Brigadier-General Chris Horner was a keynote speaker (remotely) at the Space Canada Horizons 2025 conference which took place in Ottawa on June 4, 2025.
Herein we present the video of his talk, courtesy of Space Canada, and the full transcript.
Brigadier-General Chris Horner Space Canada Horizons 2025 keynote transcript
It’s great to be with you today, albeit virtually. My special thanks to Brian Gallant and the Space Canada team for accepting this relatively boring video and in place of my full human presence.
But here we are. As it turns out, there’s still a war in Europe, and I’m gathered with my NATO space commanders here in Germany, talking about the criticality of space, the rules based international order that’s under threat, and how collectively we can prepare and fight together, because together, we’re stronger. And so why space? Why now?
Well, I think it is unfathomable that we would have a day or to imagine that day without space. And here’s why.
Navigation systems for the safety of travel in this country, television broadcast with critical information or news, weather predictions, enabling preparedness for disasters, the timing services from satellites that are required for efficient, safe, reliable financial transactions and national communication infrastructure rely on space.
Farm to table food security relies on space as much as the stability of our power grids in a Canadian winter at minus 40. Under pinning national critical infrastructure is the space domain, which, in turn highlights the fact that space in its entirety, I would argue now, is that support required for the infrastructure We have on the ground and across this country.
It’s part of what Canadians need to perceive and think about as critical for the success of this nation as a sovereign country. The past reliance on space based applications is no different, and it’s critical for our mission success. These capabilities support, communications, command and control across all of the domains.
Significant conflicts, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, are showing and highlighting the critical role that space effects have on Modern Warfare. Highly capable forces, both ally and adversary, use satellite communications for their command and control. They use Global Navigation Satellite Systems. We call it GPS, for the positioning navigation required for their vessels, for their aircraft, for their land forces. They use it for long range strike. They use it, space based intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance systems to enable target detection, detection of encroachments and sovereignty, and space based infrared systems as part of an integrated air and missile defense for early war.
The CAF (Canadian Armed Forces) is no different. Both our previous defense policies have laid out as you have read, the modernization of our forces includes advanced capabilities across air, land, sea and the cyber domains, all of which rely on space.
Competitive war, fighting advantage required to detect threats to our nation, deter encroachment on our sovereignty and defend this country, its people and its values, and to prevail in any conflict require space.
The geopolitical reality is no less dynamic than it was when I spoke to most of you a year ago. However, the conversation around space as a critical domain has certainly changed. It is now a conversation about national security. It’s a conversation about sovereignty, and this conversation continues to grow, and it’s why I feel lucky to be talking to you today. But there’s good and terrifying reasons for this conversation. The strategic context has changed, and our adversaries have turned the space domain into a war fighting domain. Adversarial nations not only are developing and fielding counter space capabilities to disrupt, deny, degrade and destroy space assets, but they pose significant threats to the security and resilience of our capabilities and how we operate them to protect our nations.
The proliferation of space faring nations and commercial entities has led to very crowded orbital environments, raising concerns about space Traffic Management, Safety and Security, and that worry of potential collisions in space, the critical reliance on space based capabilities for communication, navigation, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance has elevated the importance of space operations In the Canadian Forces. I need you to understand that the space domain is not this benign thing anymore.
Our adversaries are employing and developing capabilities today designed to deny the benefits that we require for CAF operations. Our increasing dependence on space capabilities is an attractive target for adversaries, and those potential threats range from reversible effects such as electromagnetic interference, to fully irreversible destructive capabilities such as kinetic kill, anti satellite weapon systems.
The denial of space capabilities has been highlighted during activities around Russia and North Korea, disrupting CAF operations such as Operation [unintelligible] and NATO exercises and operational testing of direct descent ASATS by China and Russia pose an ever growing threat.
But where are we in alignment with our partners and allies? Canada and its allies recognize that there is no single nation that can effectively capitalize on the immense benefits and utilities of space alone, we must work together.
The CAF accesses space capabilities through federated allied systems, including the United States and our other Five Eyes partners. What I would tell you is the criticality of remaining a credible partner continues to grow as allies rely on our ability to augment and complement their capabilities with our own sovereign mission sets and sovereign capabilities. I mean the CAF has a very proud heritage of defending the interests of freedom in the land, air and sea domains, this now extends into the space domain, requiring the acknowledgement and new responsibilities as part of pan domain operations and a pan domain force employment concept.
So how do we intend to move forward?
Well, our mission is crystal clear, create and generate an agile, integrated mission ready space war, fighting enterprise. And now that sounds super catchy, but what does that mean? It means that we will enable the CAF to employ a world class defense space capability and effects to maintain Canadian and allied strategic advantage in to and through space.
But what does that actually mean? Let me build on that from the ground up. First, we must support, enable and protect the joint force. This means assured, protected, space based enablers to allow the joint force in the air, land and sea, to project power forward. This means the protection of those Space Forces from space enabled attack. And now that might sound scary, and it probably is to some, but what I would suggest when we talk about that protection of space enabled attack, it’s around precluding an adversary from having decisional advantage on a battlefield by obfuscating our actions on the ground, air and sea. And that means counter space activities that deny the adversary the ability to use their command and control systems, their surveillance or intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance systems, and deny them access to information that we would privilege ourselves with to gain that advantage on the battlefield. We must also protect those space based assets and terrestrial assets that give our war fighters that advantage on the battlefield, in the air and at sea, allowing them to project power as far forward as required to fly, sail, fight and win. And to do that, it requires us to simultaneously think through the second part of our problem set, which is, how do we develop capabilities, authorities and a professional cadre of space war fighters required to defend and protect the critical national infrastructure and capabilities in space. Let’s highlight that for a second.
There are some arguments right now that everything in space is dual use. I’m not sure we’re there yet as a country, but certainly from a technical and military aspect, there are so many civilian capabilities in space that augment militaries around the world and military capabilities that augment civilian or other government department capabilities on the ground that is really hard to separate what that means.
And so I’ve watched some of my partner nations and allied nations turn to this conversation around critical infrastructure, critical national infrastructure, and there’s an argument about, what does it mean from Canada’s perspective to focus on that? And so, as I said in my opening so much of what we rely on as Canadians is tied to the space domain, and it’s tied to this critical national infrastructure that is it possible in the future we see the entirety of asset and capability in space as critical national infrastructure?
And I think, I think we’re on a pathway to have that conversation. So we talk about protecting that. That’s now a shared mission. There’s a defense role, there’s a public safety rule. There are other government departments that play a role in that. I think we have to craft our way forward as a whole of government, to get to that understanding of defending and protecting critical national infrastructure is a Canadian responsibility, and how do we get there?
But to do both those tasks, I have to be able to control the space domain. And this is a conversation that’s new and somewhat challenging, if you don’t think about it through the lens of how we operate in every other domain. It is, quite simply, assuring access to and freedom of maneuver in space. That allows me and my forces to do what we need to do to achieve the protection and support to the joint force while defending critical infrastructure for this country.
The employment of national sovereign means to maintain strategic advantage is the element of war fighting advantage and how we do and enable that control of space.
Let me expand on that just a little bit. I think a year ago, at Spacebound, I talked about the need for integrated space fires. Listen, I wear a uniform, and I like to use the word fires anytime I can. It really gets people riled up, and it got lots of people riled up, and we’ve we then said. Well, it’s space control and fires, and then it got really confusing.
And I’ve actually spent time trying to listen to community experts tell me, Hey, that’s not helpful when we talk about the rules based international order, and it’s not, not necessarily helpful when we talk about responsible use of space and that you want to light it on fire to be fair, I don’t want to light it on fire. It’s really hard to have a fire in space, but controlling the domain is important. And controlling the domain means thinking through what counter space capabilities are required. It means thinking through, where is that to use, the words of General Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations from the US, the special province of war fighters. You can fly across this country in Air Canada, but Air Canada doesn’t control the air domain. The Royal Canadian Air Force does.
You can see merchant ships sailing across the ocean, but they don’t control the maritime domain. Navies do like the Royal Canadian Navy. And you don’t seize and control land in a battlefield context with regular civilians. You do that with soldiers and armies like the Canadian Army.
So to control the space domain, it means enabling us to move forward in a conversation about what are those authorities required to deliver offensive and defensive effects to through and from space, to enable war fighting advantage, while denying the adversary the same and protecting Canadian interests.
Okay. So you understand the threat landscape, we understand our mission, and we focused on our tasks. So let me walk you through two more things. Our mission areas and my focus of effort for the next couple of years.
Our missionaries remain unchanged from what I talked about about a year ago. But like I said, when we talked about space control, we clarified some of the language. We tried to remove some of the over classification of terminology, which is standard when you have space nerds talking about space nerd stuff, and it’s super secret, and we’re only doing in space, and we can’t tell you about it. That is unhelpful. It is unhelpful to Canadians. Is unhelpful to other soldiers in other domains, and it’s unhelpful to government as we walk through, quite frankly, what we need to do as a country to be successful.
And so let’s talk about the missionaries. Missionary one, satellite communications, unchanged. We have a storied history of developing satellite communications, using artificial satellites in orbit to transmit signals between two points on Earth. It’s super easy to understand. We use that on different levels and different capabilities to enable communication, not just for the military, but for many government purposes, ensuring communication with our North and the Arctic, ensuring connectivity to disparate communities across what is the second largest land mass in the world. We as Canadians rely on satellite communications to do that. From a military perspective, it’s that mission area is ensuring that the joint force is enabled with the satellite communications to deliver the command and control they need to have decisional advantage on the battlefield, in the air and on the sea.
Missionary two, space based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, again, unchanged from the wording that we’ve used for years. This is, how do we use space assets to gather, process and disseminate information for intelligence and military purposes? Pretty easy.
This is looking at how do we use the RADARSAT Constellation mission that is flown by CSA (Canadian Space Agency) that we take advantage of, just like every other department for our mission set as national technical means that give us that advantage as Canadians. It’s looking forward to things like the defense enhanced surveillance of space program known as DESPP, and the significant investment this government has already chosen to make as we build that out to give us defense specific ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) capabilities for next generation warfighting.
And it’s moving into things we are unfamiliar with but are getting more familiar with, like airborne moving target indicator, even I can’t say it correctly yet, AMTI, it’s a great acronym. And this is using a combination of space assets and other assets to detect threats to Canada’s sovereignty, such as cruise missiles, hypersonic weapons, or aircraft that just choose to try to remain undetected by traditional means. These are all important parts of what we think about from an ISR perspective, and those two missionaries have been around for decades, so it’s not something that we’ve conceived of. We’ve just started to talk a little bit more publicly about what are we doing in those areas.
Missionary three is space domain awareness. Space Domain Awareness is that timely, relevant, actionable understanding of all aspects associated with the space domain, including the capabilities, limitations, vulnerabilities, threats and hazards.
Let me be super clear about this. This is the foundational layer for operating into and through the domain. It underpins all of our tasks and all of our strategic objectives. Without domain awareness, I cannot see what is a threat to Canada.
When I think about our strategic goals from a military perspective and our strategic tasks that is to detect, deter and defend this great nation. To do that, I must have an ability to understand and have awareness in the domain. Fundamentally, we have been part of that process for decades.
SAPHIRE is a great example. We were the first country to contribute to the global space surveillance network provided by the United States Space Force, and we continue to provide in that. Moving forward, as we augment our capabilities, we have to look at what do we need from a sovereign capability perspective. How do we move beyond optical into long wave infrared so that we can see threats as they maneuver through the Eclipse and through the sun?
How do we look at inspector satellites beyond Leo, out at geo to see what are threats to our non traditional communications assets. How do we understand, using ground based radar, how things maneuver in space? The challenge for us, I think, is to really and truly grapple with that immediately, to really and truly understand the foundational layer for everything we must do for our other mission areas comes from the ability to have that sovereign, nationally separable capability to detect in the domain.
Missionary four, space control. This is the challenging one for most. This is focused on assuring access to and freedom of action space. We’ve said it before, and really it encompasses all of the actions and capabilities required to contest and control the domain.
And so I just want to pick at this one more time, doctrinally, and I’ll say that word, and then I know nobody reads doctrine and nobody cares about doctrine, but doctrinally, a function of space power focused on assuring access and freedom of action in space, space control encompasses all those activities, so there’s the doctrinal answer.
If you get a test on this later, I’m pretty sure Brian and the Space Canada crew aren’t going to give you that test. But let me be crystal clear, this is offensive and defensive action in space. This is required to control the domain, to gain and maintain war fighting advantage.
There is no clearer way to say that. There’s no less terrifying way to say that. This is not Canada developing any satellite kinetic kill vehicles, but this is Canada thinking through the authorities and the policy space and the capabilities required that at its core, we need to be able to deter an adversary.
Deterrence is my happy place, and here’s why. Because if we can detect something and do nothing about it, I’m not super happy about that. And I most certainly do not want to see conflict in space. War in space is not on the horizon, and I sure don’t want it to be. But that goes back to deterrence. We must have, at a macro level, an ability to prevent conflict. Preventing conflict relies on deterrence, relies on capabilities to control a domain and keep the adversary at bay.
And why don’t I want a conflict in space? Well, I think about our astronauts a lot. I talk to them regularly. I’m excited to know that you know Colonel Jeremy Hansen in his mission with NASA and Artemis 2 as a CSA astronaut, is going to launch early in 2026 and go around the moon. We should be excited about that. I’m just as excited to know that Colonel Josh Kutrick, also working with NASA, also a CSA astronaut, will go to space midway through 2026 and do his operational tour on the International Space Station.
That’s what space is for. It’s for exploration, it’s for society, it’s for growth, it’s for goodness. And that’s what I want it to be about, and that’s what I need to focus on as we look at the mission sets that we have to enable advantage for our war fighters, while also protecting Canadian interests.
And so space control isn’t making space harder. It’s clearing the pathway for exploration. It’s enabling temporary, reversible effects to preclude an adversary from overwhelming us.
Electronic warfare, electronic attack, electronic support, orbital warfare, rendezvous, proximity operations, all of those things are important in space control, just as important as assured access to space through sovereign launch capability and our ability to replenish capabilities that are already in orbit to keep them longer.
And so let me cover one last thing before I let you go. Let me cover our pathway to the future, or, as the Air Force would say, our pathway to the stars. So 3 CSD, the 3 Canadian Space Division, is the lead across the Canadian Armed Forces for establishing what the future is for space.
And to do that, we’ve had to take our position as to where we are, and the great work that was done by my predecessors to build a division and pivot from its initial operating capacity or capability, and focus on, what does it mean for Canada to have a full operational capability in the space domain? And so that pivot to operationalizing and to focus on the future requires us to do a thing we call a campaign plan, which, again, nobody in the outside world cares about. So we just call it a plan. It’s funny, when you add strategic in front of it. It gets funnier or more military. You add campaign in front of it, certainly that we could just call it a plan or strategy. But our campaign plan moves us along a pathway over the next several years, which ties together those mission areas that we talked about and those big tasks and objectives we have.
And so missionary one is first and foremost to prepare and professionalize the forces and the Canadian Forces for space operations. And this will revolve around an analysis to see whether or not we need to stand up an occupation or career field or career pathway for pure space professionals. That is important to be able to recruit off the street, bring people into the Canadian Forces, and have, from day one, they become space professionals and have a career as space professionals. Hugely important.
That also allows us to prepare for full spectrum operations by having a cadre of professionalized forces and developing the training and the tools and procedures that we have now will prepare us for full spectrum operations in 2028 and beyond. There’s a lot of work to do there, and so that is a long pathway, but we are off on that journey.
Our second focus, our second effort, is to seamlessly integrate space effects into joint operations and plans. And we’re pretty good there, but we’re not where we need to be. As we talk about the fact that my secondary role is to be the Joint Force Space Component Commander, and to deliver those effects for the joint force, we are still building through what that means for the Canadian Forces to be able to focus our energy the most efficiently and deliver the most effect possible with the least number of resources required to enable that war fighting advantage.
Again, there’s work to be done there, but if we do that properly, that allows us to deter the adversary or to counter the adversary, because they will know that from the beginning, we have integrated our effects across all domains, and the pan domain force employment concept has come to reality, and That’s the focus of what we think about as we develop an all domain campaign plan, or all domain defense plan for Canada. Lots of words for it, lots of work to be done there, but space is integral to how that moves forward.
Focus area number three, or effort three, is strengthening interoperability with partners and allies. Again, said at the start, we can’t do this alone, nor should we. We need to preserve the rules based international order. We need to prevent aggression. We need to ensure that space is responsibly used so that Josh and Jeremy can go around the moon and go to the ISS (International Space Station) and conduct the experiments for the betterment of society.
Without the rules based international order, societies will collapse.
Aggression against that is why the space domain is so incredibly important. So as we build out those partnerships with partners and allies, that’s not just the Five Eyes. That’s not just our combined Space Operations initiative 10 countries, or operation Olympic Defenders, seven nations. That’s partners, internal to Canada, across government departments, that’s across new relationships that we are forming in different ways.
That is building that out as a global community that wishes to preserve that international order and have that interoperability in the space domain be one of those cornerstones that allows us to succeed as apocalypse.
And finally, four, optimize and expand key missionaries. Again, we talked about the missionaries. There’s four of them. We’re challenged in the space control mission area, in talking about it, because we haven’t talked about it a lot before.
But make no mistake, the capabilities that are developed and are continuing to be developed for space control, satellite communications, space based ISR and space domain awareness, are world class. And this is when we rely on Canadians and Canadian industry to help us accelerate this forward. We cannot and will not achieve success without the integration of our needs and wants, if you want to call it that, with that of the expertise in the academic world, with regular Canadians in different sectors, who can bring ideas forward, and with the space economy and space industry and ecosystem that we have here in this country to enable us to be successful.
Together, we can accelerate the critical capabilities the Canadian Forces needs to get after our tasks to defend this great country. And with that, I thank you for your time. This has been not exactly what I wanted, because I’m not there with you, but it’s been really important for me to be part of this community for the last year, and I look forward to engaging with you again in the future. Thank you.
