Space Is A Growing Battlefield. Can The UK Lead The Way?

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To the anguish of the space industry, UK is the only country to have successfully developed, and then abandoned, a satellite launch capability. That was over 50 years ago. But with the nature of conflict evolving, nowadays government is taking space much more seriously, reports Sophie Church

Sometime after 5am on 24 February 2022, thousands of Viasat satellite modems in Ukraine stopped working. Hackers had disconnected the country’s military and government officials from vital surveillance and communication systems. A few hours later, amid the confusion, Vladimir Putin ordered the first Russian tanks to cross the border bound for Kyiv.

Where military might was once flexed in the air, on land and on sea, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has unveiled space as warfare’s new frontier. Now, with Elon Musk threatening to pull his Starlink satellites from Ukraine, Europe is scrabbling to stump up its own capabilities. As the continent embarks on a new space race, can the UK lead?

Without space, the British economy would lose £1.2bn a day. Yet currently, only around one per cent of the UK’s defence budget is spent on space. The National Space Council – run by ministers across government – last sat 643 days ago. The UK continues to depend on US satellites for its GPS services, and following Brexit, no longer participates in the EU’s Galileo satellite navigation system.

Critics say the UK has squandered its power in space. Industry figures painfully remember the day – 28 October 1971 – when the UK’s only launch system, Black Arrow, was retired, after the US offered its own rockets at a reduced price. The UK is currently the only country to have successfully developed, and then abandoned a satellite launch capability.

However, as the war continues in Europe, the UK is shifting gear. In 2022, £6.5bn was invested into the UK space sector. When UK Space Command was founded in 2021 – bringing together staff from the Royal Navy, British army and Royal Air Force to respond to threats in space – it employed 23 people. This has increased to 634 today.

The National Audit Office predicts the increase in defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP will be invested “differently to the past” to encompass “new domains of cyber and space capabilities”.

Underpinning these movements is a strengthening conviction that the UK must recover its sovereignty in space.

“Space is becoming critical to our national security, and we need the ability to act independently when the situation demands it,” says Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry Maria Eagle.

In August, the UK launched its first military satellite – Tyche – into orbit. Tyche will provide the British military with images and video of Earth, helping identify troop positions, for example. “It gives us the tools to monitor global events and respond rapidly to emerging threats without having to rely on others,” says Eagle.

Having previously leant on the US for such satellite footage, Tyche’s launch represents a break from our dependency on Donald Trump’s administration – but not quite a clean one. Without a launch capability in the UK, Tyche was sent to space on a SpaceX rocket from Cape Canaveral.

However, while Europe tries to go it alone, it is following in the US’s example. In 2010, Barack Obama announced that NASA would establish a multi-billion-dollar programme for private firms to compete in building and operating spacecraft for ferrying astronauts into orbit. Later that year, Elon Musk launched his first SpaceX rocket into space.

the geopolitical situation has changed a hell of a lot in the last 12 months

Last month, the European Space Agency announced its own European Launcher Challenge, which will consider proposals from launch companies across Europe, and award €169m to each winner.

Now, France’s President Emmanuel Macron has supported four French rocket start-ups with €400m worth of subsidies. Spain has made €45m available for a small satellite launcher. Germany has committed €870k to support the development of an offshore launch platform that will operate from the North Sea.

Labour has placed its hopes of a UK launch capability revival in Scottish-firm Orbex, which it furnished with a £20m loan in January.

“I think a lot of people were surprised that they did this; it’s quite unusual. It does seem like a change in tack by the government, at least compared to previous administrations,” Phil Chambers, chief executive officer at Orbex, says.

“There was broadly support for a rocket launcher in the UK, but I don’t think there was support for a British-made rocket launcher from the UK. But obviously the geopolitical situation has changed a hell of a lot in the last 12 months.”

Labour may have been wary of investing in capabilities that demand huge capital expenditure with uncertain returns. When Boris Johnson’s government gambled on a sovereign satellite system for the UK in 2020, bidding £400m on fledgling satellite group OneWeb, the acquisition was met with caution.

But that bet is good. With OneWeb one of four satellite operators being considered by EU governments as a replacement for Starlink in Ukraine, shares in Paris-based satellite group Eutelsat – which bought into the company in 2022 – have soared.

“OneWeb shareholders are back in the money now!” says Chambers. “OneWeb is looking like a very, very strategic vessel. And so, like with any of these things, you need to have the patience right and the conviction to ride them out.”

Alan Thompson, director of government affairs at UK launch company Skyrora, also recognises government’s shifted thinking.

“We’ve been knocking on [government’s] door for at least five, six years, and a lot of people say, ‘oh, that’s really interesting’, but not actually doing anything about it,” he says. “People, particularly the defence community, have begun to engage around the activity that we’ve been doing – which has been preparing ourselves for launch.”

Based in Glasgow, Skyrora conducted a test launch of its sub-orbital Skylark L vehicle in 2022 from Iceland. Though this ended in failure, Skyrora will launch its first sub-orbital mission from British soil in the spring of 2025 – making it the first ever UK-manufactured, UK-launched rocket to enter space.

Part of the problem is that nobody really grips space in government

But while the UK is inching closer towards sovereignty in space, critics say the government lacks strategy on the ground.

“This has been very haphazard in terms of management,” says Thompson. “There’s not really been a clear path through to what is acceptable, and how the UK is looking to either engage with or enable launch, and what are the outcomes that they’re expecting. It’s been very chaotic.”

“Part of the problem is that nobody really grips space in government,” says Conservative MP for Solihull West and Shirley Neil Shastri-Hurst, who chairs the Defence Technology All-Party Parliamentary Group.

While the UK Space Agency leads the UK’s civil space programme, the sector is split across the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Department for Business and Trade, the Ministry of Defence and UK Space Command in government.

“Because there’s that commercial, civilian and defence aspect to it, you end up with people pulling hopefully in the same direction, but at slightly opposing positions,” says Shastri-Hurst.

While there are differing opinions on who should take control of space strategy in government – the Cabinet Office and National Space Council are both mentioned – Thompson thinks the government is missing a “nominated, clear leader” to combine our civil and defence space operations.

“There was a particular individual in the Cabinet Office who put the pedal to the metal with regards to how can we do stuff from space,” he says, referring to Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings. “The person in the Cabinet Office at that time saw space as an optimiser, even for the civil service – because it necessitates change.”

The UK’s relatively nascent space market is feeling the effects of this strategic black hole.

“There is quite a lot of money flying through different departments in space, but each of those has slightly different agendas and different approaches,” says Nik Smith, UK regional director for UK and Europe at Lockheed Martin. “It’s confusing for the sector.”

While Smith says it is “always risky to be too critical of government decisions”, he points out that Lockheed’s 400-strong UK space workforce has remained “relatively static” over the years.

“I think it’s fair to say that the UK space sector is not growing as quickly as the global space sector, which suggests that actually we are losing a certain amount of global market share from the UK,” he says. “We need to try and identify what may be the reasons for that.”

While the UK has a thriving space small and medium enterprises (SME) community – all UK regions are home to a space organisation – few companies have managed to scale up.

“Most SMEs are initially geared towards the UK market, but eventually will pivot towards exports,” says space policy analyst at RAND Europe Theodora Ogden, reflecting wider concerns of the UK becoming an incubator economy.

“Often, the priority is to ensure that your components end up on international missions, for example. So there is a lot of demand abroad rather than at home. But that is something that will change once there’s a more substantial launch market.”

Taking the government’s ‘sovereign’ brief to its rightful conclusion, companies are now puzzling how they can use materials made in the UK while our ability to manufacture is in doubt.

“As far as we understood, sovereign means making almost absolutely everything here – almost all the way down to the raw materials. That’s a bit of a challenge, because we no longer manufacture the required types of materials to the necessary standards in the UK.”

While the UK faces challenges in space, those operating in the sector are feeling sanguine.

Lockheed Martin is investing £15m into a space technology and skills centre at Northumbria University. Skyrora believe unicorn status is “not that far away”. Industry sees the upcoming UK/EU summit as a chance for the government to liaise with its European counterparts over space defence. “The UK’s space sector is gaining real momentum,” says Eagle.

With Labour setting out the biggest increase in defence spending since the cold war, we will soon discover whether the government is really willing to see the UK space sector truly take off.