Article from CSRI’s sister site Future Intelligence
Experts monitoring satellites in space warn of potential war as global tensions spin into orbit.
Western space experts are accusing Russia and China of ratcheting up global fears of a space war. And cite cyber and satellite provocation in the fast growing area.
An investigation from the Cyber Security Research Institute has uncovered systematic attacks from foreign powers of the globe’s satellite infrastructure as the battle for dominance in space heats up.
According to leading researchers, military tensions have led to a significant increase in ‘satellite intimidation’ and hacking attacks.
A practice that so far has involved moving satellites dangerously close to other satellites. A tactic compounded by demonstrating the ability to physically grab space craft with mechanical arms.
Those monitoring satellites have also seen worrying patterns demonstrating aggressive capability, such as eavesdropping, and intimidation. Activity they say is augmenting cyber attacks on satellites, space communications systems, and the jamming of base stations.
It’s a detailed confirmation of a conflict first revealed by Future Intelligence nearly ten years ago in an exclusive interview with the Royal Institute of International Affairs, then head of research, Dr Patricia Lewis, that laid out the methods now being seen.
The activity has increased in line with tension caused by the Ukrainian War, the threat to Taiwan, and super-power competition between the US and China.
It maps to what’s going on terrestrially. And they are testing the boundaries of behaviour in space and being very unpredictable.
Clinton Clark
The intimidation activities mirror similar patterns of disruption on Earth say researchers. The attacks in space mimic those on the undersea cables feeding data into the global internet.
The conflict has also intensified in line with a recognition space is increasingly valuable place.
According to a recent UK House of Lords report published in November 2025, ‘The Space Economy: Act Now Or Lose Out‘ the global space sector is currently valued at over £342 billion.
“Many expect it to grow significantly—while estimates vary and are contested, several witnesses cited a recent report that predicted that the global space economy will be worth £1.8 trillion by 2035. Over £34.34 billion of private capital has been invested in the global space sector since 2015, growing on average by 21% annually,” stated the report.
Creating a strategic imbalance
“China is very much talking about space strategically, and they use their space assets and the things that they’re practicing are designed for that. It is a true demonstration of power. It’s not just for exploration,” said Clinton Clark, the Vice President of First Impressions, for ExoAnalytic Solutions, the Houston-based operator of the world’s largest commercial space telescope network.
“It is about the execution and use of power, full stop, to create strategic imbalance.
“And then I think when I look at the way the Russians operate their spacecraft, they’re thriving on disruption. And it maps to how they talk about it.
“It maps to what’s going on terrestrially. And they are testing the boundaries of behaviour in space and being very unpredictable,” said Clark, a former USAF spacecraft systems analyst. Clark was speaking at an event organised by the internationally respected UK defence think tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), earlier this week.
According to Ralph Dinsley, the founder of 3S Northumbria, the activities of the Chinese and Russian spacecraft were a combination of confrontation, surveillance and potential data interception.
Surveillance satellites targeting other satellites
Dinsley, a former RAF aerospace battle manager, says on several occasions satellites had been detected deliberately changing position. The intention is of either moving behind, or in front of satellites, to gather information on their construction, or to crack transmission security patterns.
A satellite simply moving out of its normal orbit, was enough to set off a warning, said Dinsley, who also spoke at the RUSI event.
“There are so many implications about transiting in and around Geo-stationary Earth Orbit. If you move away from the GEO belt, you’re obviously no longer stationary, and broadcasting back to the Earth, but instead moving one way or another around that belt.
Eavesdropping in space
“If you’re transiting above geo, you’re obviously looking at the back of those satellites that you’re going past. So you can pick out certain characteristics of those satellites, work out what their capabilities may, or may not be, and vice versa. If you’re below GEO, then you can look at the front. Obviously, it’ll depend on where the sun is at the time when you’re transiting, if you have sun advantage or not. Ideally, you can utilize above or below the GEO belt to actually take observations of any target satellites that you might be interested in to see what they’re doing.
“You can also listen to those satellites you transit past as well. If you’re below GEO, you can fly through the cone of communications of both ways from the ground to the satellite and back down again. So it gives you a lot of optical and audible advantages over those satellites on orbit,” said Dinsley, adding that they had often detected satellites carrying out those manoeuvres
Recently, according to both men, a Russian intelligence gathering satellite called Luch-Olymp, suddenly broke with a pattern of behaviour it had been demonstrating for a number of years. Normally, it would stay 45 km away from its target Intelsat 37E, a US intelligence satellite. When towards the end of its life, the satellite suddenly changed position and moved to less than two kilometres away from 37E.
Aggressive space manoeuvres
“Well, I mean, the expectation for what we expect of Luch-Olymp is the fact that it’s a listening signals intelligence gatherer. And therefore, is there any real need for it to get particularly close to any satellite? Unless, of course, it has a different capability on board than we weren’t expecting.
“If you think about a ground station broadcasting to a satellite or vice versa, particularly a ground station broadcasting up, the actual intelligence gatherer doesn’t have to get particularly close to the satellite to pick up on the uplift because it’s quite a wide beam. For some reason, Luch-Olymp decided that it wanted to get a lot, lot closer.
“The big question is, what was it doing? Was it leaving something behind? Was it inspecting the satellite? Or was it actually trying to get more defined signals to be able to get inside the cryptographic system to be able to try and break codes?
A possibility the Russian satellite’s proximity to the US spacecraft makes more likely. Picking up signals destined for the US satellite can be done from huge distances, according to Clark.
Increase in hostility
“The communications dish that pushes information up to 37 E is typically 1 degree wide and so that’s 700 kilometres wide by the time you get to geo. So, if you’re within 350 kilometres, you can listen to that signal. So, when you get to within two kilometres, the implication is you’re likely doing something else,” said Clark.
The news of the increase in hostilities in space set out by RUSI, in a presentation to its members was confirmed last October, at the Software Defined Space Conference in Tallinn, in Estonia on the Russian border, attended by Future Intelligence.
“There is an increase in hostile manoeuvres, unwelcomed manoeuvres, unannounced manoeuvres, but there is not fully yet a war in orbit, said Clemence Poirier, a senior researcher at Switzerland’s ETH Zurich University’s Center for Security Studies, and a leading researchers on the issue. Poirier added that even commercial systems like Elon Musk’s StarLink had now become targets.
“Now it’s also including a lot of commercial space services used by belligerents as well. So, we distinguish that from the weaponization of outer space. That is the use and placement of weapons in space. And this is slowly emerging. It’s not fully there yet.
Missile threats, satellite attacks, and cyber warfare
“They are like things that states have been observing, such as development of counter-space capabilities, anti-satellite tests,” said Poirier.
“Some states are also projecting hardly identifiable sub-satellites. So that means that one of their satellite is ejecting a sub-satellite. Some states like the US and China are developing space planes that are highly manoeuvrable. There are also dual-use systems that can be repurposed to be used as weapons to attack adversary satellites.
Hybrid warfare
“There’s also a development of civilian technologies that can be turned into weapons. Like robotic arms that can grab a satellite to remove debris. So, it’s a civilian mission, but if you can grab the debris, you can also grab an adversary satellite.”
An ability recently demonstrated by the Chinese according to Clark, who says that satellites are increasingly showing off their physical abilities in space.
Aggressive satellite activity, that according to those monitoring the developments, intensified during the Ukrainian War. These attacks are being used to apply geo-political pressure as part of co-ordinated attempts to demonstrate an ability to threaten vital global communications systems.
As a result, we are now seeing attempts to jam ground stations, the hacking of satellites unprotected against cyber-attack, and physical attacks on the vital space craft orbiting our planet. The cyber attack on satellites is particularly worrying as it could render them useless without generating physical debris. A hacking vulnerability many satellites have little or no defence against as they were considered beyond hacker’s reach.
A cyber attack that like the aggressive moves by satellites has started to dramatically intensify according to Poirier, whose recent report on the issue ‘Breaking the Final Frontier: Cyber operations against the space sector’ followed 237 mostly Palestinian hacktivist attacks on satellites during the Gaza War.
Poirier noted that attacks on satellites from hackers now closely follow events on Earth. At the start of the Ukrainian War for instance, attacks from Russia involved satellite hacking, intimidation and jamming.
Virtual European Space Command
In a recognition of the threat to satellites from hacking, the EU has announced its plans for an encrypted space network. A nod to the increasing geo-political tensions caused by the US. A tension resulting in both Sweden and France announcing plans to stop using US technology systems like Zoom and Microsoft.
On January 27, 2026, Andrius Kubilius, the European Union’s Commissioner for Defence and Space revealed that eight satellites from five different member states are currently being pooled as part of GOVSATCOM. The Commission sees this as a first step towards less dependence on the US .
“If you protect only your own country, your own army, we shall not learn to fight as Europe. We will not deter Putin. We will not succeed in our defence,” Kubilius said in a speech at the European Space Conference, in which he pitched the idea of a “virtual European Space Command”.
European Union member states now have access to European-made “secure and encrypted” satellite communication, Kubilius also announced in the speech.
“Last week we started GOVSATCOM operations. That means all member states can now have access to sovereign satellite communication. Military and government. Secure and encrypted. Built in Europe, operated in Europe, under European control,” said Kubilius, describing it as the “first step in satellite connectivity”.
The announcement has expanded coverage and bandwidth targets that were set for 2027. A development that lays the groundwork ahead of the rollout of the Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite (IRIS²), a multi-orbital constellation of 290 satellites, is now expected in 2029 instead of 2030.
These efforts are all part of plans to reduce the EU’s dependence on foreign space services, such as Elon Musk’s Starlink. They are also part of the EU’s efforts to bolster the bloc’s defence capabilities and readiness before the end of the decade. A point some intelligence agencies have highlighted as the potential moment Russia could attack another European country.
