by Francesco Di Matteo, Mario Benincasa, Alessandro Tozzi e Anna Roma
BIS-Italia
The BIS at ASPC 2025
Over 1,500 participants each day, 57 foreign delegations, 33 air force chiefs from around the world, representatives from industry and SMEs, more than 300 professors, researchers, and students from universities and aeronautical technical institutes, prestigious academic institutions, research centers, think tanks, and representatives from the Italian Defence Higher Studies Center: these are the key figures of the second edition of the “AeroSpace Power Conference 2025” (#ASPC2025)—a two-day event dedicated to aerospace, organized by the Italian Air Force in scientific collaboration with the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), making it one of the most significant events of the year in the international aerospace sector.
“Fighting and Winning in the Sky Beyond the Next Decade” is the title chosen for this year’s event, aimed at offering authoritative insights into the concept of aerospace power as a decisive military tool in light of the rapidly changing international security context and the ongoing technological evolution of the aerospace domain.
The conference was inaugurated on Thursday, May 8 and continued until Friday. ASPC25 provided authoritative perspectives on technology, innovation, and sustainability in the aerospace sector, creating opportunities to develop new reflections, share in-depth analyses, and foster new relationships—continuing the path started with the first edition in 2023, on the occasion of the Air Force’s centenary.
To this event, BIS Italia has had the privilege to be invited and attend as part of the aerospace think-tanks and thanks to its outreach work with the ITAF staff.
The two-day conference included two panels per day, interspersed with speeches by five prominent keynote speakers.
The opening and the four panels have been live streamed on Aeronautica Militare YouTube Channel, unfortunately only with real time translation in Italian. At this URL you can find the recording of the opening.
- The first panel, “Strategy and Policy,” analyzed the strategic dimensions of aerospace power within the current international security framework and future scenarios. Gen. Goretti delivered remarks in this session.
https://www.youtube.com/live/-t9l-2uNViw - The second panel focused on “Competition and Technological Challenges,” and industrial prospects.
https://www.youtube.com/live/NRszvaWIGMM - On the second day, the third panel on “Doctrine and Leadership” tackled the intangible yet fundamental aspects of aerospace power, including education and training for current and future generations of aviators.
https://www.youtube.com/live/Nl2e_4W9Ylg - The fourth and final panel, on “Evolution of the Space Domain”, presented by the Director General of ESA Joseph Aschbacher, was moderated by AM astronaut Col. Walter Villadei, focusing on outer space as a field of strategic competition.
Regarding the last panel, for the first time an ESA Director General has explicitly remarked that ESA convention not only allows but it is also ready to pursue dual use programmes and in the field of security and defence. Aschbacher also highlighted the issue that Europe is the only space power that does not have an institutional dual-use space-based Earth Observation system. From the Space security Congress recently held in Warsaw, the rising need to increase investments in defence & security into the Space Domain has been more and more evident and claimed by all the countries involved.
The panel saw as speakers, the president of the Italian Space Agency Prof. Teodoro Valente, the former administrator of NASA senator Bill Nelson, the ESA IRIDE project manager Gabriella Costa, the Managing Director of Space Division in Leonado Massimo Comparini, the VP of Commercial Sales of SpaceX Stephanie Bednarek, and the Commander of the French Space Command Major General Philippe Adam.
While for the worldwide Air Forces space is considered the “next frontier” where major issues of Security & Defence will be dealt with, the panel seemed to miss the opportunity to talk about these topics. Nevertheless, very good points were addressed regarding the “evolution of the space domain”, such as the contribution of Gabriella Costa when she says that autonomy is a pillar for collaboration and not in contrast with it. Only demonstrating autonomy, true collaboration can be achieved as true partners and not as subordinates.
The recording of the whole panel is available here, but unfortunately with an Italian translation voice-over.
As a general remark this conference was focused on the “aerospace”, i.e. the continuum of atmosphere and outer space, from a military and strategic perspective: both as an enabler of power projection and as a battlefield per se.
The military domains now expand beyond the traditional ones (i.e. land, submarine, sea surface, and sky) to the information sphere (the cyber security) and outer space. Several discussions, especially in the doctrine panel, focused on managing the complexity of such scenarios: on one side the need to increase agility, and thus to delegate decision-making power further down the chain of command, on the other side the need to orchestrate multi-domain operations, that require decision-making to happen higher in the command chain.
High rank military officers, military analysts and representatives of the defence industry owned the floor, and thus the conference was biased by their perspective, that could appear a bit scary: full-scale war scenarios, both in Europe and in the Indo-Pacific were depicted as high probable, and the mindset was more on “how to deal with them” rather than “how to prevent them”. Only US senator Bill Nelson, former NASA Administrator (and former astronaut), recalled the peace-making power of space: he recalled the Apollo-Soyuz mission, which, in the midst of Cold War, marked a significant moment of détente, and the international endeavour of the ISS, which, beyond all the other important outcomes, forces mission control centers of both NASA and ROSCOSMOS to interoperate seamlessly.
The fourth panel has also hosted interesting considerations about the economic sustainability of commercial space, especially commercial space stations in low earth orbit, i.e. the need for clear business cases and business plans, that don’t exist yet.
Lt. General Luca Goretti, Chief of Staff of the Italian Air Force concluded the event by inviting the conference guests to ASPC27: in his greeting he highlighted a fundamental concept for the future of defence in Space. Evoking a potential future of space conquests in which the nations of the Earth compete for new territories, he showed how this scenario could be extremely problematic and a harbinger of war. The Space Domain by creating deterrents to war is the solution, by uniting knowledge, understanding and intent, as friends. It will be necessary to rely on the industry and the products it offers, to train the leaders of the next generation: Space will be everyone’s wealth, but at the cost of maintaining Peace, protecting us from the catastrophic scenario of War. This event was certainly a seed of meeting, knowledge and discovery of the other, leading us to doing things together, trusting each other, sharing and not fighting.
The aerospace conference was a valuable opportunity to strengthen collaboration between the air forces of various countries, including Bangladesh, the Philippines, Malaysia, Libya, South Africa, Zambia, Austria, the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
The conference also featured a large exhibition pavilion with booths from leading aerospace and tech companies and key event partners.
In closing, ASPC25 – AeroSpace Power Conference 2025 was also a reflection on the dynamics of industry and international defence, with a spur to work to increase more and more skills, access to new technologies by investing in research. By achieving cutting-edge results, technological independence and sharing knowledge, wonderful results can be obtained, starting a dialogue between Nations that can lead to Peace.
