ACE0010
Written evidence submitted by Blackswan Space
1. Introduction
1.1. Blackswan Space is a space technology company building software that makes satellites autonomous. Since 2019 it has developed the Mission Design Simulator (MDS), a digital-twin platform for planning, rehearsing and testing complex in-orbit manoeuvres, built on Tudat, an established space-dynamics software library. It has also built Vision Based Navigation and Robotic Proximity Operations (RPO) systems that allow spacecraft to conduct rendezvous, docking, inspection, servicing and debris-removal operations with reduced reliance on continuous ground control. The company has delivered multiple contracts for the European Space Agency, has been selected for the European Defence Fund's ASIMOV project, coordinated by Leonardo, which is building Europe's first dual-use satellite-servicing system spanning low, medium and geostationary orbit and is growing its engineering presence in the UK alongside its base in Lithuania.
2. Summary
2.1. The UK's military space dependencies extend well beyond SATCOM, PNT and ISR into space control and autonomous orbital operations, which is a capability the 2025 Strategic Defence Review has already named as government policy. The procurement and acquisition pipeline behind it has not caught up with that decision, however.
2.2. UK dependence on the United States and other allies is highest in precisely this newer category. This is a sound basis for interoperability, but it leaves the UK with the least sovereign capability in the fastest-growing part of its own military space dependency, and the Committee should treat this as a resilience gap in its own right.
2.3. This is not a hypothetical threat. Russia and China have already demonstrated it. Russia launched a cyberattack on ground infrastructure in 2022 which disabled tens of thousands of terminals across Europe, and both states have carried out deliberate rendezvous, proximity and co-orbital manoeuvres as recently as 2025 and 2026. Autonomous detection, inspection and manoeuvre is increasingly the only credible UK response to threats that move, or sever ground links, faster than a human-in-the-loop decision cycle allows.
2.4. The UK Government has already committed the strategy and the headline funding for deterrence and resilience i.e., space control, autonomous RPO, SDA and digital simulation, through the Strategic Defence Review and Defence Investment Plan, but it has not yet committed how funding will be spread across capability. The Defence Investment Plan's £880 million ISR/Space Control line and its £5 billion for autonomous systems do not currently specify how much, if any, reaches spacecraft autonomy and RPO, even with the above threats clearly outlined in national and international public media.
2.5. The UK lacks a funding structure that would draw space control, RPO, simulation and ISAM under one sovereign capability, built once. These capabilities use the same underlying technology, so treating them as separate procurement lines duplicates spend on the same capability, which is easily remedied.
Summary of recommendations:
The UK Government and the UK MoD have sense capabilities but continue to struggle with maneuverability capabilities. The UK Government should therefore:
3. Question 2 — What are the main military dependencies on space systems?
3.1. The UK’s established core military dependencies are satellite communications (SATCOM), positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and data relay.
3.2. A newer dependency now sits alongside them. The 2025 Strategic Defence Review put space control on equal footing with the UK's other operational domains i.e., land, sea, air and cyber, and named it a core capability requirement. The acquisition pipeline behind it has not caught up with that decision. Space control and autonomous orbital operations i.e., the ability to manoeuvre, inspect, defend and, where necessary, interdict in orbit, is stated government policy but remains to be an unfunded one.
4. Question 2(a) - Are there any under-appreciated areas that deserve closer scrutiny?
4.1. Four areas within space control deserve closer scrutiny from the Committee and the Government:
4.1.1. Space-to-space space domain awareness (SDA) — the ability to detect, track and characterise objects and activity in orbit from another spacecraft, rather than from the ground alone. UK Space Command's own figures show the scale of the problem: tracked objects in orbit have gone from around 3,000 a decade ago to over 11,000 today, with a forecast of up to 60,000 by 2030. A tracking problem that has nearly quadrupled in a decade cannot be solved from the ground alone or without the requisite funding.
4.1.2. Autonomous manoeuvre and rendezvous-and-proximity operations (RPO) — the ability for a spacecraft to approach, inspect and, if required, manoeuvre relative to another object without waiting on a ground-control decision cycle. This is the same technology base that underpins civil ISAM. The UK's three live sovereign space programmes i.e., ISTARI (ISR), BOREALIS (SDA) and Skynet 6 (SATCOM), strengthen sensing and communications, but none delivers this capability. The UK can see its satellites and talk to them, but cannot currently move them for RPO purposes.
4.1.3. Digital test environments i.e., simulation, space-control exercises and wargaming, allow operators and government to rehearse space-control and RPO scenarios, and test doctrine and response times, without placing live national assets at risk. Blackswan Space's own Mission Design Simulator, developed with the European Space Agency, is an example of the digital-twin infrastructure this depends on. Doctrine tested for the first time during a live incident is doctrine tested too late.
4.1.4. The MoD and UK Space Agency's National Space Operations Centre, which were launched in May 2024, already centralise ground-based satellite tracking, but they have no sensors actually in space. The UK therefore cannot see what is happening in orbit from orbit, which is the main strategic vulnerability this submission is highlighting.
5. Question 2(b) How much relies on non-UK assets (for example US systems)?
5.1. The UK's reliance on US systems is sharpest in exactly the newer category identified above i.e., space control. This is a sound basis for interoperability with allies, but it leaves the UK with limited sovereign capability in the fastest-growing part of its own military space dependency. This is especially important during the current era of geopolitical and transatlantic tension. Building greater UK and allied-European capability in autonomous RPO and SDA, including through UK-based industry, would reduce that reliance without displacing the value of allied cooperation.
5.2. A capability that is named in strategy but absent from procurement, tracked from the ground but not from space, and supplied by allies but not built at home, is not yet a national capability.
5.3. As UK space activity extends beyond low Earth orbit, autonomy stops being optional. Radio signals take longer to travel further, and at lunar or deep-space distances, the delay is long enough that a human on the ground literally cannot react in time to steer a spacecraft through a fast-moving situation. Space control via autonomy is the only way UK space operations can function at all as the UK's ambitions extend further from Earth
5.4. Recommendation: Government should fund the acquisition pipeline for space control and autonomous orbital operations to match the policy commitment made in the 2025 Strategic Defence Review. It should do so specifically by:
5.4.1. establishing space-to-space SDA as a distinct, funded capability line rather than an extension of ground-based tracking;
5.4.2. launching or designating a UK programme for autonomous manoeuvre and RPO, sitting alongside ISTARI, BOREALIS and Skynet 6, to close the gap those three programmes do not address;
5.4.3. formally recognising digital-twin and simulation infrastructure as national space-resilience capability, tested before it is needed operationally rather than during a live incident; and
5.4.4. setting out how UK dependence on US and allied assets will be reduced in space control and SDA specifically, including through investment in UK-based industry.
6. Question 3 — What capabilities do adversaries hold to disrupt space-enabled systems (both in space and on the ground)?
6.1. Adversary capability spans both the space and ground segments, and both Russia and China are diversifying it rather than concentrating on any one form. For example, the most damaging attack on European space infrastructure to date targeted a ground network rather than a satellite or a signal, even as both countries’ space control capabilities rapidly progress.
6.2. In the electromagnetic and cyber domain, adversaries hold jamming, spoofing and cyber-attack capability against UK space-enabled systems, targeting the signal and the network rather than the spacecraft itself. The UK's National Cyber Security Centre publicly attributed exactly this kind of attack to Russia i.e., the February 2022 cyberattack on Viasat's KA-SAT network, timed to hit an hour before Russian forces invaded Ukraine, which disabled tens of thousands of modems across Europe and, through spillover, cut remote monitoring of 5,800 wind turbines in Germany. A single cyberattack on ground infrastructure achieved a continent-wide effect and with no missile or jammer involved.
6.3. In orbit, adversaries hold anti-satellite and co-orbital capability, including the same class of rendezvous and proximity technology that enables beneficial servicing missions. This is not a future risk. In April 2026, two Russian satellites, COSMOS 2581 and COSMOS 2583, were tracked manoeuvring deliberately to within three metres of each other, part of an ongoing pattern of Russian rendezvous activity. China has gone further still: in July 2025, the satellites Shijian-21 and Shijian-25 docked in geosynchronous orbit and appeared to carry out the first satellite-to-satellite refuelling at that altitude achieved by any nation, and the US Space Force separately reported Chinese satellites running "dogfighting"-style manoeuvre drills the same year. The capability that lets a friendly spacecraft inspect, dock with or refuel another can equally let an adversary shadow, disable or capture one, and both Russia and China are actively rehearsing it.
6.4. On the ground, adversaries can target ground infrastructure and the data links between it and orbiting assets. The Viasat attack is the clearest evidence of why this matters: it was the ground segment, not the spacecraft, that proved the softest target. So much of the UK's current resilience model still assumes a continuous, uncontested link between ground control and the spacecraft it operates.
6.5. Taken together, this points to a growing need for autonomous detection, inspection and manoeuvre capability in the U’s space capabilities.
6.6. Recommendation: Government should treat ground-segment resilience and autonomous space-domain response as one connected investment, not two separate lines, by:
6.6.1. hardening and diversifying ground infrastructure and terminal networks against the wiper-malware style of attack already used against Viasat, rather than treating the spacecraft as the primary target;
6.6.2. funding autonomous detection, inspection and manoeuvre capability so that UK and allied assets can respond to co-orbital shadowing and close-approach activity of the kind Russia and China have both demonstrated, without depending on a ground-control decision cycle an adversary may have already severed; and
6.6.3. establishing standing, published UK space domain awareness of foreign RPO activity, rather than relying on commercial tracking firms to surface it after the fact. An adversary that can sever the link or close the distance should not be able to assume the UK will need a human in the loop to notice either.
7. Question 6 — What investments and wider actions are needed from Government and industry?
8. 6(a) To deter adversaries, including options to retaliate effectively if required
8.1. Government and industry should invest in space control and space-to-space SDA, so that the UK can detect and characterise threatening activity in orbit rather than relying primarily on allied or ground-based detection. Within the Defence Investment Plan's published figures, the government has allocated £880 million to "space-based ISR and Space Control" as a single combined line, with no public breakdown of the split. The Committee should clarify how the Government intends to spend this money and what benefits it will bring to the UK’s national security.
8.2. Government should support the development of autonomous, manoeuvrable spacecraft, and the improvement of RPO, inspection and proximity-operation capability, as the core technical building blocks of credible deterrence and, if required, effective response in orbit. The Defence Investment Plan's £5 billion for autonomous systems covers drones, autonomous ships, autonomous submarines and collaborative combat aircraft. None of the DIP’s funding is earmarked for autonomous spacecraft, which is the one domain in which the UK's adversaries are demonstrably furthest ahead.
8.3. Government should expand space training, exercising, digital test ranges and space wargaming, so that space-control doctrine and response times are tested and refined before they are needed operationally rather than during a live incident. The Army has already proven the model through Project ASGARD's autonomous systems, which were trialled under realistic conditions in Exercise Spring Storm before being fielded. Space capability deserves the same discipline.
8.4. Government should accelerate the adoption of commercial technologies into Defence. Autonomy, RPO and simulation capability of the kind described in this submission is being developed today in the UK commercial and allied sector. The government has already committed £1.6 billion to UK Defence Innovation specifically to pull dual-use technology into service faster. That UKDI funding should name autonomous RPO and space-domain technology as a priority category, rather than leaving space to compete informally against drones, quantum and AI for the same pot.
9. Question 6(b) To improve resilience, both for the UK and working with partners
9.1. The UK should move toward more redundant, distributed and manoeuvrable systems, reducing the extent to which the loss or degradation of any single asset or link constitutes a critical failure.
9.2. Government and industry should prioritise greater spacecraft autonomy, so that UK space assets can continue to operate, manoeuvre and defend themselves through periods when ground control is degraded, jammed or severed. The 2025 Strategic Defence Review already commits 10% of the defence equipment budget to novel technologies including autonomy. The Committee should ask the government to confirm what share of the SDR’s 10% spending on novel technologies will reach spacecraft autonomy specifically, rather than being absorbed entirely by land, sea, and air platforms.
9.3. Government should invest in better digital simulation and space mission rehearsal, building on the kind of digital-twin infrastructure Blackswan Space has developed with the European Space Agency, so that resilience to disruption is tested against realistic scenarios in advance.
9.4. Government should build stronger UK capability in ISAM, RPO and space control together, rather than as separate strands. ISAM and space-control missions draw on the same underlying autonomy and RPO technologies, so a pound spent on one builds sovereign capability in the other.
9.5. These recommendations are consistent with the UK Space Agency's Annual Report 2025–26 and the Defence Investment Plan. The UK Space Agency's report identifies ISAM as a critical capability supporting both economic growth and national security, including through its Active Debris Removal programme. The Defence Investment Plan allocates £3.2 billion to space by 2030, with at least £9 billion more promised between 2030 and 2035, yet independent analysis of the Plan, including from Durham University, has already concluded its long-term plan for space "is unclear."
9.6. Recommendation: Government should treat space control, autonomous RPO, digital-twin simulation and ISAM as one funded capability programme rather than four competing lines, by:
9.6.1. naming a specific, ring-fenced share of the Defence Investment Plan's £880 million ISR/Space Control allocation and its £5 billion autonomous-systems funding for spacecraft autonomy and RPO specifically, rather than leaving both folded into unspecified totals;
9.6.2. directing part of the £1.6 billion UK Defence Innovation fund and the Strategic Defence Review's 10% novel-technology target explicitly toward pulling commercial autonomy and simulation capability into service; and
9.6.3. building on the shared technology base between ISAM and space control so that funding for one deliberately builds sovereign capability in the other.
4 September 2026