Orbital sovereignty explores how satellite networks, commercial providers and geopolitical tensions shape national security and strategic autonomy.
At about 03:02 UTC on February 24, 2022, Viasat detected "high volumes of focused, malicious traffic" coming from modems in Ukraine on one consumer partition of the KA-SAT network. Tens of thousands of modems lost connectivity and were not observed attempting to re-enter the network, according to Viasat's incident report. The damage did not stay in Ukraine. Enercon, the German turbine maker, said remote monitoring had failed for 5,800 of its wind turbines in central Europe, with 11 gigawatts of capacity. On May 10, the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States attributed the operation to Russia. London said it began roughly an hour before the invasion and that its primary target was believed to be the Ukrainian military, while Washington said Russia had acted "to disrupt Ukrainian command and control during the invasion".
The attack did not target the satellite in orbit. Viasat found no evidence that KA-SAT itself or its supporting satellite infrastructure had been "directly involved, impaired or compromised." The intrusion instead exploited a ground-based network vulnerability. The intruder exploited a misconfiguration in a VPN appliance to reach the network's trusted management segment, then issued management commands that overwrote key data in the flash memory of residential customer modems, the terminals on subscribers' premises. The partition was operated for Viasat by an Eutelsat subsidiary. Those affected included wind-energy companies in central Europe that were not parties to the conflict. Although the turbines were located in German territory, part of their remote monitoring depended on a commercial satellite communications service whose continued availability neither Enercon nor the German government could independently guarantee.
That exposure is what the phrase "orbital sovereignty" usefully describes, provided it is read as an analytical label and never as law. The Outer Space Treaty says in Article II that outer space "is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means." What the treaty grants instead is narrower. The state of registry "shall retain jurisdiction and control" over the registered space object (Article VIII); states bear international responsibility for national activities, including those of private companies, which require "authorization and continuing supervision" (Article VI); and launching states are liable for damage (Article VII). The Liability Convention makes a launching state absolutely liable for damage caused by its space object on the Earth's surface or to aircraft in flight, while liability for damage caused elsewhere than on the Earth's surface depends on fault. The Registration Convention requires a national registry. Satellite radio frequencies and, where applicable, orbital positions are coordinated through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), under procedures that include advance publication, coordination between administrations, and notification and recording in the relevant international registers. Although filing priority can matter, these procedures do not confer national sovereignty over outer space or create an unrestricted first-come, first-served allocation of orbital rights.
These rules allocate responsibility and liability. They are silent on whether a state can launch, defend or replace what it registers. A government can register a satellite it cannot protect, license an operator whose rockets are built elsewhere, and file for spectrum it lacks the industry to use. This article uses "orbital sovereignty" as an analytical concept, not a recognised legal status: a state's capacity to sustain or restore essential space-enabled functions during disruption, including when access to foreign-owned infrastructure, commercial services or allied capabilities is withdrawn. That capacity rests on five related capabilities: assured access to orbit; the ability to operate, maintain and replace critical spacecraft and ground infrastructure; control over sensitive data and mission-critical services; resilience against jamming, spoofing, cyberattack and congestion; and the ability to influence the rules governing spectrum use and responsible conduct in space. These capabilities need not all be nationally owned, but their absence must not leave essential functions without a viable fallback. Ownership is the easy part to measure. The harder question is whether those functions survive coercion, conflict or a prolonged outage.
OneWeb learned that lesson early. In March 2022, Russia set conditions before a Soyuz launch of 36 of its satellites from Baikonur, including a guarantee that armed forces would not use them and a demand that the British government sell its stake. The company's board voted to suspend all launches from Baikonur. Seven months later, an Indian LVM3 rocket placed 36 OneWeb satellites in orbit from Sriharikota. OneWeb restored its launch pathway through access to an Indian launch vehicle, illustrating how a third country's capacity can reduce the consequences of geopolitical exclusion.
Europe met the problem at continental scale. Ariane 5 flew for the last time on July 5, 2023, and Ariane 6 did not make its inaugural flight until July 9, 2024, when Philippe Baptiste, chief executive of the French space agency CNES, said Europe "has finally recovered its capacity to access space." In the interval, two satellites for Galileo, the EU's own navigation system, went up on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in April 2024. Earlier that month, on April 12, 2024, a new signal for Galileo's encrypted Public Regulated Service (PRS), reserved for authorized governmental users, was broadcast for the first time. Galileo's initial services have been available since 2016, but as of July 2026 the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) was continuing organisational preparations to support the delivery of Galileo's Public Regulated Service (PRS) Initial Operational Capability.
Modern armed forces rely on satellites for intelligence, communications, missile warning, navigation and timing. Destructive anti-satellite tests are among the most visible demonstrations of counterspace capability, but they are not the only means of disrupting space services. China destroyed its Fengyun-1C weather satellite on January 11, 2007, producing what NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office called "the single worst contamination of low Earth orbit (LEO) during the past 50 years." India's Defence Research and Development Organisation hit an Indian satellite in low Earth orbit on March 27, 2019. Russia's test on November 15, 2021, generated, by the US State Department's count, "over fifteen hundred pieces of trackable orbital debris". The Secure World Foundation (SWF)'s 2025 open-source assessment counted 6,851 cataloged debris pieces attributable to destructive anti-satellite tests by four countries, of which 2,920 remained in orbit at the time of the assessment. For the conflicts covered by its assessment, the SWF reported that non-destructive counterspace capabilities were the forms being used in active military operations during the reporting period. Interference is the everyday threat. In March 2025 the ITU, the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization jointly expressed "grave concern" over rising jamming and spoofing of satellite navigation.
Commercial services complicate the picture by placing private-sector decisions inside military operational chains. At the UN General Assembly's First Committee in October 2022, Russian diplomat Konstantin Vorontsov said Western use of commercial satellites in Ukraine amounted to indirect participation in the conflict and warned: "Quasi-civilian infrastructure may become a legitimate target for retaliation." In September 2023, Elon Musk said there had been "an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol" and that agreeing would have made the company "explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation."
In March 2025, the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) temporarily suspended Ukraine's access to its main portal for commercial satellite imagery procured by the US government. Kyiv could still purchase imagery directly from providers, so the suspension restricted access through a particular government-supported channel rather than eliminating all access to commercial imagery. The dependence on commercial satellite services became more immediate in October 2026, when Ukrainian officials accused SpaceX of imposing restrictions on Starlink's military-grade connectivity without warning, disrupting some drone missions used for both strikes and air defence. Reuters reported that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said limits on speed and usage were controlled by the US government and military, while Ukrainian officials said the restrictions had disrupted operations and sought clarification from the company, Washington and NATO. These episodes differ in their immediate causes and remedies: a government-supported imagery portal can be suspended, while a private satellite operator can impose technical restrictions subject to its contractual and governmental arrangements. Yet both expose the same strategic vulnerability: access to space-enabled services can depend on decisions made by a company, an allied government or an adversary, rather than by the state relying on them.
The strongest counterargument is that commercial scale can itself be a source of resilience. Large providers can deploy capacity, replenish constellations and distribute costs in ways that most national programmes cannot match. Some governments have therefore made commercial integration a deliberate element of their space-security strategies. Japan's Space Security Initiative, issued by the government's Space Development Strategy Headquarters in June 2023, says its architecture should "best optimize the use of commercial services," seeks resilient positioning "through cooperation with the ally, including the use of GPS satellites," and limits indigenous ambition to "critical technology components that should be maintained autonomy to a certain degree." The Pentagon's 2024 Commercial Space Integration Strategy aims to ensure access to commercial solutions "across the spectrum of conflict" and to achieve integration before a crisis. Japan's positioning system, QZSS, began four-satellite operation in November 2018 and is designed to work alongside GPS. On balance, the evidence narrows the thesis. The greatest vulnerability arises when dependence on a commercial or allied service, provider or critical component leaves a state without a credible fallback. Ownership alone does not eliminate that exposure, and commercial scale does not guarantee resilience if access can be withdrawn or disrupted at a critical moment.
National approaches differ not only in their stated ambitions and demonstrated capabilities, but also in the kinds of dependence that can undermine resilience.
Comparative assessment: stated objectives, demonstrated capability and dependencies of five space actors
Actor | Stated policy objective | Demonstrated capability | Critical dependency or resilience gap |
|---|---|---|---|
United States | Ensure access to commercial solutions “across the spectrum of conflict” (DoD, 2024) | Three launch providers contracted for national security missions (SSC, April 2025) | SpaceX projected to receive 28 of the 47 missions allocated between SpaceX and ULA; seven additional missions were projected for Blue Origin beginning in the second order year. These are projections, not completed launches. |
China | Build a “space power” and grow an “independent capacity” in the space industry (2021 white paper) | 30-satellite BeiDou-3 completed and operating; 207 launches, 2016 to December 2021 (2021 white paper) | Independent verification is limited for some capabilities: the white paper does not address military space roles, so assessments of them rely on external tracking where available. |
European Union | Secure connectivity through IRIS² (European Commission); European “autonomous access to space” (Ariane 6 Task Force, 2024) | Galileo operational since Initial Services in 2016 (ESA); Ariane 6 first flight in July 2024 | A roughly one-year gap between Ariane 5's final flight and Ariane 6's inaugural flight, during which two Galileo satellites flew on a non-European rocket; IRIS² remains a planned capability, not an operational service. |
India | “Augment space capabilities” and allow private firms “end-to-end activities” (Space Policy 2023) | LVM3 launched 36 OneWeb satellites in October 2022 (ISRO) | NVS-02 failed to complete orbit raising after its January 2025 launch. An ISRO investigation published in February 2026 identified a likely connector-contact failure affecting the drive signal to the oxidizer-line pyro valve; corrective actions were subsequently implemented on CMS-03. (ISRO). This was a failure of one spacecraft, not of the whole navigation system. |
Japan | Autonomy in “critical technology components” “to a certain degree” while making the best use of commercial services (Space Security Initiative, June 2023) | QZSS regional positioning, in four-satellite operation since November 2018 and designed to work with GPS (Cabinet Office) | Positioning resilience remains partly dependent on GPS and allied cooperation. |
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Concentration persists even where providers are plural. Space Systems Command's April 2025 awards for national-security launch missions projected 28 missions for SpaceX and 19 for United Launch Alliance (ULA) during fiscal years 2025–2029, allocating approximately 60 percent of the missions assigned between those two providers to SpaceX. Blue Origin was projected to receive seven additional missions beginning in the second order year. China's Long March family dominates at home: 183 of the 207 launches its 2021 white paper counts between 2016 and December 2021 used Long March rockets, and the Shanghai-led Qianfan broadband constellation passed 200 satellites in June 2026. These figures demonstrate the scale of China's domestic launch and constellation programmes; they do not, by themselves, establish how resilient either system would be under sustained disruption.
Europe's weak points are assured access to orbit and the ownership and financing of critical satellite operators. The European Commission describes IRIS² as a network that "will use 348 satellites", a plan rather than a service, and ESA's European Launcher Challenge has preselected five companies, with a target of €169 million each. Paris has moved to anchor its satellite operator through state-backed recapitalization. Following the capital increases completed in late 2025, the French state held 29.65 percent of Eutelsat and the British government held 10.89 percent. The transactions increased government shareholdings in a strategically important European satellite operator, although public ownership alone does not guarantee operational independence or uninterrupted service. India's problem illustrates the distinction between independent system ownership and operational reliability. Its Space Policy 2023 opens "end-to-end activities" to private firms, including their own ITU filings, but the NVS-02 incident exposed a failure in one element of India's regional navigation architecture. NVS-02 reached its intended transfer orbit in January 2025 but could not complete orbit raising. In February 2026, ISRO's investigation identified a likely connector-contact failure affecting the drive signal to the oxidizer-line pyro valve. ISRO also reported that corrective actions had been implemented on CMS-03, launched in November 2025. The incident illustrates a spacecraft-specific reliability problem rather than a failure of India's entire navigation system.
The volume of international space governance exceeds its binding force. The treaties establish legal obligations, but many of the additional guidelines and political commitments remain non-binding. The COPUOS Guidelines for the Long-term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities, adopted in 2019, are implemented voluntarily. The General Assembly's resolution against destructive direct-ascent anti-satellite tests passed on December 7, 2022, by 155 votes to 9 with 9 abstentions, with China and Russia opposed and India abstaining, and it creates no legal obligation. The working group on reducing space threats through norms of responsible behavior was mandated to work by consensus and, as UNIDIR's recap report records, did not reach it, so no report went to the General Assembly. The SWF documents close-approach maneuvers by Chinese, American and Russian satellites; in this article's assessment, the absence of comprehensive, broadly accepted rules for such activities makes it harder for states to distinguish legitimate inspection or servicing from manoeuvres that may be interpreted as preparations for hostile action. This uncertainty is particularly consequential for states that lack the surveillance capabilities to independently assess another satellite's behaviour. For states without large fleets, participation in ITU processes and the development of shared norms can offer relatively inexpensive ways to influence the rules of the space domain, even when building an independent constellation is beyond their means.
Economics argues against duplication, since few states can justify their own launchers, broadband constellations, imaging fleets and tracking networks. The relevant choice is not between complete self-sufficiency and unrestricted dependence, but between duplicating every capability and maintaining credible alternatives for the functions whose loss would be most damaging. Published policies point that way, reserving national control for a few functions and buying the rest from more than one source, with allied backups arranged in advance. Galileo illustrates why the choice of essentials matters: the European Space Agency says satellite navigation underpins economic activity equivalent to 10 percent of the EU's annual GDP.
The consequences can be sorted by confidence. So far, governments are paying to keep more than one route to orbit, recapitalizing national operators and writing commercial services into military plans. A reasonable inference is that concentration among a few launch and broadband providers can give those firms, and the governments that regulate or license them, leverage over foreign customers, particularly when alternatives cannot be activated quickly. States able to offer launch or ground capacity to others, as India did for OneWeb, may gain influence out of proportion to their spending. More conditional is the effect of an attack on a commercial satellite serving a party to a conflict. If Russia's warning were acted on, insurers, investors and neutral customers would have to price wartime risk into services now sold as civilian, and the commercial resilience on which Japan and the Pentagon are building would be tested in ways it has not yet been.
Investment in national capability buys insurance at a premium and can still fail, as NVS-02 showed. Reliance on commercial and allied systems buys capacity and speed at the price of decisions taken elsewhere. Most states will need to identify which dependencies they can accept in peacetime and which they cannot accept in a crisis, then match each safeguard to a failure. Spares and replacement spacecraft answer hardware faults like NVS-02's. A second launch option answers denial of access to orbit, OneWeb's position at Baikonur. Dispersed ground stations limit what a local disruption or physical attack can take down. More than one communications and data provider hedges against a company or an ally withdrawing service, as happened to Kyiv's imagery access. Agreements on access, licensing and crisis-time authorization, settled in advance, keep those alternatives from stalling when needed.
Enercon's turbines kept turning in February 2022. They ran in automatic mode, grid operators retained unrestricted access to control their output, and the company worked on alternative communication links. The satellite link failed and the system around it did not. A state's effective orbital sovereignty will be measured in the same way: by whether it can sustain or restore essential space-enabled functions when a critical link is cut, a provider withdraws service or an external dependency fails.
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