Global Affairs Session 103 5 October 2026

SPACE WARS ARRIVING

New contest in LEO?

Space is no longer simply a support environment for warfare; it increasingly shapes deterrence. Ukraine wants sanctions on entities enabling Russia’s Rassvet constellation. Russia’s Medvedev responded that blocking Rassvet would mean destroying it and warned of a space warfare involving Starlink. Behind the rhetoric lies a larger shift: commercial constellations, sovereign alternatives, military networks, cyber operations, anti-satellite weapons, debris risks, and unsettled rules for conflict in orbit.

Summary

Space is no longer simply a support environment for warfare; it increasingly shapes deterrence.

Ukraine wants sanctions on entities enabling Russia’s Rassvet constellation. Russia’s Medvedev responded that blocking Rassvet would mean destroying it and warned of a space warfare involving Starlink.

Behind the rhetoric lies a larger shift: commercial constellations, sovereign alternatives, military networks, cyber operations, anti-satellite weapons, debris risks, and unsettled rules for conflict in orbit.

Why ‘orbit’ is becoming part of war

1. Strategic dependence: Modern militaries increasingly depend on space for communications, navigation, surveillance, missile warning, targeting, and command resilience.
2. New vulnerability: That dependence makes commercial and military satellites strategically valuable, while also creating new vulnerabilities and escalation risks.
3. Immediate trigger: Ukraine sought sanctions on entities supporting Rassvet, aiming to slow Russia’s emerging sovereign satellite communications capability.
4. Medvedev’s response: Russian leader Medvedev replied that blocking Rassvet meant destroying it, warning that full-scale space warfare could follow. (Medvedev is now Deputy Chairman of Security Council)
5. Starlink threatened: He specifically threatened Starlink satellites, framing retaliation in orbit as a consequence of interference with Rassvet.
6. Not entirely new: This rhetoric extends Russia’s earlier position that commercially owned space infrastructure used militarily may face retaliation.

Why Starlink changed battlefield communications

1. Distributed resilience: Starlink demonstrated that a large distributed constellation can sustain battlefield connectivity when terrestrial networks are damaged or jammed.
2. Ukrainian dependence: By July 2025, Ukraine relied on over 50,000 terminals for military communications, coordination, and drone operations.
3. Vulnerability exposed: A July 2025 global outage disrupted Ukrainian military communications for roughly two and a half hours.
4. Russian access: Ukraine said Russian forces obtained unauthorized Starlink terminals, enabling battlefield communications and some drone operations.
5. Access became controllable: Ukraine and SpaceX later restricted access through a whitelist, leaving only approved terminals operational inside Ukraine.
6. Strategic lesson: The episode revealed dependence on infrastructure whose technical access can be altered by a private operator.

The Iran War story

1. Russian-built Iranian reconnaissance: Russia built Iran's Khayyam Earth-observation satellite, significantly strengthening Tehran's independent high-resolution space-based reconnaissance capabilities.
2. Russian battlefield intelligence: Russia is reported to provide Iran satellite-derived intelligence on regional military activity, supplementing Tehran's comparatively limited orbital surveillance capacity.
3. Iran's BeiDou transition: Iran has progressively pursued China's BeiDou architecture to reduce strategic dependence on vulnerable American-controlled GPS navigation services.
4. Encrypted Chinese navigation: BeiDou includes restricted authorized military-grade signals, potentially giving approved Iranian systems greater resilience against GPS disruption and spoofing.
5. Greater strike resilience: BeiDou-assisted navigation can improve positioning and redundancy for suitably equipped Iranian missiles and drones operating under intense electronic warfare.
6. Satellite-linked battlefield communications: BeiDou supports two-way short-message communications, creating potential pathways for secure command updates to compatible platforms during long-range operations.

Why Russia is building Rassvet

1. Strategic autonomy: Rassvet reflects a broader objective - reducing dependence on foreign-controlled communications infrastructure during conflict or sanctions.
2. Experimental phase: Bureau 1440 launched six experimental satellites across 2023 and 2024 before beginning production deployment in 2026.
3. Production deployment: Sixteen production satellites entered orbit in March 2026, followed by another sixteen in July.
4. Present scale: Independent tracking counted 38 launches, 37 spacecraft remaining in orbit, and 29 classed as working.
5. Important qualification: Here, “working” means not thought failed by orbital tracking, not confirmation of full commercial service.
6. Intended expansion: The disclosed plan is to begin operations in 2027 and expand toward roughly 900 satellites.

LEO balance is already highly unequal

1. Numbers need context: Satellite counts reveal scale and resilience, but they do not by themselves measure military power or effectiveness.
2. Starlink: Starlink had 11,142 satellites classed working on October 2, overwhelmingly exceeding other broadband constellations considered here.
3. OneWeb: Eutelsat OneWeb had 651 satellites classed working, showing Starlink is not the only mature LEO broadband network.
4. China: Qianfan had 234 core satellites working; Xingwang had 246 working, including 213 HW Digui production satellites.
5. Russia: Rassvet had 29 classed working, while its planned constellation remains far larger than today’s deployment.
6. U.S. military: PWSA had 90 classed working in October tracking; 63 Tranche 1 vehicles were officially on orbit by July.

Reagan’s “Star Wars” and today’s space contest

1. Historical perspective: Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative offers context for space security debates, but not a technological precedent for Starlink.
2. The 1983 proposal: On March 23, 1983, Reagan proposed intensive research into defenses against nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.
3. “Star Wars”: The program became popularly known as “Star Wars,” although Strategic Defense Initiative was its official name.
4. Strategic purpose: SDI explored several interception concepts, including space-based technologies, within a Cold War nuclear deterrence framework.
5. Fundamental difference: Today’s Starlink and Rassvet systems are communications constellations, not missile-defense architectures or direct descendants of SDI.
6. Genuine connection: The genuine connection is strategic: space technology can alter vulnerability, deterrence, resilience, and perceptions of escalation.

What a space war could actually look like

1. Wider spectrum: Conflict in space need not begin with exploding satellites; disruption can start through cyber and electronic attacks.
2. Cyber precedent: The 2022 KA-SAT cyberattack caused communication outages across Ukraine and parts of Europe before Russia’s invasion.
3. Electronic attack: Satellite communications and navigation can also face jamming or spoofing, degrading services without destroying spacecraft.
4. Kinetic precedent: Russia’s 2021 direct-ascent anti-satellite test destroyed Cosmos 1408 and created more than 1,500 trackable debris pieces.
5. Shared consequences: Kinetic attacks risk harming unrelated satellites because orbital debris can persist and cross-national ownership boundaries. Space Command
6. Escalation spectrum: Escalation therefore spans cyber interference, electronic warfare, physical attack, debris creation, attribution, and potential retaliation.

Deeper strategic problem

1. Bigger than personalities: The central issue is not Musk versus Medvedev, but growing military dependence on contested commercial orbital infrastructure.
2. Private strategic power: Private satellite operators now control capabilities that governments may depend upon during crises and high-intensity warfare.
3. Limited legal prohibition: The Outer Space Treaty bans orbital weapons of mass destruction, but does not prohibit every military activity in space.
4. Dual-use dilemma: Dual-use satellites complicate targeting decisions because the same network may support civilians, governments, and armed forces.
5. Orbital consequences: Growing constellations also intensify orbital congestion, while destructive attacks could worsen long-term collision and debris risks.
6. New deterrence problem: Space deterrence now involves resilience, replacement capacity, commercial control, legal ambiguity, and escalation management alongside traditional weapons.

Conclusion

The danger is not that a space war has already started.

It is that modern warfare now depends on orbital systems whose disruption can affect armies, governments, companies, and civilians simultaneously.

Starlink, Rassvet, Chinese constellations, and military LEO networks are creating new forms of resilience, dependence, deterrence, and vulnerability that existing rules only partly address.

Value addition

Glossary and related terms

Low Earth Orbit (LEO)

The relatively low-altitude orbital region used by many communications, Earth-observation and military-support satellites. The session focuses heavily on large LEO constellations because their scale can provide connectivity and resilience.

Medium Earth Orbit (MEO)

An orbital region above LEO and below the highest Earth orbits. The session’s orbital explainer distinguishes MEO from LEO and HEO as part of understanding how different satellite systems operate.

High Earth Orbit (HEO)

High-altitude Earth orbits shown in the session’s orbital explainer. Different orbital regimes involve different coverage, latency and mission characteristics.

Deterrence

The attempt to discourage an adversary from taking an action by shaping the expected costs, risks or consequences. The session argues that dependence on orbital systems is increasingly part of deterrence calculations.

Satellite constellation

A group of satellites designed to operate as a coordinated network. Starlink, Rassvet, OneWeb, Qianfan, Xingwang and military LEO networks appear in the session as examples of constellation-scale infrastructure.

Proliferated constellation

A network distributed across many satellites rather than relying on a small number of spacecraft. The session links proliferation with resilience because losing or disrupting individual satellites may not disable the whole network.

Starlink

A large commercial satellite-communications constellation discussed in the session for its battlefield connectivity, distributed architecture and dual-use implications.

Rassvet

The Russian satellite-communications constellation discussed in the session as part of Moscow’s effort to reduce dependence on foreign-controlled communications infrastructure.

Strategic autonomy

The ability to retain critical capabilities without depending on infrastructure controlled by another state or external provider. The session uses this idea to explain Russia’s motivation for building Rassvet.

Dual-use satellite

A satellite or network that can serve civilian or commercial purposes while also supporting government or military activity. The session highlights how dual use complicates legal and targeting decisions.

Satellite communications (SATCOM)

Communications carried through satellites. In the session, SATCOM supports military coordination, battlefield connectivity and resilient command links when terrestrial networks are unavailable or disrupted.

Earth observation

The collection of imagery or other information about Earth from orbit. The session discusses Iran’s Khayyam satellite in the context of space-based reconnaissance.

Reconnaissance

The gathering of information about locations, forces or activity for situational awareness and planning. Satellite imagery can contribute to reconnaissance over large geographic areas.

BeiDou

China’s satellite navigation architecture. The session discusses Iran’s interest in BeiDou as a way to reduce strategic dependence on American-controlled GPS services.

GPS

The United States satellite navigation system used for positioning, navigation and timing. The session discusses the strategic risks created when military systems depend on navigation signals that can be disrupted or spoofed.

Jamming

Electronic interference intended to degrade or block a radio signal. The session identifies jamming as one way satellite communications or navigation can be disrupted without physically destroying a spacecraft.

Spoofing

The transmission of deceptive signals intended to make a receiver calculate an incorrect position or other false information. The session treats spoofing as part of the electronic-attack spectrum affecting satellite navigation.

Whitelist

A list of specifically approved devices or users allowed to access a system. The session describes the restriction of Starlink access through a whitelist so that only approved terminals remained operational inside Ukraine.

PWSA

The U.S. military space network referenced in the session’s comparison of LEO satellite scale. The session cautions that raw satellite counts should not be treated as a direct ranking of military effectiveness.

OneWeb

A mature LEO broadband constellation cited in the session to show that Starlink is not the only large operational communications network in low Earth orbit.

Qianfan

A Chinese LEO constellation included in the session’s satellite-count comparison.

Xingwang

A Chinese satellite constellation included in the session’s comparison of current LEO deployments.

Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)

The 1983 U.S. research initiative popularly called “Star Wars.” The session uses SDI as historical context for space-security debates while stressing that it was not a technological predecessor of Starlink or Rassvet.

Anti-satellite weapon (ASAT)

A capability intended to disable, damage or destroy a satellite. The session discusses Russia’s 2021 direct-ascent anti-satellite test as a kinetic precedent.

Direct-ascent ASAT

An anti-satellite weapon launched from Earth to intercept a spacecraft in orbit. The session cites the destruction of Cosmos 1408 as an example and highlights the debris consequences of kinetic attacks.

Orbital debris

Non-functional objects and fragments orbiting Earth. The session stresses that debris from destructive attacks can persist, threaten unrelated spacecraft and create consequences beyond the original combatants.

KA-SAT cyberattack

The 2022 cyberattack cited in the session as evidence that conflict affecting space infrastructure can begin through digital disruption rather than physical destruction of satellites.

Electronic warfare

Military activity involving the use or disruption of the electromagnetic spectrum. In the session, electronic warfare includes threats such as jamming and spoofing against satellite communications and navigation.

Outer Space Treaty

The international treaty discussed in the session for banning weapons of mass destruction in orbit while not prohibiting every form of military activity in space.

Orbital congestion

The growing density of satellites and other objects in useful orbital regions. The session notes that larger constellations increase congestion and that destructive conflict could worsen long-term collision risks.

Escalation spectrum

The range of increasingly severe actions described in the session, from cyber interference and electronic attack to physical destruction, debris creation, attribution problems and potential retaliation.