“The universe is an ocean. The Moon is the Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands. Mars is Huangyan Island (Scarborough Shoal). If we don’t go there now even though we’re capable of doing so, then we will be blamed by our descendants. If others go there, then they will take over, and you won’t be able to go even if you want to. This is reason enough.” – Ye Peijian, head of the Chinese Space Exploration program, 2017.

The strategic relevance of space has only increased in the 21^st century, with the domain once again a primary arena for geopolitical competition between West and East.

While Western satellite networks have been indispensable in the war in Ukraine, complacency kills. These constellations, so effective at helping Ukraine oppose Russia, are insufficient to win the long-term competition with China for space dominance. In that competition, the interweaving of other technologies along with superior satellite systems will be decisive.

Satellites in 21^st Century Warfare

Given the increasing dependency of modern economies on space-derived data – from navigation and timing through GPS to commercial and military geospatial applications – this domain is becoming ever more essential for governments to operate successfully and remain competitive globally. In essence, space is a critical component of state power in the 21^st century.

More acutely, the impact of satellite technology in the military sphere is reaching the point where it can shift the entire strategic balance of an international conflict. Orbiting satellites perform three main military functions: communications, for battlefield and beyond-the-horizon connectivity; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), for targeting; and navigation, including positioning, for precision strikes.

All this has been on full display in the Ukraine war where, as observers of that conflict have noted, there is also tremendous involvement from commercial space companies.¹

Nothing illustrates the connectivity aspect better than Starlink. The Ukrainians have pioneered the use of the Starlink satellite broadband service to share targeting data quickly for artillery fire. Early in the war, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) developed a networked artillery system that could integrate apps like GIS Arta.² Typically, a forward drone operator would geolocate an enemy target, then input the data directly on an iPad-type tablet into the GIS Arta app. This, in turn, would update the whole picture at Headquarters via Starlink. Finally, HQ would direct the firing solution to its field artillery units. While the dynamics of the Ukrainian battlefield have evolved, the AFU has demonstrated how space technology can shorten the kill chain, allowing friendly forces to do more damage with less ammunition.

Space-based ISR has also become vital in supporting military operations by identifying and locating enemy units – making the battlefield more transparent than ever. To appreciate the full power of space ISR, it is worth considering the “state of the art” in the two main types of ISR sensors available overhead in the Ukraine war.

The first are optical sensors (i.e. photography from space). The world’s best technology is believed to be deployed on the United States’s National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Keyhole spy satellites, with a resolution of 5cm.³ The commercial standard has been around 30cm – roughly equivalent to letting a viewer in space see someone holding an iPad on earth – with the leading-edge commercial resolution has breaking the 10cm threshold.⁴

The other key sensor type is synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Unlike optical sensors, SAR works through clouds and at night. The best current commercial resolution is only 16cm, while the typical standard has been 25cm-50cm.⁵

Other space-based ISR sensing includes radiofrequency (RF) geolocation, with satellite sensors used to detect radio and cellphone usage, electronic warfare (jamming) and radar emissions, and in some cases the commercial market even offers electronic intelligence (ELINT) capabilities on top like radar characterization. RF sensing has allegedly been used to great effect particularly in some high profile strikes on specific general officers who were identified partly through their cellphone signals.⁶

The Ukraine war has also seen the use of infrared (IR) or “thermal” space-based sensors, originally designed for missile warning but in recent years used extensively for detecting forest fires. Some have now been repurposed to detect artillery fires, explosions, and other types of events and targets on the battlefield.

Impressive as all these different categories of space-based sensors are, the next generation of hyperspectral sensing technology – able to identify the chemical signature of objects – is set to take space ISR to yet another level. For example, it will make it possible to differentiate between different types of materials (e.g. natural v. plastic foliage) and thus rewrite the rules of camouflage, which in turn has become more important than ever in the age of drone warfare as practiced in Ukraine.

Finally, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) likeGPS or GLONASShave been essential to precision strike by both sides, through the use of precision guided munitions.  But the best illustration of the full power of space-enabled precision remains the missile strike in Syria on 14 April 2018, in retaliation for the Syrian government forces’ use of chemical weapons in Douma.

The Syria strike involved 105 missiles of five different types, against three different target areas, involving sea, air and subsea launches from positions dispersed geographically across three different seas, by ships and planes from the UK, United States, and France. This was an extremely complex airstrike mission plan, executed to perfection with almost all the missiles arriving on target at the same time despite their widely varied launch conditions and flight profiles. The U.S. Air Force Secretary at the time, Heather Wilson, called it “the most precise strike in the history of man.”⁷

Key to the precision was the ability of US forces to “optimize” the GPS constellation, where some satellites are moved into certain orbits to minimize errors across the system.⁸ This is important because the accuracy of the weapons directly influences the number of weapons deployed and size of their warheads. A single missile with a smaller warhead can be used if the planners are certain it can strike exactly where it is targeted.

All these space capabilities, from ISR to GPS, have been essential to Ukraine’s ability to strike targets deep in the Russian rear with long range precision fires, especially in 2023 and 2024. These are complex military operations, requiring wider preparations such as creating fire corridors through sequenced strikes, supported by a fusion of all data from different space sensors and aerial drones.⁹

This combination helped give Ukraine the edge over Russian artillery in many situations, showing the practical effects of space-based assets negating key advantages in the classic domains and weapons categories.

Competing with China

Given the vast distances involved in the Western Pacific, any sea-air battle over Taiwan will be shaped by long-range strike capabilities. The Chinese strategy centers on using missiles (including hypersonics) to contain the U.S. Navy – or to sink it should it approach Taiwan or the Chinese mainland.¹⁰ Therefore, the ability to defend against that missile threatis essential for American strategic planning for a Taiwan contingency. Successful missile defense requires the ability to detect the launch immediately, acquire the target, track it, and quickly send the data to the interceptors.

Because space-based systems are vital for this cycle, command of space is now the foundation for command of the sea. Advanced missile defense missions become impossible without it. This is why, even before the second Trump Administration launched the Golden Dome project, the Pentagon was already building the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a multi-orbit constellation that includes different layers of satellites with different functions in detection and data transport.¹¹

The PWSA concept, coupled with the new generation of space-based sensors developed by the Missile Defense Agency, was already poised to give the United States a significant advantage in the long-range fight against China. Golden Dome, which will build on these systems and add space-based intercept capabilities, is only set to strengthen America’s lead in this area.¹²

Even this brief survey of the use and potential of orbital capabilities for warfighting in land and sea environments suggests an important conclusion: space power has now clearly matured into an element that can not only swing, but which might actually decide the military balance around the central flashpoint of the new Cold War.

Because space power relies on networked systems, the more space assets there are in orbit, the more possibilities there are for linking them, compounding access and effects for allied capabilities. The net effect not only changes the military balance; it can introduce strategic surprise in a military confrontation.

New Tech Nightmares

Space power today may be at an equivalent stage of development as air power was in 1918, when militaries at the end of the First World War fielded rather primitive, canvas-framed airplanes. Yet only three decades later, in the late 1940s, air power had become strategic focal point. Space power will likely experience a similar – if not bigger – transformation, both technologically and in public sentiment, over the next thirty years. A leading example are spaceplanes, like the American X-37B, or the Chinese version, the Shenlong. In both cases, test models exist and operate today, in orbit.¹³

What space capabilities will be available in the 2050s? We can easily imagine fleets of space bombers being fielded quickly, given that this technology is already proven.¹⁴ Governments should factor this type of strategic development into their long-term thinking – or risk becoming victims of strategic-technological surprise.

The fact that such long-range planning is done in other domains, like submarine warfare, but not for space, reveals a particular blind spot in high-level strategic thinking today. A clear example in the Anglosphere is the AUKUS alliance, which revolves around the development of the next generation of nuclear-powered attack submarines. These boats are projected to come into service in the 2040s, while the entire program, which is now already funded and underway, stretches a full thirty years, into the 2050s.¹⁵ Western space power planning does not even approach that kind of time-horizon. This is a mistake.

As satellite technology continues to improve, bringing unimaginable degrees of precision and responsiveness in support of ground-based activities, it will make the entire planet closely observable and drive a convergence between space and ground infrastructures.

But space-tech is now breaking open new frontiers beyond earth orbit. Already there are some 100 missions of all sizes, from around the world, scheduled to go to the Moon by 2030 – quite apart from the US and Chinese programs to put boots on the lunar soil by the end of the decade.

Controlling the Moon is of paramount strategic importance. It offers a solid, physical site out in space on which to build an entire logistical and industrial infrastructure supporting a new lunar economy. In-situ resources – metals and minerals from the lunar regolith – can be used as manufacturing materials. The hydrogen and oxygen from lunar ice can be turned into rocket fuel, thus making the Moon a highly energy-efficient jump-off point for interplanetary missions (e.g., to Mars) or for other operations in the Greater Earth area (the region up to 1.5 million kilometers from Earth that comprises the strategically significant Lagrange points which allow for stable orbits).

Militarily, the lunar surface and orbits represent the “high ground” of the future Earth-centric orbital warfare battlespace – ranging from LEO to GEO.¹⁶ These and other cislunar locations can host a variety of sensors and space warfighting capabilities that could operate against Earth-orbiting spacecraft with considerable strategic advantage from such positions. In a future where both near-Earth orbits and deeper cislunar space will have developed into thriving economic systems, it will become imperative to provide for their adequate defense – and, conversely, to hold them at risk. And the economic development trajectory of space is hardly in doubt: the CEOs of Amazon, SpaceX and Google are already committed to building large-scale orbital data centers.¹⁷

As always in history, the conquest of new frontiers and commercial expansion towards and beyond them is a process that goes hand in hand with rivalry and conflict, requiring protection and military force of one kind or another. Space is no different – except that the opportunities are literally endless and that the room for growth is limitless once new technologies make space transportation and in-space energy and manufacturing viable at scale.

The question that arises now in anticipation of that future, therefore, is how to build space power outwards, looking from Low Earth Orbit out toward inter-planetary space – particularly in the cislunar region (the area between Earth orbit and the Moon) – and dominate that new space terrain for both military and economic advantage.

The New Great Game

Space is a critical infrastructure, as well as big business in its own right. It has become a center of gravity that we must defend, and that also can be used to advance geopolitical interests.

Space power is shifting conventional military balances, both in the land domain and in the maritime domain – with these trends set to accelerate as new, transformational space technologies are introduced in the years ahead.

And finally, looking outward from earth orbit, we are in the foothills of a great strategic struggle for dominance of cislunar space, with China already positioning itself to compete and win in this crucial race.

We must hope that space strategists in the Western world will match these Chinese ambitions, in both strategic space power thinking and in space power development – at the very least to maintain a balance of military power and therefore strategic stability in the decades ahead.

1. Tereza Pultarova, “Ukraine’s Space Industry and its Allies Integrate Lessons from 3 Years of Vicious War,” Via Satellite, March 28, 2025. ↩︎
2. Mike Wilmot, “AI on the Battlefield: Lessons from Ukraine,” Wavell Room, September 7, 2023. ↩︎
3. The maximum resolution of US KH-11 satellites, the most advanced in NRO’s arsenal, is not publicly confirmed but widely believed to be as low as 5 cm. See for example, Brian Wang, “US Spy Satellites at Diffraction Limit for Resolution Since 1971,” Next Big Future, September 1, 2019. ↩︎
4. Press Release, “Booz Allen Celebrates Albedo’s Historic Clarity-1 Launch,” Booz Allen, March 19, 2025. ↩︎
5. Press Release, “ICEYE launches high-performance Gen4 satellite for commercial operations,” Iceye, September 9, 2025. ↩︎
6. Alan Yuhas, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, and Yousur Al-Hlou, “For Russian Troops, Cellphone Use Is a Persistent, Lethal Danger,” New York Times, January 4, 2023. ↩︎
7. Gabriel Elefteriu, “Western Tech May have Beaten Iran’s Air Attack, but Greater Challenges are to Come,” The Yorktown Institute, April 20, 2024. ↩︎
8. Joe Pappalardo, “How a Syrian Airstrike Got Help From Space”, Popular Mechanics, April 24, 2018. ↩︎
9. Harry Halem, “Ukraine’s Lessons for Future Combat: Unmanned Aerial Systems and Deep Strike,” Parameters 53, no. 4 (2023). ↩︎
10. Frank Gardner, “The race for the two miles-a-second super weapons that Putin says turn targets to dust,” BBC, August 21, 2025. ↩︎
11. Scott King, “Revolutionizing Missile Warning: The Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture,” Elara Nova, October 3, 2023. ↩︎
12. Mike Stone and Jeff Mason, “Trump selects $175 billion Golden Dome defense shield design, appoints leader,” Reuters, May 20, 2025. ↩︎
13. Harry Kazianis, “The X-37B Space Plane Is Breaking All the Rules and Makes Chinese Generals Sweat,” National Security Journal, November 24, 2025. ↩︎
14. The debate regarding the possible use of spaceplanes as Earth-attack platforms is over 15 years old. See, for example, Jack Buckby, “Forget Aircraft Carriers or the F-35: China Thinks the X-37B Is a ‘Space Bomber’”, National Security Journal, November 27, 2025; Brandon J. Weichert, “The X-37B Could Be the U.S. Military’s Secret Space Bomber,” National Interest, May 31, 2024; and Noah Shachtman, “Secret Space Plane Likely an Orbiting Spy Not a Bomber,” Popular Mechanics, May 14, 2010. ↩︎
15. Luke Gosling, “Deterring at a distance: The strategic logic of AUKUS,” Lowy Institute, June 24, 2024. ↩︎
16. Low Earth Orbit, where spaceflight begins, to Geosynchronous Orbit which is around 22,000 miles from Earth surface. ↩︎
17. Sasha Rogelberg, “Google CEO Sundar Pichai says we’re just a decade away from a new normal of extraterrestrial data centers,” Fortune, December 1, 2025; Elvira Pollina, “Data centres in space? Jeff Bezos says it’s possible,” Reuters, October 3, 2025; Eric Berger, “Elon Musk on data centers in orbit: ‘SpaceX will be doing this,’” Ars Technica, October 31, 2025. ↩︎