through industrial alignment that props up American firms rather than building your own capacity.

What this means for alliessecure preferential access to US cislunar and missile-warning architectures, shared operational concepts, an

Allies should read this order as a request for integration, not cooperation. Integration means your systems, your operations, and your industrial base are woven into American architecture on American terms. That comes with trade-offs, and allies need to be clear-eyed about them.

There's an opportunity case, certainly. If you're a close ally, you could secure preferential access to US cislunar and missile-warning architectures, shared operational concepts, an industrial workshare in nuclear power and launch infrastructure, and commercial opportunities as the ISS transitions to private platforms. For countries whose space strategies have been aspirational but chronically underfunded, and that includes most of Europe, this creates concrete hooks, timelines, and political air cover to finally spend money.

But integration can quickly become dependency. The STM shift is the canary in the coal mine. If the US moves toward priced services, you're exposed. Same with spectrum coordination, where US positions at the ITU shape market access for decades. Same with standards, particularly around cislunar navigation and timing, where the order explicitly positions the US as the "standards and services leader." The right response isn't to reject alignment; that ship has sailed for most Western allies, but to enter it with leverage. That means investing in domestic capability where it matters most, so the partnership stays reciprocal rather than extractive.

There's also the strategic stability blowback to consider. If the US pulls missile defence and counterspace deeper into "space superiority" doctrine, rivals will respond. That response will likely be asymmetric: more jamming, more co-orbital inspection platforms, more ambiguous "servicing" spacecraft, more cyber operations against ground segments. Allies get the spillover whether they opt into American architectures or not. This is why allied resilience isn't an optional add-on to US partnerships. It's the actual deterrent that makes integration sustainable.

What this means for China and Russia (and why it matters to everyone else)

Space is already a three-body problem: the US, China, and Russia, with commercial actors warping the gravitational field. This executive order adds thrust to the American vector, which means the others will adjust accordingly.

China is building a parallel narrative of lunar infrastructure through the International Lunar Research Station framework with Russia. Chinese officials have publicly discussed using nuclear power in space for lunar operations. Two camps are forming around governance and access: Artemis Accords on one side, ILRS partnership frameworks on the other. The risk isn't a Cold War rerun. The risk is fragmented standards, fragmented safety culture, and fragmented crisis communication in the same physical environment. When you've got multiple lunar bases, multiple cislunar traffic patterns, and multiple debris mitigation philosophies operating in the same space, the potential for miscalculation goes up fast.

Russia's comparative advantage isn't mass or scale: China and the US both dwarf Russian launch and satellite capacity now. Russia's advantage lies in its disruption capability and risk tolerance. If the US doubles down on space-enabled missile defence and cislunar awareness, Russia's incentives to build denial and ambiguity tools increase, because those are cheaper than matching American industrial throughput. The "nuclear in space" thread, whether deployed or not, is already doing strategic work: it raises the perceived cost of orbital conflict and muddies the signalling environment. When signalling gets muddy, crisis stability suffers.

What this means for commercial space

This executive order is industrial policy wearing a national security badge. That will reshape market incentives in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

The order explicitly pushes commercial integration into national security architectures and accelerates acquisition reform using commercial terms and Other Transaction Authority pathways. That's good for market entrants in theory, but in practice, it centralises power around firms that can comply quickly, scale fast, and survive policy volatility. The procurement funnel gets bigger, but the alignment requirements get tighter.

The language on space traffic management, debris, and positioning, navigation, timing standards signals that the US wants to be the provider of last resort for core orbital services. If you're building STM, accelerate the conversation on safety, licensing, launch risk, and international normsaugmentation, space weather services, or cislunar communications, you should read this as a race to become the default infrastructure layer, not just another vendor competing for contracts.

Space nuclear power is also moving from taboo to mainstream. The order normalises it as an enabling technology for sustained presence, which will accelerate the conversation on safety, licensing, launch risk, and international norms. UNOOSA's Nuclear Power Sources principles exist, but they were written for a different era of launch cadence and commercial volume. The regulatory and safety frameworks will struggle to keep pace, creating both opportunities and risks for operators.

How other countries should respond

If you're advising a government, regulator, or defence establishment outside the US, the useful response isn't to mimic this executive order. It's to build a coherent position across five practical areas.

Build sovereign SSA and STM capacity. Not necessarily as a duplicate of the US, but enough to avoid dependency, pricing exposure, and single points of failure. The revisions to Space Policy Directive-3 is your warning shot. You cannot afford to be a price-taker in the orbital services market, because that market is about to get weaponised as a strategic tool.

Treat cislunar as a real planning domain now. You don't need cislunar bases to have cislunar interests. If your economy or military relies on space, and if you're reading this from Europe, Japan, or Australia, it absolutely does, you have a stake in the stability of the routes and chokepoints beyond GEO. US planning is already moving there. You need to at least understand the operational environment and your dependencies within it.

Harden the ground segment first. Most real-world space disruption runs through terrestrial infrastructure: ground stations, cloud mission control, terminals, supply chains, and spectrum dependencies. This is where resilience scales fastest and where smaller states can make the biggest difference per pound spent. Orbital capabilities grab headlines, but ground infrastructure is where you're most vulnerable and where investment yields the highest return on deterrence.

Define your red lines for alliance integration. If the US wants basing agreements and deeper operational cooperation, be explicit about the conditions: governance, oversight, data-sharing, escalation control, and what happens in a crisis. The time to negotiate those rules is before your ground station becomes a node in someone else's kill chain. The US will push for maximum flexibility. You need to push back with clear boundaries, documented in treaty-equivalent text, not gentlemen's agreements.

Push for crisis stability mechanisms, not just norms statements. We're not short of principles. The Outer Space Treaty, the Artemis Accords, the UN space debris guidelines - there's no shortage of aspirational text. What we're short of are practical safety rails: incident communication channels, interference attribution processes, conjunction-warning interoperability, and agreed behaviours for proximity operations. The executive order's direction of travel makes these mechanisms more urgent, not less, because it accelerates the operational tempo and expands the geography of potential friction.

The deeper takeaway

The most consequential parts of this order aren't the Moon landing dates or the nuclear reactor timelines. They're the governance moves: reshaping international civil cooperation to align with US priorities, revoking the National Space Council order, shifting STM language away from expectations of "free" services, and positioning the US as the leader in standards and services across debris, traffic management, and positioning systems.

That combination reveals a clear thesis: the US wants to set the rules of the next space age, and it intends to do so through industrial-scale commercial integration and allied alignment. Other countries don't have to oppose that to respond intelligently, but they do need to deliberately choose where they'll be partners, where they'll be independent, and where they'll insist on shared governance.

Because in the late 2020s and beyond, the space race isn't only about who gets there first. It's about who gets to decide what "normal" looks like once everyone arrives. And if Europe, Japan, and other allies don't start building the capability and policy positions to shape that definition, they'll find themselves living under rules they had no hand in writing.

That's not partnership. That's client status. And space is too important to accept that outcome by default.

References:

1. Executive Order: "Ensuring American Space Superiority" (18 December 2025)