Iran or North Korea could not buy the level of space-based services that Ukraine has at any price. Western companies are far in the lead in their capabilities and are subject to formal and informal limits on the customers to whom they sell data. With the explosion in commercial communications and imaging services, many combatants will have such products. The war in Ukraine demonstrates that what matters is having access to the products of space systems, not owning the satellites. The United States is also reportedly sharing imagery or signals intelligence from classified collection satellites. This capability provides enough information to enable warfighters to attack fixed targets, or to cue assets such as unmanned aerial vehicles to the vicinity of mobile targets.
Commercial imagery can show individual military vehicles, and constellations of multiple satellites can image any target every few hours. Specifics on Ukraine’s military use of commercial images are scarce, but the available resolution and timeliness of such images should make them tactically valuable. Ukraine obtains high-resolution imagery from Western commercial firms, including synthetic-aperture radar that can “see” at night and through clouds.
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The Ukrainian military makes extensive use of commercial satellite communications, in particular satellite links share data for its networked artillery system (GIS Arta, sometimes called “Uber for Artillery,” is an android app that collects target information from drones, US and NATO intelligence feeds, and conventional forward observers, then distributes orders to fire among multiple artillery units to make counterbattery fire more difficult.). Nevertheless, space systems, in the form of third-party commercial and government assets, have played an important role in the Ukrainian war effort. In 2022, Ukraine had no national space capability. Combatants can conduct space-enabled operations without owning space assets Last, Russia is gaining surprisingly little advantage from its space capabilities, reflecting the long-term weaknesses of the Russian space industry-weaknesses not shared by China, however.
Third, commercial space will only grow in importance in conflicts, while policy makers in Western countries have yet to make clear when and how they would protect commercial assets. Second, for all the attention on kinetic anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, Russian counterspace attacks have been limited to the cyber domain-achieving some success and causing collateral damage in NATO countries. First, despite having no indigenous space capability, Ukraine has made effective battlefield use of space-based communications and intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) assets from US and European commercial providers. Three decades later, the Russia–Ukraine war is perhaps the first two-sided space war.Īs a potential harbinger of the future, Russia’s war in Ukraine offers four preliminary lessons for political and military leaders. The 1991 Persian Gulf War is often called “the first space war” owing to the American military’s use of global positioning systems and other space-based technologies-the first of several US conflicts against opponents with no space capabilities. AugEarly lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war as a space conflict
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