The UK is launching a new space squadron to defend Britain's satellites from “hostile action”, the Ministry of Defence has announced.
The RAF's new No III Space Effects Squadron will be the first British military unit dedicated to seeking out and attacking hostile threats in the cosmos.
The Ministry of Defence said it would protect critical satellites that guide British warships, warn of missile attacks and support civilian infrastructure.
“My job is to make sure that our deterrence in space is as strong as it is on Earth,” Defence Secretary Wes Streeting was due to tell the UK’s first space power conference on Wednesday.
The creation of No III Squadron represents a significant change in Britain's approach to the increasingly contested domain above Earth.
The system will “disrupt, degrade and deny hostile activity to defend UK space interests and gain operational advantage”, the head of the Royal Air Force announced at the conference in London.
War in space
There were “critical lessons” to learn from the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, with a pivot to uncrewed systems that are highly dependent on satellites, said Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Harv Smyth. “No one wants a war in space,” he said. “We are positioning to deter this.”
But it was now seen as a “warfighting domain in its own right”, a contested place “where our operational edge and strategic advantage can be won but can also be very quickly lost”.
Russia in particular is attempting to jam UK military satellites on what is thought to be a weekly basis, while also shadowing Germany's military space vehicles.
ACM Smyth suggested an assault on a Nato ally in space would trigger Article 5, in which an attack on one member is seen as an attack on all, just as it would “in the other more traditional domains”.
“Unfortunately, we are now seeing more and more irresponsible and provocative actions from our adversaries, in flagrant disregard of the norms for responsible behaviour by spacefaring nations.”
He highlighted an incident this summer in which five Russian military satellites moved very close to two Finnish commercial satellites.
With the spacecraft travelling at three kilometres per second, a collision would be “catastrophic, creating substantial, long-standing debris in an orbit that is congested, full of critical assets”.
In what is known as the Kessler Effect, space debris can have a cascading impact, potentially wiping out all satellites.
He also warned that for the UK economy alone, major disruption to GPS would cost it £1.4 billion ($1.86 billion) every day.
Space squadron fighters
No III Squadron will bring together specialists from across the UK armed forces and will use capabilities including electronic warfare to counter hostile activity in orbit.
It will work alongside the RAF's existing No I Space Operations Squadron and No II Space Warning Squadron, which monitor activity in space and provide warning of threats. The new unit will provide the ability to act against adversaries, said ACM Smyth.
“No III Space Effects Squadron will safeguard the vital benefits that space gives to our integrated armed forces and will be capable of denying those benefits to our adversaries.”
He also announced that planning was under way for three more squadrons, “including a space tactics and training” unit.
Mr Streeting, meanwhile, warned that “dependency on space is precisely why it is increasingly under threat from our adversaries” and that the threat “was growing in scale, speed and sophistication”.
The UK is investing £880 million over the next four years in space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. But it has ruled out destructive anti-satellite missile testing and says it remains committed to the peaceful use of space.
