Thousands of soldiers paraded down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, on foot, on horseback, in tanks and even on a flying hoverboard. But the real action, increasingly, was somewhere far away: outer space.
President Emmanuel Macron of France set the stage for last Sunday’s annual Bastille Day military parade by announcing the creation of a space command within France’s air force.
Stressing that France and Europe’s independence was at stake, the president said that the command would "ensure our defense of space within space."
The move by France, the Continent’s leader in space, was the latest sign that the era of fighting in space — disabling or even shooting down satellites on which warfare on earth is increasingly dependent — was getting closer.
"Space is increasingly seen as a strategic asset, not only by the major space powers, but also by secondary powers like France," said Jean-Jacques Tortora, director of the European Space Policy Institute in Vienna. "Space might potentially be the theater of military operations, and this justifies the setting up of dedicated space commands to manage these sorts of operations."
But for now, Europe is playing catch up. Pooling resources has helped Europe keep its leadership in the civilian use of space, experts say. But when it comes to militarizing space, Europe remains divided, with France facing resistance from Germany and other nations.
The result is that Europe’s military capacity in space ranks far behind the United States, China and Russia. The lack of a unified vision could constrain France’s ambitions for its space command.
In space-related activities in Europe, "France is the biggest and most important country, but going it alone would be close to impossible," said Thomas Hoerber, a professor at the Essca School of Management and co-editor of the book, "European Space Policy."
Mr. Macron hinted as much in his speech announcing the creation of the space command. While he spoke of reinforcing France’s "strategic autonomy," he added that it must take place in a "European framework."
But even there, the challenges were apparent.
Just as Mr. Macron was set to announce the creation of the space command, Galileo, Europe’s satellite navigation system and its biggest joint project in space, was experiencing a systemwide "outage."
All of its 22 orbiting satellites had gone offline. “The signals are not to be used,” Galileo’s operators said.
Instead, Galileo’s users, including owners of the latest smartphones, were switched to signals from America’s Global Positioning System or other competitors.
Galileo represented a united Europe’s lofty ambitions to carve out, in space, a place for itself among the world’s traditional and rising powers. But the systemwide shutdown was a reminder of how those ambitions have often been undermined by the European Union’s competing national interests and comparable lack of resources.
Last year, the European Commission said it would merge its space-related activities in a single body called the E.U. Space Program.
Emphasizing the need for European autonomy, the commission announced a budget of 16 billion euros from 2021 to 2027, about $18 billion, a 44 percent increase over the previous six-year period.
Most of the money would go to programs with mainly civilian uses, like Galileo and Copernicus, a satellite observation system that allows for the precise monitoring of earth from space.
More satellites would be added to Copernicus’s constellation, increasing its capacity to monitor the environment and climate change, as well as manage the security at borders and at sea.
The plan also calls for increasing military capacity by beefing up the Governmental Satellite Communications system, which provides "access to secure satellite communications for national authorities."
The growing threats in space, some experts said, could soften the view of Germany and other European nations toward military use.
"So France starts first," Mr. Tortora said, “and will call the more motivated to join."
Last year, President Trump called for the establishment of a space force as a sixth branch of the American armed forces. Russia created its own space command in 2011. And China identified space as a critical part of its military strategy in a 2015 white paper on defense.
For France — a nation with longstanding military and civilian ambitions in space and with the biggest budget devoted to space activities in Europe — joining the club was a natural step, said Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of the Centre National d’Études Spatiales, the French space agency