Japan and Poland will join the US, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and the Czech Republic, as part of the US Military’s Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) Coalition. The WGS satellites, built by Boeing and operated by the U.S. Space Force, provide high-capacity communication services for military operations. With 10 satellites in geostationary Earth orbit, WGS has been the backbone of U.S. military communications.
Allowing more countries to access the WGS network will place more terminals online. Each terminal represents a new attack vector for an adversary. The two new countries in the coalition just happen to be common targets for our two main adversaries. With Poland consistently targeted by Russia and Japan consistently targeted by China in the cyber realm. While adding more countries to the WGS coalition is a great way to ease the financial burden of the program and ease the difficulties the US has in sharing information with its allies the additional vulnerabilities brought in by new users may end up threatening the use of the WGS network for all countries involved.