UKspace Labour Party Conference fringe to examine how Britain protects its interests in an increasingly contested space domain
UKspace will bring together Government, Parliament and industry at the Labour Party Conference to examine how the UK’s new Space Strategy can strengthen Britain’s defence, resilience and sovereign capability in an increasingly contested space environment.
The fringe event, ‘How can the UK become a resilient and globally competitive space power?’, follows the publication of the new UK Space Strategy, which puts defence and national security at the heart of national space policy and establishes Control of Space as a strategic requirement for the UK.
The Strategy brings together more than £7.8 billion of planned Government investment to 2029/30, including £880 million for sovereign space-based Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) and Space Control.
The challenge now is to translate that investment into operational capability.
Space is fundamental to modern defence. Communications, navigation, intelligence, surveillance, targeting, and command and control all depend on secure and resilient access to space. Space-enabled services also underpin significant parts of Britain’s wider critical national infrastructure and economy.
At the same time, the threat is changing. Satellites and the systems that support them face electronic warfare, cyberattack, jamming and spoofing, hostile proximity operations and the potential use of counterspace capabilities. Disruption in space could also form part of a wider attack involving cyber networks, telecommunications, undersea cables and other critical infrastructure.
The UK’s response therefore must extend beyond protecting individual satellites. Resilience increasingly means creating distributed, observable, defendable and rapidly replaceable systems, backed by the ability to identify and attribute hostile activity and maintain freedom of action in, from and through space.
The new Space Strategy creates an opportunity to bring these capabilities together more coherently – connecting Space Domain Awareness, ISR, command and control, satellite communications, ISAM, assured access to space and Space Control.
It also raises fundamental questions about sovereignty. The UK will continue to operate alongside NATO, Five Eyes and other international partners, but must determine which capabilities it needs to own, which it can develop collaboratively and which it can securely access through allies or commercial providers.
The discussion (16:00-16:50) will be chaired by Zoe Grunewald. Panellists are:
- Luke Pollard MP – Minister of State for Defence Readiness and Industry
- Tan Singh Dhesi MP – Chair, House of Commons Defence Select Committee
- Marco Rocchetto – CEO and Founder, Spaceflux
- Dinz Dinsley – Managing Director, 3S Northumbria
- Sharon Parker-Lines – Vice-Chair, UKspace and Deputy Managing Director, Astroscale UK
Discussion topics will include:
- What Control of Space means for UK Defence in operational terms
- Translating the £880m ISR and Space Control commitment into deployable capability
- Improving the UK’s ability to detect, understand and attribute hostile activity in space
- Determining which critical capabilities Britain needs to retain sovereignly
- Balancing sovereign capability with NATO, Five Eyes, European and commercial partnerships
- Building resilience through distributed architectures, redundancy and rapid reconstitution
- The contribution of ISAM, rendezvous and proximity operations to future resilience and Space Control
- Assured access to space and the ability to replace capability during a crisis
- Opening defence procurement to commercial and dual-use space companies
- Accelerating the pathway from civil innovation and demonstration into defence trials and contracts
- Ensuring defence investment strengthens both military readiness and the UK’s domestic industrial base.
UKspace Head of Policy, Stephanie Ayres, said: “Space is no longer simply an enabler of modern defence; it is an increasingly contested operational domain in its own right.
“The new UK Space Strategy recognises that shift. Establishing Control of Space as a strategic requirement and committing £880 million to ISR and Space Control are significant steps. The challenge now is turning that ambition and investment into operational capability.
“Britain needs to be able to understand what is happening in space, identify and attribute hostile behaviour, protect UK and allied capabilities, and maintain our freedom of action. And if capability is disrupted or lost, we need the resilience and industrial capacity to restore it quickly.
“That does not mean Britain needs to own everything. Sovereignty should ultimately be about retaining the freedom to act – understanding what we must own, where we should collaborate with allies and where commercial capability can provide assured and resilient services.
“It also means recognising that many of the technologies defence increasingly needs are being developed in the commercial space sector. Space Domain Awareness, satellite communications, Earth observation, AI, autonomy, ISAM and launch are increasingly dual-use capabilities.
“Defence therefore needs procurement routes capable of bringing those companies into the national-security enterprise quickly. A technology successfully demonstrated through UKSA, UKRI or ESA should have a clear pathway through security accreditation and military trial to operational procurement.
“By 2030, the test of the Space Strategy should be straightforward: is Britain better able to see threats, attribute hostile activity, protect its space capabilities, sustain operations through disruption and restore capability when necessary?
“Government has now set the strategic direction and committed significant investment. The next task is to turn that investment into the capabilities, industrial capacity and resilience Britain will need in a crisis.”