Aaron Bateman
Hundreds of miles above the earth, thousands of satellites are enabling the battle for Ukraine. Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites provide the connectivity to Ukraine’s armed forces that is vital for targeted drone strikes against Russian units. Meanwhile, commercial imaging satellites deliver crucial battlefield intelligence to Ukrainian soldiers. It is therefore unsurprising that the conflict in Ukraine has been dubbed the first commercial space war. Defence analysts frequently point to the Gulf War (1990-91) as the first space war due to the integration of satellites into the US-led coalition’s combat operations. However, neither of these claims about the role of satellites in conflict is wholly accurate. American forces first used satellites during the Vietnam War and commercial communications satellites played an important role during the First Gulf War. These historical nuances aside, satellites, particularly commercial ones, have become woven into the fabric of modern warfare, intensifying military competition in space.
The very idea of space conflict conjures up images of space battleships that could be taken from the pages of a Jules Verne novel. The US military’s newest service, the Space Force, has already been incorporated into kitschy popular culture representations of space conflict. But space systems constitute a multi-billion-dollar information infrastructure for the United States to project power across the globe. Russia and China have also heavily invested in weapons designed to degrade and destroy the satellites that are so crucial for the US way of warfare.
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