The world is entering a new era of battlefield, marking the expansion of conflicts beyond this Earth and spilling into space.
And the timeline is not faraway; it’s just 5 years away. The experts warn that orbital space could break out within five years as allied assets are already being targeted daily by adversaries seeking to disrupt communications, GPS and critical infrastructure.
Dr Julia Balm, of the Freeman Air and Space Institute, in the School of Security Studies at King's College London, said, “If we're looking at the number of satellites proliferating in orbit and the capabilities that are growing in both scale, but also in their technical capacity […], we are looking at conflict emerging not only in the domain, but in the next five years.”
Consequently, a disruption of orbital infrastructure could lead to financial collapse, loss of internet, TV, and weather forecasting, blinding air traffic control, and effectively pushing modern civilization back to the 19th century.
Pivot towards defence capabilities
In the wake of growing threats, commercial space firms are also pivoting to defence. For instance, Astroscale, originally founded in 2013 for orbital debris removal, shifted toward military applications following the UK’s 2024 Strategic Defence Review.
It is now engaged in classified military programmes to monitor, deter, or disrupt aggressive spacecraft such as deploying chaff-like payloads.
Similarly another space-refuelling startup, Orbit Fab, is now collaborating with the UK Ministry of Defence to develop defensive and offensive Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO), allowing military satellites to manoeuvre in space without draining their operational fuel.
Moreover, the European Space Agency is increasingly adopting dual-use frameworks to incorporate military and security objectives into its projects.
Ongoing hostile actions
Many countries have been engaged in hostile activities in space. For instance, Russia launched the Cosmos 2553 satellite, which is suspected by US intelligence to carry components of an orbital nuclear device aimed at a potential "mass kill" of satellites via radiation.
It also maneuvered a military satellite in close proximity to ICEYE X36, an Earth-observation satellite supporting Ukraine.
China is not behind, demonstrating capabilities using its Shenlong robotic space plane to capture objects in orbit.
Last month, the US military acknowledged that it deployed a weapon capability in space for the first time. The UK developed the Royal Air Force’s first dedicated space squadron to protect British orbital assets.
