When people talk about spacepower, the conversation usually drifts toward great power competition or distant theaters. The Indo-Pacific. Eastern Europe. High-end conflict.
But spend a few minutes listening to Col. Brandon Alford, and that framing starts to feel incomplete.
Because some of the most consequential uses of spacepower aren’t happening “over there.” They’re happening much closer to home, across the Western Hemisphere, in ways that are quieter, less visible, and arguably more foundational to how the United States operates day to day.
In a recent conversation on the Spacepower Podcast, Alford, who commands U.S. Space Forces Southern, offers a window into that reality. His command, only recently established, exists to integrate space capabilities into operations across U.S. Southern Command’s area of responsibility. That spans everything from the Caribbean to South America, a region defined less by large military footprints and more by geography, distance, and relationships.
And that last piece, relationships, comes up early and often.
“We are in the business of relationships,” Alford says. It is not a throwaway line. It is the organizing principle.
In other theaters, military power often shows up in the form of bases, aircraft, or forward-deployed forces. In the Southern Command area of responsibility, those things exist, but they are not the center of gravity. What matters more is the network. The ability to work with partners, to build trust, to align capabilities across borders without overwhelming presence.
Spacepower, in that sense, fits naturally into the region. It is inherently connective. It enables coordination without requiring physical proximity.
What that looks like in practice is less dramatic than a rocket launch, but far more constant.
Satellite communications keep forces connected across remote terrain. GPS enables precision in environments where infrastructure is limited. Space-based sensing provides awareness across vast maritime and jungle regions where visibility is otherwise scarce. These capabilities are not occasional enablers. They are the baseline.
As General Saltzman put it during the activation of Space Forces Southern, without space, “we can’t complete our joint missions.”
That reality becomes even more pronounced in a region like this. Distances are long. Terrain is complex. Operations often involve multiple nations, agencies, and mission sets layered on top of each other. Space is what allows all of that to function as something coherent.
And yet, most of it happens quietly.
The quiet nature of that work makes one moment in the conversation stand out even more.
Alford describes a recent operational response in which his organization, still in the process of standing up, was thrust into real-world mission planning. At the time, Space Forces Southern did not yet have the formal authorities or structure to operate as a component command. That changed quickly.
The unit was activated in the middle of the planning effort.
What followed was a compressed version of something that normally takes years. Building a command-and-control structure. Requesting forces. Integrating personnel from across the Space Force enterprise. Establishing an operational rhythm. Then executing.
It worked.
The mission was successful. Lives were saved. And in the process, the timeline for building the organization accelerated dramatically. What might have taken a year or more was done in months, under pressure, with real stakes attached.
It is one thing to talk about integrating space into joint operations. It is another to do it before the organization itself fully exists.
If there is a single idea that lingers after listening to Alford, it is that spacepower is becoming less exclusive.
There is still a perception, especially among partner nations, that participating in space requires decades of investment. Launch infrastructure. Satellite constellations. A level of scale that only a handful of countries can realistically achieve.
That assumption is increasingly outdated.
Today, much of the value in space operations comes from access to data, not ownership of hardware. Commercial capabilities, shared networks, and initiatives like space domain awareness programs are lowering the barrier to entry in ways that would have been hard to imagine even a decade ago.
Alford makes the point simply. You do not need a launch program to contribute. In some cases, you need little more than access, connectivity, and the willingness to participate.
That shift matters, especially in a region where many countries are eager to be involved but historically lacked the means. It opens the door to a more distributed, collaborative model of spacepower. One where capability is built through partnership rather than scale.
That idea of partnership runs through everything.
Whether it is working with countries like Brazil and Colombia, which are developing more advanced space capabilities, or engaging with nations just beginning to explore the domain, the approach is consistent. Build trust. Find shared objectives. Enable participation.
It shows up in small ways, like providing sensors or training. It shows up in larger ways, like helping partners think through long-term investments such as space launch infrastructure. And it shows up in the day-to-day work of integrating commercial data and multinational inputs into a shared operational picture.
The result is not just better awareness of what is happening in space. It is a stronger, more connected approach to security across the hemisphere.
There is a tendency to think of spacepower as something separate. A distinct domain, operating at a distance from the realities on the ground. Conversations like this challenge that assumption.
In the Western Hemisphere, space is not an abstraction. It is part of the connective tissue that holds operations together. It enables coordination where geography works against it. It creates precision where ambiguity would otherwise dominate. It allows a network of partners to operate as something closer to a system.
It is, in many ways, invisible. Until it is not.
For those who want to understand how that actually plays out, the full conversation with Col. Brandon Alford on the Spacepower Podcast is worth the time.
🎧 Listen to the full episode here:
Youtube: https://youtu.be/4hTINoA1jRI
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4EHbjY42EdGTqB1EC2hAmO
Apple Music: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/spacepower/id1500399200
Learn more about U.S. Space Forces Southern: https://www.spaceforcesouth.spaceforce.mil/
Join the Space Force Association: https://ussfa.org/
