Extending the Battlespace to Space

Extending the Battlespace to Space

Photo: Planet Observer/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

It is not just the defender that seeks the benefits of space to provide military and information advantage, but the aggressor as well. While Russia remains a global space power, its space program has atrophied in recent years, suffering from sanctions, an aging population, and corruption.¹⁷ As a result, Moscow has resorted to using "others' civil and commercial remote-sensing satellites to supplement" its own capabilities.¹⁸ For example, the Wagner Group acquired satellite imagery from Chinese companies such as Spacety and HEAD Aerospace, prompting the U.S. Treasury Department to issue sanctions against those providers in January 2023.¹⁹ Russian forces have reportedly also obtained Starlink terminals illicitly to improve their own connectivity and coordinate attacks on Ukrainian positions.²⁰

Today, any nation seeking military or information advantage, or any outgunned nation wanting to level the playing field, can take advantage of the high ground of space. Whether defender or aggressor, they will have an array of space-derived data and services available, and commercial companies willing to provide them.

Denial and Disruption: The Battlefield Utility of Counterspace Weapons

With space capabilities playing such a significant operational and tactical role on the battlefield, it should come as no surprise that adversaries will seek to deny them. For both Russia and Ukraine, their means of denial and disruption have largely been through cyberattacks and electronic jamming systems, but other conflicts could see more expansive use of both kinetic and non-kinetic means as adversaries attempt to erode each other's satellite systems. These counterspace weapons-employed by both attacker and defender and integrated into military units at the tactical and operational levels-aim to degrade the battlefield effectiveness of space-enabled capabilities, including communications and precision weapons.

Space Capabilities: An Early Target

As noted at the beginning of this chapter, on February 24, 2022, before artillery was fired or Russian tanks were driven into Ukraine, a cyberattack was launched against a commercial SATCOM provider, Viasat, aiming to disrupt Ukrainian government communications and military command and control. A targeted denial of service attack took tens of thousands of satellite modems offline across Central and Eastern Europe, not just affecting Ukrainian users but also knocking out wind turbines and internet access for civilians across Europe.²¹

The attack, later attributed to Russian state-backed cyber operators, underscored a new reality of modern warfare: Space-based systems are prime targets in the opening salvos of an attack, especially those that provide command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (C4ISRT) capabilities.22

Recent conflicts underscore this trend. On October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israeli border surveillance cameras and communications towers to disable military communications and command and control (C2) and slow any responses.²³ Likewise, during Operation Rising Lion, on June 13, 2025, Israel conducted widespread strikes against Iranian military C2 nodes alongside attacks on nuclear sites and key personnel. While not targeting satellites (of which Iran has few), it was a bold act to degrade Iranian military commanders' situational awareness, operational coordination, and ability to respond to further strikes, including by the United States against Tehran's nuclear infrastructure.24 Though neither case involved direct attacks on satellites, both demonstrate how warring sides will target C4ISRT infrastructure and both challenge any assumptions that parties would not seek bold, extensive, and perhaps escalatory ways to cripple the other side's C4ISRT systems-whether terrestrial or space-based-to degrade operational capacity and any information advantage.

The U.S. military has long assessed that its C4ISRT systems-particularly those based in space-would be among the earliest targets in a conflict with China. In the Indo-Pacific, U.S. forces depend heavily on the "high ground" of space for deterrence, defense, and warfighting. Satellites are vital for providing indications and warning of Chinese military activity, connecting distributed forces across vast maritime distances, and enabling the employment of precision weapons. This assessment is reinforced in successive U.S. Department of Defense reports on China's military and security developments, including one which noted that "PLA texts emphasize using cyber operations and other capabilities to degrade adversary C4ISR, weapon systems, and support nodes early in a conflict to seize information dominance."²⁵

For the last three decades, the United States, in particular, has been able to project, stage, and maneuver forces with relative impunity, dominating all domains of warfare and conducting C2, sensemaking, and target prosecution largely unimpeded. Yet trends in the global accessibility and acceleration of advanced technologies are creating challenges to that military dominance. Further, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) intends to leverage its own C4ISRT networks to gain an edge.²⁶ In modern warfare, parties now have to concern themselves with their own C4ISRT vulnerabilities, as well as contend with adversaries utilizing advanced C4ISRT capabilities for their own operational and informational benefit.

In future conflicts, the ability to disrupt or deny an adversary's C4ISRT will be both a

strategic objective and a vulnerability-placing a premium on one's own resilient, adaptable C4ISRT architectures, capabilities, and processes in contested operating environments as well as investments in counter-C4ISRT capabilities.

The Pervasiveness of Electronic Warfare

One of the most dominant features of the modern battlefield has been the pervasiveness of electronic warfare (EW), especially for force protection. Aiming to erode the effectiveness of drones and other precision munitions, EW systems provide a temporary and reversible way to target satellite navigation, communications signals, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) collection. Beyond the Ukrainian battlefield, widespread electronic jamming and spoofing of GPS signals has been detected in Israel, along Russia's western borders, and elsewhere around the globe.²⁷

EW systems have long been part of Russia's military tool kit. Well before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow demonstrated a capability and willingness to employ EW systems in regional conflicts. In 2018, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command reflected that Syria had become "the most aggressive EW environment on the planet," after reports surfaced that Russia had been "disabling" U.S. AC-130 gunships and blocking small U.S. surveillance drones from receiving GPS satellite signals.²⁸ That same year, the U.S. Army commander in Europe offered similar observations on Russia's EW capabilities in Ukraine, noting that "you cannot speak on a radio or any device that's not secure because it's going to be jammed or intercepted or worse, it's going to be found and then it's going to be hit," contrasting it to "something we never had to worry [about] in Afghanistan and Iraq."²⁹

In the months prior to February 2022, an increase in GPS interference was detected along the Belarus-Ukraine border and in the Donbas.³⁰ This was preceded by reports in 2021 that unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) used by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) for border monitoring continued to experience a high level of GPS signal jamming, affecting their ability to take off, land, and navigate.³¹

As the war in Ukraine has progressed, both Russian and Ukrainian forces have ramped up their use and production of EW systems that interfere with global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and SATCOM transmissions.³² Russian efforts have been aimed at undermining the performance of Western-supplied precision weapons, complicating the use of drones, and interfering with military C2 and communications.³³ For example, the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), Excalibur 155 mm guided artillery shells, Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), and Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) have all reportedly experienced degraded accuracy due to intense GPS jamming, which causes the weapons to veer off course and miss their targets.³⁴

Ukraine has made its own progress in employing electronic jammers and spoofers to erode Russian drones and guided munitions reliant on satellite navigation signals. However, a former commander in chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine wrote in 2023 that Russia "continues to maintain a significant electronic warfare superiority" with layered EW systems that "constantly change their location."³⁵

These EW weapons-also considered counterspace weapons because their targets are space-based capabilities and services-have become integrated with conventional ground forces and moved around the battlefield. Rather than holding these capabilities in strategic reserve, the Russian military has embedded EW systems within command and logistics units.³⁶ This allows Russian forces to use them as force protection, shielding units from drones and smart weapons, while also disrupting Ukrainian targeting and coordination.³⁷ These counterspace tools, once regarded as strategic instruments, have become part of the daily tool kit of ground forces at the tactical and operational levels of warfare.

Israel also conducts widespread, persistent GPS jamming and spoofing, no doubt aiming to protect itself from missile and drone threats launched by Iran, Hamas, Hez­bollah, and the Houthis.³⁸ PLA military exercises "regularly incorporate jammers against space-based communications, radars, and navigation systems like GPS," and the PLA "may be developing jammers to target SATCOM over a range of frequencies."³⁹ The United States has also begun to increase its inventories of EW systems fielded by the Army and Space Force to "disrupt their [adversaries'] comms and their kill chains and their targeting links."⁴⁰

With electronic jamming and spoofing of space-derived services producing the desired military effect-eroding the ability of munitions and drones that rely on GPS to find their targets-this counterspace weapons trend is likely to continue. However, as the next section highlights, it is not a magic bullet for drone defense or protection against munitions strikes, as technologies and tactics continue to evolve to mitigate the effects of EW systems. Furthermore, those jammers-when on and radiating-can be detected, located, and struck if one's targeting process can beat the time it takes to move the jammers.

Not only will future battlefields see the ubiquity of EW, but regions outside of conflict zones will also experience greater electromagnetic interference, risking harm to civil and commercial transportation and public safety. As the CSIS Aerospace Security Program reported in the 2024 and 2025 editions of its Space Threat Assessment, in recent years, observers have tracked daily occurrences of GPS jamming and spoofing in regions like the Baltic Sea, Middle East, and parts of South Asia.⁴¹ In 2023, the In­ternational Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations issued warnings to pilots about Chinese warships engaged in radio signal and GPS jamming over the South China Sea, Philippine Sea, eastern Indian Ocean, and northwest of Australia. Several UN agencies have emphasized the harms of jamming and spoofing, noting that interference with satellite navigation signals is a threat to air and maritime safety and security.⁴²

Agility and Adaptability

Russian counterspace weapons have also targeted satellite communications in Ukraine, including through repeated attempts to jam Starlink terminals supporting Ukrainian forces. However, SpaceX has demonstrated remarkable agility in countering this jamming, specifically by deploying rapid software updates. One U.S. defense official called Starlink's updates "eyewatering," contrasting them to the often-sluggish response cycles of traditional military systems.⁴³ The episode underscored both the importance of commercial space assets in modern warfare and the battlefield agility and adaptability needed to counter EW threats.

The Ukraine conflict has served as a proving ground for the agility and adaptability that will be needed in future conflicts, particularly as both sides contend with the disruptive effects of GPS and SATCOM jamming. Drone developers have played a central role in this adaptation, pushing innovation cycles to weeks rather than months or years. For example, in response to electronic interference, companies have fielded drones with electromagnetic interference detection kits, autonomous terminal guidance, and even fiber-optic tethers that eliminate reliance on wireless signals for communications and targeting altogether.⁴⁴ These measures have allowed Ukrainian forces to maintain effectiveness despite widespread jamming while also providing valuable insights into how Western militaries might mitigate vulnerabilities in precision-guided weapons through a mix of technology and adaptive tactics.

At a broader scale, both Ukraine and its partners have actively evolved their approaches to operate through and counter EW. Ukrainian forces have expanded sensor networks to geolocate Russian jamming systems and quickly suppress them.⁴⁵ These EW systems have increasingly become high-value targets on the battlefield. The United States, for its part, is upgrading its GPS satellites with military transmission signals more resistant to jamming, investing in alternatives to GPS, and developing more resilient and proliferated satellite communications architectures-like Starlink-to ensure operational continuity.⁴⁶

Going forward, EW will be the norm. Jamming and spoofing satellite navigation, communications, and ISR will be integral to maneuvering forces and protecting battlefield assets. Militaries will place a premium on operating effectively in degraded environments, geolocating and neutralizing electronic threats, and striking EW systems as part of operational campaign plans.

Battlefield Transparency

The proliferation of space capabilities, including commercial space assets, has introduced a new level of transparency to modern warfare. From intelligence professionals and military forces to private open-source intelligence (OSINT) companies and amateur analysts, more groups will be able to assess military forces and posture and even counter disinformation thanks to access to commercial imagery and other publicly accessible data sources.

This transparency has strategic implications. It enables rapid attribution of military activity, counters disinformation, and enhances situational awareness. During the early days of the Ukraine war, the availability of satellite imagery helped debunk Russian narratives and provided real-time evidence of atrocities and battlefield developments. Satellite imagery generated greater public awareness of Russia's military aggression and aided nations rallying to condemn Moscow's actions in diplomatic forums, counter with security assistance to Ukraine, and assess damage to Ukraine's infrastructure and places of cultural significance.

Yet transparency is a double-edged sword. Adversaries also benefit from greater access to space capabilities and services. As noted earlier, Chinese companies have supplied satellite imagery to Russian forces, and similar dynamics may emerge in other conflicts. By 2025, two Chinese entities had begun launching satellites for their Starlink-like, low Earth orbit broadband constellations, with other Chinese entities planning additional SATCOM constellations. The U.S. intelligence community assessed that "China has achieved global coverage in some of its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) constellations."⁴⁷ When global ISR coverage is paired with advanced processing, AI tools, and global distribution networks, China will possess real-time target detection and tracking across the planet, including of naval vessels, force movements, and aircraft. As one senior U.S. Space Force official noted, "the full deployment of a space-enabled targeting network means that China can hold U.S. and allied forces at risk with long-range precision weapons."⁴⁸

U.S. and allied forces are not accustomed to operating in an environment of persistent surveillance. The Cold War-era emphasis on denial and deception waned after the 1990s. From 2001 onwards, two decades of counterterrorism operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were conducted with the United States and its allies and partners operating under the cover of dominant air, space, cyber, and electromagnetic spectrum capabilities. Now, with commercial and foreign sensors proliferating, all militaries must adapt to a world where movements, emissions, and signatures are constantly monitored.

This demands a fundamental shift in training, doctrine, operational planning, and posture. Military forces-especially those at fixed sites and massed in central locations-must assume that they will be seen and their movements and emissions detected. Operating in this environment requires renewed emphasis on operational security, deception tactics, and electromagnetic spectrum discipline. Exercises should simulate conditions where adversaries possess near-real-time ISR capabilities. The threat of persistent surveillance further reinforces the necessity of eroding an adversary's ISR capabilities and the networks that enable them early in a conflict.

It is also important to note that transparency does not always lead to deterrence. Despite overwhelming satellite evidence and the disclosure of sensitive U.S. intelligence, including warnings about false flag operations, Moscow proceeded with its invasion of Ukraine. Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed skepticism in the days leading up to the attack. Thus, while transparency can shape the information environment, it does not guarantee strategic restraint.

This transparency nevertheless made it harder for Moscow to deny its actions and for third-party countries to ignore the facts. However, as technology continues to advance in areas like adversarial AI, where new kinds of deception, obfuscation, and misinformation can be generated at machine speeds, trust in such information will be tested in the years to come.

Beyond the Tactical: The Expanding Counterspace Tool Kit

While the conflict in Ukraine has illuminated the battlefield utility of certain counterspace weapons, there is an array of counterspace capabilities being pursued by global actors to deny or disrupt the advantages that space assets provide in peacetime and conflict.⁴⁹ The war in Ukraine has provided an unprecedented look into how counterspace capabilities are actually employed in conflict-not just in theory or doctrine. While Russia has demonstrated a willingness to integrate EW weapons into conventional operations for tactical and operational effect, it notably has refrained from using other elements of its counterspace arsenal. This selective employment raises important questions about doctrine, thresholds, and the evolving nature of escalation in the space domain.

Russia has leaned heavily on reversible, non-kinetic counterspace weapons-specifically EW systems that jam or spoof signals such as GPS and SATCOM. These tools have proved effective in degrading the performance of Ukrainian and Western-supplied precision munitions and drones. However, Russia has avoided more overt or escalatory counterspace actions, such as kinetic attacks or the use of laser weapons designed to blind or damage optical sensors in orbit.

For instance, despite the heavy and transparent use of imagery satellites to track Russian forces, there is little publicly available evidence to suggest that Russia has used laser systems (such as the Peresvet and Sokol-Eshelon) or SAR jamming systems to blind ISR satellites.⁵⁰ A European Space Agency SAR satellite did experience interference while imaging Sevastopol in November 2023, echoing similar disruptions observed in 2021, but it was unclear whether this resulted from intentional satellite jamming or radar interference in the region.⁵¹

At the same time, in the lead-up to its invasion, Russia engaged in a pattern of ambiguous demonstrations that could be interpreted as strategic signaling. In November 2021-just three months before its invasion-Russia conducted a direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test, generating significant debris in low Earth orbit. While the test was not directly tied to operations in Ukraine, its timing raised questions: Was this a message of intent, a readiness demonstration, or a rehearsal for more aggressive action?

Other activities further complicate the picture. The Russian "inspector" satellite Luch, believed to be for gathering signals intelligence, has maneuvered and loitered in geostationary orbit throughout the Ukraine conflict near Western satellites providing high-throughput communications over Europe. And perhaps most notably, in the same month that Russia invaded Ukraine, it launched an experimental satellite believed to be an ASAT weapon capable of carrying a nuclear device-though this development was not revealed publicly until February 2024. The timing and nature of these developments suggested a willingness to use space demonstrations as strategic signaling tools, possibly as a form of deterrence or coercive leverage, even if the weapons themselves were not directly employed in combat.

These patterns-employing reversible, non-kinetic means in a tactical fight and exercising restraint in some areas while signaling ambiguity in others-offer insights into how Russia may view the utility of counterspace weapons, the conditions under which certain weapons might be employed, and how it manages escalation risks. Moscow's strategy blends tactical denial with strategic ambiguity-a doctrine that may favor deterrence through uncertainty rather than action.

For the United States and its allies, this raises important questions. What thresholds are adversaries observing in space? What conditions on Earth precipitate actions against space assets? And how should the United States and its allies respond to demonstrations that fall below traditional red lines but still aim to alter the strategic calculus? These are not theoretical concerns. Future conflicts are likely to be shaped by similar patterns of gray zone counterspace activity.

Beijing, which possesses a full range of space capabilities that it is increasingly integrating into its own joint force, is undoubtedly watching these developments closely. The U.S. intelligence community considers the People's Republic of China (PRC) to be the most expansive space threat and a global space power, competing with the United States. In its 2025 annual threat assessment, the U.S. intelligence community assessed: "Counterspace operations will be integral to PLA [People's Liberation Army] military campaigns, and China has counterspace-weapons capabilities intended to target U.S. and allied satellites."⁵²

PRC doctrine has long emphasized the value of striking C4ISR capabilities early in a conflict to deny the U.S. military its operational edge. The lessons emerging from Ukraine-especially around EW, ISR denial, and the use of counterspace capabilities for both warfighting and signaling-are likely reinforcing China's investments in a broad suite of space denial tools. Further, with the pursuit of large, proliferated satellite constellations (involving hundreds or thousands of satellites) as an approach to enhance performance and resiliency in key capability areas-whether SpaceX's Starlink for communications or the U.S. Department of Defense's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture for tracking missiles-adversaries will inevitably look for ways to hold these systems at risk.53 Such options are likely to shift toward methods that generate widespread effects, such as cyberattacks, debris-generating attacks to collapse an entire orbital plane, high-altitude nuclear detonations (HANDs), or attacks on physical infrastructure like ground stations. Indicators for such a shift could include research to understand the effects of HANDs on satellites, for example, as Chinese scientists are reportedly doing at a PLA research institute.⁵⁴ Each of these variants of counterspace weapons has pol­icy, operational, and technical trade-offs.⁵⁵ Some would be highly escalatory and others, like HANDs, would be both escalatory and indiscriminate, presenting as much danger to the attacker's own satellites as to its intended targets.

Beyond Russia and China, the United States and its allies have become more explicit about their counterspace policies and investments to protect their assets and target adversary satellites.⁵⁶ Although the United States has long held space control as a core mission, it has been reticent to publicly discuss its capabilities. But that stance is shifting. In April 2025, the U.S. Space Force released a space warfighting framework emphasizing both "offensive and defensive actions" to achieve space superiority.⁵⁷ France has been particularly outspoken among Western nations, outlining plans to develop and field orbital counterspace capabilities and bodyguard satellites, potentially with shoot-back or jamming systems on board.58 Even commercial companies, like U.S.-based True Anomaly, are developing new "spacecraft purpose-built for space superiority."59 This raises the specter that in the future satellite operators could contract with private firms to protect their assets.

As space systems prove critical from peacetime to conflict, they are increasingly vulnerable to a growing array of counterspace weapons as adversaries seek to erode each other's space-based advantages. In Ukraine, Russia has employed reversible, non-kinetic tools for tactical denial of space services while exercising restraint and signaling ambiguity with others-revealing a nuanced approach in the employment of counterspace weapons and highlighting the complexity of deterrence and escalation involving counterspace weapons in modern warfare.

Policy Challenges and the Road Ahead

The use of space in the Ukraine conflict raises profound policy questions for the future of warfare. First, the centrality of commercial space capabilities to military operations demands a rethinking of public-private relationships. U.S. and allied governments have traditionally relied on commercial capabilities as a supplement to national systems. Increasingly, these capabilities are at the core of operational planning, with countries like Poland adopting commercial space solutions as the foundation for their sovereign satellite constellations.⁶⁰

This creates new challenges in acquisition, integration, and protection.⁶¹ How can U.S. and allied forces rapidly incorporate commercial space services into joint and coalition operations? How can contracts and partnerships be structured to ensure responsiveness and resilience in conflict? And what obligations does a government have to protect commercial assets that become military targets?

One area of active debate is whether commercial satellites used for military purposes become legitimate targets under the laws of armed conflict. Russian officials have made statements suggesting that they consider such systems valid military targets.⁶² This raises concerns about the protection of dual-use infrastructure and the potential escalation of conflict into space.

Another key issue is deterrence. How can the United States and its allies and partners deter attacks on their space assets, including those operated by commercial providers? What signaling, posture, and capability mix is required to communicate resolve without provoking escalation? These questions are central to ongoing doctrinal development, especially within the U.S. Space Force, and the source of debate within the U.S., European, and Asian space policy communities.

Classification is also a barrier. Much of the U.S. space architecture remains highly classified, as do certain allied capabilities and cooperative space defense initiatives, complicating efforts to share information among allies and integrate commercial partners. As space becomes more contested and more crowded, information sharing and interoperability will be vital.

Finally, space business leaders will increasingly find themselves in the middle of geopolitics and global security questions. Companies like SpaceX, Maxar, and others have found themselves making geopolitical decisions-such as whether to provide services in contested regions, how to handle adversary access, and how to balance global business interests with national security.⁶³

There are also emerging signs of adversarial cooperation in space. Russia and China have expressed interest in greater space collaboration, and Chinese support for Russian military efforts in Ukraine suggests a growing willingness to share capabilities. U.S. and allied strategies must account for the potential of a "coalition of convenience" in space.

Conclusion

The evolving role of the space dimension in modern warfare is reshaping how conflicts are fought and who can influence them. The greater accessibility of satellite data and services can both level the playing field for underdogs and serve as a force multiplier for those best able to exploit them and mitigate attacks against them. The persistent coverage of terrestrial activities by space assets is making the battlefield more transparent, diminishing strategic surprise, and inviting the public to peer into the fight in unprecedented ways. Business leaders, too, increasingly find themselves in the middle of geopolitics, crises, and war.

The evolving role of the space dimension in modern warfare is reshaping how conflicts are fought and who can influence them.

The war in Ukraine has crystallized these trends, demonstrating the power of commercial systems, the impact of persistent surveillance on force posture and movements, and the growing risks of counterspace threats. These lessons are urgent and enduring. The space domain will be central to future conflicts-not just as a support function, but as a contested arena of operations. Policymakers must act decisively to update doctrine, enhance resilience, deepen public-private integration, and prepare forces for a world in which space systems are not only accessible to all, but visible to all.

Please consult the PDFfor references.

Kari A. Bingen is the director of the Aerospace Security Project and a senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.