The NZDF told RNZ on Tuesday it was not authorised to release the information, citing advice from US Space Command. While the NZDF said it retained sovereignty over the hub, it stated it did not have the authority to unilaterally release documentation tied to the Joint Commercial Operations network. It suggested RNZ instead pursue the request through the US Freedom of Information Act rather than New Zealand’s Official Information Act.<\/p>\n
Auckland coordinates the Pacific third of the globe for the US-led JCO network, created by the Pentagon in 2020 to bring commercial data worth about 50 million dollars a year into US Space Command. Earlier this year, information released under the OIA showed the Auckland hub in February tracked launches of Chinese military satellites and an Iranian civilian satellite from Russia. That Russian launch of two satellites for Iran, for weather and TV broadcasting, was described in the hub’s notices as a significant milestone for Iran’s space program and continued Russian-Iranian cooperation.<\/p>\n
The head of the JCO, Barbara Golf, said US Central Command asked the Space Force to broaden its monitoring of electromagnetic spectrums when President Donald Trump ordered the start of Operation Epic Fury on 28 February. “When Operation Epic Fury kicked off, the answer was, ‘We want more of that now in every band you can find,'” Golf said at a tech surveillance conference in Hawaii last month. The capability was used to detect sources of electronic attack on US systems, such as Iranian jammers that could disrupt drones. Golf said the network intended to expand this into all six ground combatant commands over the next year, including US Indo-Pacific Command.<\/p>\n
RNZ asked whether the Auckland hub was involved in the Iran JCO operations. The NZDF did not say. The NZDF has previously denied the Auckland hub expanded into electromagnetics, tactical surveillance, reconnaissance or tracking, stating it remains within its remit as approved by Cabinet and that any expansion requires appropriate permissions from government. When RNZ asked the NZDF to release notices from March to September and two years of activity reports, the request was blocked. US Space Command passed the request on internally and offered no comment on why it blocked the release.<\/p>\n
The Commander of US Space Command, General Stephen Whiting, said at the same conference the ultimate objective was space superiority and unrestricted freedom of manoeuver in space for the US and its allies. He described an urgent need to integrate allied and commercial capabilities and said detection times were being cut from minutes to seconds in some cases. The US recently added Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites to the JCO’s commercial sources, which Golf said in April led to a significant increase in successful tracking of Chinese and Russian launches.<\/p>\n
RNZ has asked the NZDF again whether its involvement has expanded more recently and has approached US Space Command directly. The US has stressed 2026 as the Year of Integration in space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The NZDF told RNZ on Tuesday it was not authorised to release the information, citing advice from US Space Command. While the NZDF said it retained sovereignty over the hub, it stated it did not have the authority to unilaterally release documentation tied to the Joint Commercial Operations network. It suggested RNZ instead pursue the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91243,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10720,10722,10721,1596,10719],"class_list":["post-91206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-auckland","tag-iran-war","tag-joint-commercial-operations","tag-new-zealand","tag-us-space-command"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91244,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91206\/revisions\/91244"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}