New Zealand's military partners in space in Europe are talking more openly about war in space. This country joined the peak US-led space body, Operation Olympic Defender, last year at the same time as Germany and France. German Space Command told a NATO Space Defense and Security Summit last week that Germany had "finally realised" that space is a war-fighting domain. "We have to accept that space is a tested domain, is a war-fighting domain, is becoming a war-fighting domain." Military-related government space spending had overtaken civil space spending in the past two years, according to consultancy Novaspace.