Space is a critical domain for Britain. £450 billion, or 18%, of the United Kingdom’s (UK) economy is underpinned by space assets, and losing Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) would have an economic impact of over £1.4 billion per day. Russia, as an adversarial state, is taking advantage of this by attempting to disrupt British space assets.
This highlights the centrality of space to the future of British security – a fact recognised by Maj. Gen. Paul Tedman CBE, Commander of UK Space Command. With the significance of space also being acknowledged by His Majesty’s (HM) Government in the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) and National Security Strategy (NSS), for this week’s Big Ask, we asked ten experts: How important is space power to British national strategy?
Associate Director of International Engagement, Partnerships and Education, European Space Policy Institute
The UK is not a space power but yields some degrees of spacepower, understood as the ability of a state actor to deploy, operate and leverage space-related capabilities to serve national interest. This power is indispensable to the fulfilment of the objectives set forth in British national strategy, as space is not only a physical domain – the ‘eighth continent’ to be controlled and exploited – but also an inescapable component of modern statecraft and overall power projection.
Spacepower already forms the backbone of contemporary warfare, enabling everything from weather forecasting to multi-domain Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) and missile defence. The equation is as simple as it is compelling: without space, there is no defence.
However, beyond this core security and defence dimension, what should not be overlooked is the relevance spacepower has as a tool for supercharging the national economy, and as a key instrument in foreign policy. The United States (US) and People’s Republic of China (PRC), as the two prominent space powers, understand this well, and are betting massively on space as a key economic driver for the future – primarily through communications, including direct-to-device solutions as a hyper-scaler in consumer markets, and potentially in-space computing and networking. They also fully embrace space as a core asset of their digital sovereignty and international posture; a tool to forge strategic alliances or magnify technological dependencies in other countries.
Today, in a winner-takes-all domain like space, scale is the currency of power. For the UK, embracing a renewed spirit of federation within the European village – at the European Space Agency (ESA), European Union (EU) and bilateral levels – proves the only viable path to building scale and ensuring its long-term strategic relevance.
Vice Chair, UKspace Launch Committee, and Chief Executive Officer, Celestial Fix Ltd.
The recent announcement that HM Government-backed launch company Orbex has appointed administrators demonstrates how the UK sees space in the context of national power. If Britain turns its back again, as it did in 1971, it will go down in history as the only nation to develop, then abandon, launch capabilities twice (the first time being the Black Arrow programme).
It is difficult to discern where space power does not impact on the NSS’ priorities of security at home, strength abroad and increased sovereign capabilities; whether through national levels of power or space’s contribution to the UK’s security, stability and prosperity.
Britain depends on space for its Critical National Infrastructure (CNI). Global Positioning Systems (GPS) enable everything from airport operations and financial transactions to navigating congested roads or logging Strava efforts. Over half of the United Nations’ (UN) climate variables can only be monitored from space, providing insight into human effect on our planet. Through allies, the UK can watch adversaries via overhead imagery, while communicating securely with globally dispersed critical defence capabilities.
Reliance on the US for access to space can no longer be assured; where British national interests diverge from America’s, there is a risk that the US will refuse. With other European nations advancing space capabilities, such as Germany allocating €35 billion (£30.5 billion) to space defence before 2030, the UK turning a blind eye is an outlier.
As Britain has global interests economically and politically, space is a tool of security and prosperity – alongside supporting the UN in international space stability. However, the UK is currently outbid by its peers and outpaced by adversaries.
For Britain to be a meaningful player in space, it should recognise how companies such as Orbex contribute to overall strategy and security. The value of the internet is not counted as the cost of cables connecting the country, so nor should the value of space be calculated by the cost of sovereign access and the ability to monitor and protect the UK’s interests and capabilities.
Managing Consultant, PA Consulting, and Chair, Security and Defence Committee, UKspace
Space power is not just important to the UK’s national strategy; it is the arena in which Britain could actively shape the strategic environment to its advantage. The UK’s economy and national security depend on orbital infrastructure, but too much of that resilience is outsourced. Britain is heavily dependent on American systems – not through deliberate strategy, but because it has simply drifted into over‑reliance, creating a strategic vulnerability.
The opportunity lies in using space to project national power and build sovereign resilience. The UK has the talent, industrial base and alliances to lead, but it is not leading today. It has strategies and vision documents, yet delivery continues to lag behind the pace at which the domain is changing. Britain should diversify and build sovereign layers where essential. It should also work more emphatically with European partners, while maintaining its relationship with the US.
The UK’s allies are accelerating, and competitors are rewriting the rules of the domain. Britain should be shaping those rules, not adapting to them. With the National Armaments Director (NAD) Group reforms, a maturing National Space Operations Centre (NSpOC) and world‑class industrial talent, the UK has the mechanisms to act decisively, if it chooses to do so. Britain can lead if it moves with focus, pace and purpose.
James Black
Deputy Director, Defence and Security, and European Lead, Space, RAND Europe
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Space Policy Analyst, RAND Europe Space Hub (RESH)
If we broadly define space power as the ability to exert influence in and from space, one question immediately emerges: who should the UK primarily aim to influence? Russia is a strong candidate – both as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) key adversary and as a more realistic goal for Britain and its European allies and partners than deterring the PRC in space.
It is a truism to state that space is indispensable to modern military operations, but also pressing is what happens in the sub-threshold ‘grey zone’. Although public attention has turned to undersea cables and sabotage on land, Russian sub-threshold activities against CNI extend to outer space.
Russian spacecraft have moved dangerously close to eavesdrop on European satellites that enable both civil and military activities. From the ground, Russia interferes electronically with GPS and communication signals. It has also insisted that commercial space companies represent legitimate targets, while blocking a UK-led diplomatic push at the UN to agree to new norms on responsible space behaviour.
Despite ongoing efforts by UK Space Command to build capability – with much more limited financial resources than peers such as France or Germany – Britain does not have many sovereign systems to match or deter Russian counterspace threats. Without more robust Space Domain Awareness (SDA) and space control capabilities, as well as cross-domain deterrence options, the UK’s industrial, economic and military dependencies on space will remain vulnerable.
Similarly, Britain’s contribution to allied space power, through partnerships such as the Combined Space Operations Initiative, Operation OLYMPIC DEFENDER or the Artemis Accords, will be less credible and influential with its allies. Failing to address hostile behaviours now will create a normative framework later – one that has not been shaped by the UK’s interests.
Vice President, Institutional Partnerships, Open Cosmos
Space is, without question, central to the British way of life and national strategy. Fibre roll-out is slow: satellite broadband provides an instant connection. Major flooding occurs: images from space map the damage and allow recovery. A missile is launched: it is detected and mitigated from space. And it goes on.
But as a space power, how does the UK fare? Irrespective of the specifics of space, power has two parameters: it must be projected, and it must be resilient. It is risky to become a true space nation – dependent on the advantage of space but without the means to assure it. That is not power. It is a temporary sugar rush.
Unfortunately, the Brexit experience laid bare the UK’s vulnerabilities, with the well-rehearsed loss of access to critical, resilient positioning systems, having an impact on defence and regional airports. Now, with recent turbulence in geopolitics, Britain must ask urgent questions about which assets are truly nationally separable or otherwise assured by international partnerships, as stressed in the recent House of Lords report.
Mapping shows that, Skynet aside, the UK relies substantially on assets over which it has little control. A review of its peer space nations shows a rapid uptake of national space systems (e.g., Japan, Spain, Greece and many others) – mostly small constellations to serve national security and local applications.
Increasingly, these countries are finding ways to share their assets, creating a blend of sovereignty with scale leverage and international partnering while all having skin in the game. This is emerging as a critical de-risking strategy for smaller and middle space powers.
So, how important is space to national strategy? Very. How seriously does Britain take its space power posture? The jury is out.
Senior Analyst, Defence Strategy Programme, Australian Strategic Policy Institute
The UK’s defence and security depend on ensuring a high degree of sovereign and resilient space support. Space is not a peaceful global commons that sits as a sanctuary, serene and free from major power competition on Earth below. The 21st century space domain is highly contested, as adversary counterspace – or Anti-Satellite (ASAT) – systems are tested in orbit.
So, Britain cannot afford to assume access will not be challenged, or will always be assured. Nor can the British Armed Forces undertake modern joint and integrated operations, either independently or within a coalition, if they cannot access space support.
Without space, the British Armed Forces are effectively ‘deaf, dumb and blind’ in 21st century warfare – itself ever more complex and faster paced. They would be unable to utilise modern information-based military capability and would face a return to older-style attritional war, with a greater risk of higher casualties and the possibility of defeat.
Certainly, the UK can accept a degree of dependency on others to provide coalition space capability, such as through NATO, but it should also burden-share in orbit in order to contribute to ensuring allies share capability and to boost deterrence against adversaries with ASAT capabilities, such as Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It cannot freeride, and total dependency on others carries its own risks.
Britain should strengthen both space self-reliance and space cooperation to ensure its future security, as space is vital to the UK’s defence and security interests.
Senior Research Fellow (Space Power), Council on Geostrategy, and Co-founding Partner, AstroAnalytica Ltd.
For most of its short history so far, the space domain has been an enabler, adjunct to the instruments of government and the functioning of modern society. But, as the digital economy and core services are increasingly intertwined with, and dependent on, space-derived Big Data – from sensing to communications and navigation – orbital capability is now morphing into a core aspect of national infrastructure and a ‘centre of gravity’ in its own right.
This is a strategic convergence with far-reaching consequences, placing a premium on space power in the geopolitics of the future – especially for important players in the international system such as Britain, who want to maintain or improve their competitiveness and ability to project influence.
As the military balance evolves, there is also increasing recognition that future wars could be won or lost in space. The defence argument for the importance of space – and space power – has now arguably gained more potency than all the others, at least as regards the UK. To defend itself on Earth, Britain needs to be able to defend itself in space.
In the next couple of decades, the impact of space power in the military field in particular will outstrip anything experienced thus far. While the pace, sequencing and impact of this space-earth strategic convergence across the world remains a matter of debate, the point is that this process is now in motion, and will continue over the next decades and beyond.
Strategic Policy Adviser, Perigord Consultancy Ltd., and PhD Candidate, King’s College London
In Toward a Theory of Spacepower, Robert Pfalzgraff argues that the centrality of power to international relations theory as ‘the most important variable for understanding the behaviour of the political units into which the world is divided’ extends logically to space power. However, Britain could be considered to have an inconsistent historical experience when it comes to the pursuit of space power.
One of the first spacefaring nations in the aftermath of the Second World War, and with the intention of retaining great power status, the ensuing decades saw the UK grappling with the tension between a desire to retain a world-leading space programme and concerns over fiscal constraints. The primacy of national security as an objective is now growing as alliances shift, global institutions are destabilised and traditional centres of power recede while others emerge. In response, the drive for sovereign autonomy and industrial consolidation is taking hold among Britain’s closest allies.
This is the broader contextual environment in which a recent House of Lords report expressed concern about the UK’s ability to position itself in this transformed space landscape, stating ‘those who do not adapt will be left behind’. The question posed for this piece is not whether space power should be important to British national strategy, it asks whether it is.
For this to be true, HM Government should articulate the strategic purpose of its national space mission and its plan to achieve it, and resources should be allocated accordingly. It would be difficult to argue that this is the case. Given the rapid pace of change in the global space environment, indecision is a decision. As such, the UK’s window of opportunity to make its own choices about its role as a space power grows smaller by the day.
Co-founding Partner, AstroAnalytica Ltd.
Space power – the ability in peace, crisis and war to exert influence promptly to, in and from space, and deny adversaries the ability to do the same – is essential to British national strategy. Space power is a critical enabler of the UK’s economy, critical infrastructure and way of war.
This is indisputable, beyond debate and as plain as the noses on our faces. Anyone from Britain who says otherwise is either wilfully ignorant or intellectually dishonest.
From my perspective, the question is not whether space power is important to the UK’s national strategy – it absolutely is. Rather, the question is whether any British political leader is capable of articulating the UK’s national interests in space, and then formulating a policy and implementable strategy to defend and assert those interests. Decades of reliance on the US for space power needs has made the UK ‘fat, dumb and happy’. As a result, British political leaders and officials have abrogated all strategic responsibility for space power to America.
The issue is not space power per se, but the inability of this generation of British technocratic political leaders to think strategically about it in the first place. I would be delighted to be proven wrong on this matter.
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