Written by: Asia Corsano, Manfred Sintorn, Irene Verduci, Christos Loizou, Vittorio Ippolito, Harold Degeert, Oliver Leicester, Gloria Bertasini, Cecilia Rosa Yáñez, Elena Valente
Against the backdrop of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War and Europe’s changing security environment, space has become ever more significant in the field of defence and security. Of course, outer space has long been an arena in which states have competed and vied for influence. From the Soviet launch of the ‘Sputnik’ satellite in 1957 to the U.S. Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, space emerged as a point of competition throughout the Cold War, becoming indispensably linked to nuclear deterrence with the development of the first successful Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile in 1957 (Siddiqi, 2000). Today, the spatial context has moved beyond the binary Soviet-American dynamic of one-upmanship experienced during the Cold War. A multitude of countries now possess independent spatial launch capacities, while a huge number of state and private actors possess satellite infrastructure (UCS, 2023). Furthermore, modern society has grown increasingly reliant on the space domain as satellite technology widely contributes to the day-to-day necessities of civilian life including Internet access, telecommunications and GPS navigation (Steer, 2020). Greater acknowledgement of the domain’s importance to modern society has led to a renewed look at space within military affairs in recent years, spurring the formal recognition of space as an operational domain by NATO allies in 2019 (Eagleson, 2023). Just as satellites offer a host of benefits to civilian society, space operations through satellite-based communication, navigation and real-time intelligence and surveillance are pivotal in the conducting of modern military operations (Basham, 2024). Hence, space assets facilitate a wide array of military functions, including effective response to crises and deterrence and defence against potential adversaries in worst-case scenario contingencies.
With the publication of this Food For Thought (FFT), Finabel explores various strands of the strategic domain of space in the European context, involving analyses ranging from explorations of the sector’s legal dimensions to a further dive into the lessons learned from the Russo-Ukrainian War in the realm of space. The first paper tackles the issue of fragmentation in the EU’s space landscape, highlighting the limitations of governing the domain across numerous different organisations. The second evaluates the establishment of the EU’s Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite (IRIS²), while the third and fourth delve into European endeavours to bolster future capabilities in space and the upper atmosphere and the European Space Agency’s Ariane 6 Rocket, respectively. Moreover, it is here, in the fifth paper, where the space lessons of the Russo-Ukrainian War are considered. Finally, as previously touched upon, this FFT’s second section explores the legal dimensions of space in the realm of defence and security, including an examination of international space law, an exploration of anti-satellite weapons, and the future creation of EU space regulation.
