CHILE –
When Exercise SALITRE 2026 opened its execution week at Cerro Moreno Air Base on July 6, the largest multinational air exercise in South America featured something no combined exercise has attempted before: a commercial satellite performing a real, on-orbit evasive maneuver in response to a simulated adversary — flown live, watched by coalition space operators on three continents.
U.S. Space Forces – Southern (SPACEFOR-SOUTH) leads the Joint Commercial Operations (JCO) space cell supporting the Chilean Air Force-hosted exercise, part of the U.S. Southern Command Resolute Sentinel series. Alongside host-nation Chile, space operators and planners from Brazil, Colombia, the United States, NATO's space community, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand are integrated into a single around-the-clock coalition watch — passing the space picture across time zones in a continuous follow-the-sun rotation for the first time in a SPACEFOR-SOUTH exercise.
The week's centerpiece is a “sim-over-live” event conducted with commercial partner Turion Space. As part of the fictional exercise scenario, an aggressor spacecraft — role-played by Brazilian and Colombian space operations centers — closes on a real Turion satellite, the DROID-002. Turion responded by executing an actual maneuver of its spacecraft in excess of 1 m/s. This provided coalition operators the rare opportunity to detect, characterize, and report a genuine on-orbit event in real time using commercial space domain awareness data.
"This milestone demonstrates that security in the space domain is a team sport," said U.S. Space Force Col. Brandon P. Alford, commander of Space Forces Southern. "By executing a live, on-orbit maneuver with a commercial partner under a simulated threat, we aren't just validating theoretical concepts—we are proving our collective, real-time operational agility. Operating a continuous, multinational watch floor across three continents shows how integrated, resilient, and unified our coalition has become."
The exercise also marks an operational debut for the Chilean air force's newest space professionals: four operators who completed the four-week JCO “Protect and Defend” certification course just weeks before the exercise put their qualifications to work on live watch floors for the first time. They conducted satellite state searches, activity watches, and wide-area searches in direct support of coalition air operations.
"Integrating cutting-edge space capabilities directly with our air assets in a multinational environment is exactly how we prepare for the future of combat," said U.S. Air Force Col. Steven Cabrera, U.S. Exercise Commander for Exercise Resolute Sentinel - Salitre 2026. "The collaboration we're seeing here in Chile between our air wings and the space cell represents a massive leap forward in multi-domain command and control. We are no longer operating in isolated silos; we are planning, executing, and defending as a fully unified coalition."
Argentina and Paraguay, both flying in SALITRE's air component, observed a JCO-centered space cell for the first time. The experience provided firsthand exposure to how commercially derived space data supports combined operations, ranging from pre-mission satellite imagery of exercise target areas to daily space weather reports produced by the Chilean team.
Preparation for the exercise included an orbital warfare familiarization series for new space operators from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Colombia. Delivered by U.S. Space Force officers during the exercise's integration phase, the series served as a primer on spacecraft maneuvering, intercepts execution, and defensive detection and response tactics.
SALITRE 2026 runs through July 12. Lessons from the space cell will inform PANAMAX 2026 later this summer, continuing SPACEFOR-SOUTH's campaign to build enduring, interoperable space partnerships across the Americas and beyond.