5 days ago
The British military base preparing for war in space
In a fake village in Buckinghamshire, several members of Space Command are huddled around a computer screen watching a foreign missile approach to a Ministry of Defence communications satellite.
It is just an exercise, but it is a scenario that is increasingly worrying military chiefs, who fear space is now the most important theatre of war.
Modern life is largely space-based, with satellites controlling everything from EasyJet flight plans to Amazon deliveries and army advances. Taking out satellites would cripple society.
Russia took down the country's satellite communications just hours before it began the land invasion.
China and Russia have also both tested anti-satellite missiles, while Moscow is allegedly developing a programme to arm some of its satellites with nuclear warheads, meaning it could destroy enemy networks while in orbit.
In recognition of this new orbital battlefield, Space Command was established at RAF High Wycombe in 2021, to 'protect and defend' UK interests in space, and is now home to the UK Space Operations Centre, which was officially opened by government ministers this week.
The RAF base is the former headquarters of Bomber Command, a military unit responsible for strategic bombing during the Second World War. With its winding streets, faux church towers and manor house office blocks, was designed to look like a quintessential Home Counties village, should the Luftwaffe be passing over.
The Bomber Command logo 'Strike Hard, Strike Sure' has been replaced with Space Command's 'Ad Stellas Usque' – Latin for 'up to the stars'. Where Bomber Harris's team had its eyes fixed firmly on the ground, Space Command's gaze is now turned skywards.
Maria Eagle, minister for defence procurement, who helped open the operations centre this week, said: 'From a national security point of view, space is a contested and congested and competitive domain, and we need to make sure, as our adversaries advance their capabilities, that we're able to deal with what that throws up.'
She added: 'It's an extension of the more earthbound worries that we've got. The usual kind of things that you worry about on Earth, it's just extended upwards, because that's now a domain that is as important as land, sea or air to the potential of war-fighting or defending national security.
'The National Space Operations Centre does vital work in monitoring and protecting our interests. It's a recognition of the fact that our adversaries are active there, and we need to know what's going on.'
Although the United States performed the first anti-satellite tests in 1959, space warfare has largely been consigned to Hollywood and science fiction until recently.
Fears began to ramp up in January 2007, when China shot down one of its own ageing weather satellites with a ballistic missile creating a cloud of space junk, which is still causing problems.
In November 2021, Russia conducted its own direct-ascent anti-satellite test, destroying the Soviet intelligence satellite Kosmos-1408, and generating a debris field that forced astronauts on the International Space Station to take shelter.
However it is not just anti-satellite missiles that are causing concern.
According to the latest Space Threat Assessment, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, nations are developing evermore elaborate space weapons.
These weapons include electro-magnetic pulses, microwaves and lasers to fry electronics, dazzlers to blind optical sensors, and grapplers to latch on to satellites and pull them out of orbit.
China, Russia, Iran and North Korea all have the capability of jamming and hijacking satellite signals and launching cyber attacks. A 10-second delay in Google Chrome loading may seem like a domestic internet glitch, but bad actors could also be behind it, Space Command has warned.
'Counter-space arsenal'
Space Command is particularly worried about China, which in the past year has launched increasingly advanced and highly-manoeuvrable satellites for purposes that remain unclear.
CSIS believes Beijing may be creating a ' formidable on-orbit counter-space arsenal ' and that manoeuvrability testing is allowing Chinese operators to develop 'tactics and procedures that can be used for space war-fighting'.
US Space force commanders have also warned that Chinese satellites have been spotted 'dogfighting' in space, moving within less than a mile of each other.
'China continues to develop and field a broad set of counter-space capabilities,' a member of Space Command told The Telegraph. 'It's certainly one of the more capable adversaries. Space is no longer a sanctuary, it's a space of contest. It's the modern battlefield.'
Russia's Luch satellites have also been spotted stalking European communications and broadcast satellites, moving close to their orbits for reasons not fully understood. Space Command fears they are probing the systems to find out how best to disrupt signals.
Although Russia continues to deny it is developing an orbital nuclear anti-satellite weapon – which would breach the 1967 Outer Space Treaty – US intelligence suggests otherwise.
Chris Bryant, minister of state for data protection and telecoms, said: 'There's a lot of stuff up there now … and the risks from deliberate bad actors, in particular from Russia and China, and the havoc that could be created either deliberately or accidentally, is quite significant.
'So we need to monitor as closely as we possibly can, 24/7, everything that is going on up there so that we can avert accidental damage, and we can also potentially deter other more deliberate, harmful activity.'
Space Command currently employs more than 600 staff, roughly 70 per cent of whom are from the Royal Air Force with the remaining 30 per cent from the Army and Navy, plus a handful of civilians.
Not only is it monitoring the sky for threats from foreign powers but it is also keeping an eye out for falling space debris, asteroids, and coronal mass ejections from the Sun which could wipe out power grids and satellites.
When a threat is spotted, the team can contact satellite providers to warn them to reposition their spacecraft, or advise them to power down until a powerful jet of plasma has passed through. It also informs the government and the security services on the orbital movements of foreign powers.
Space Command also launched its first military satellite last year, named Tyche, which can capture daytime images and videos of the Earth's surface for surveillance, intelligence gathering and military operations.
It is part of the Government's £968 million Istari programme which will see more satellites launched by 2031 to create a surveillance constellation.
Mr Bryant added: 'Lots of people think 'space' and joke about Star Trek and the final frontier, but actually the truth is you couldn't spend a single day of your life these days in the UK without some kind of engagement with space.
'The havoc that could be created, which might be military havoc, or it might be entirely civil havoc, could be very significant.'
