Russia’s War in Ukraine: Key Observations About Space

The war in Ukraine offers several lessons for the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Space Force (USSF). While focusing on the ground-based components of space systems and on the importance of integrating data from space capabilities at the battle-edge, this chapter highlights lessons including prioritizing satellite/terrestrial force integration, attack preparation, and data access provision. Altogether, these war observations should spur the USSF to 1) evaluate priorities and investment decisions to see if they adequately reflect the importance of integration, networks, and other components of the ground-based segment of space systems, and 2) incentivize the United States to accelerate changes to regulations, policy, bureaucracy, systems, and operations to reduce barriers to sharing access to higher-end U.S. military space capabilities. 

Author: Michael Gleason

This paper was published in Space Agenda 2025, an effort by the Center for Space Policy and Strategy (CSPS) at The Aerospace Corporation to highlight and provide insights into some of the major space challenges facing policymakers. You can read the entire list of Space Agenda 2025 papers here.