/.../Todd Harrison, director for the nonprofit Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, /../ said including allies on future space programs offers benefits including stability, cost savings and improved interoperability.
“International partners can, in principle, help improve program stability by broadening the set of stakeholders in a program. In addition to offsetting some of the costs, including international partners has the added advantage of improving interoperability between U.S. and partner forces,” the report says. “The inclusion of Australia in the WGS program is notable because it may have prevented a break in production between satellites five and six.”
Harrison also points to another advantage of partnerships: disincentive for unfriendly nations to launch anti-satellite attacks.
“It would complicate the planning of potential adversaries because an attack against any protected satellites or hosted protected payloads would be an attack against all of the partner nations in the network and thus run the risk of horizontal escalation,” Harrison said/.../