Space defence assets under growing threat says Lockheed executive

When it comes to the safety of western defence assets in space, “there is no good news”, according to Justin Keller, director of advanced communications at Lockheed Martin Space.

The problem, Keller noted, “is only getting worse” mostly through China’s focused effort to develop technologies to jam, spoof or otherwise degrade access to satellite services including communications, timing, positioning and navigation for western defence forces.

Keller made those remarks at the Defence in Space conference held in London earlier this month. He said the rising east-Asian space power was “thinking about future jamming technologies” and moving at speed “outthinking in many ways” the western camp.

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Western militaries have become dependent on satellite technologies for their operations. From monitoring the movement of adversary troops via Earth-observing satellites, to securing connectivity from anywhere via satellite links to navigation for cruise missiles, space systems have become an irreplaceable part of modern-day warfare.

Oleksandr Danylyuk, chairman of the Centre for Defence Reforms, a Ukrainian defence think tank, pointed out during the event that satellite technologies have been key in the survival of his nation since the beginning of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

“From the very beginning, it was absolutely clear that Russia is bigger, has more human resources and a much more capable defence industry,” Danylyuk said. “We were completely outnumbered and outgunned. But mostly because of the support provided by commercial [space] companies, we had a much better understanding about what was going on our territory and even our satellite communications were better.”

SpaceX’s Starlink stepped in in the early days of the war, shipping thousands of terminals to keep Ukraine connected after Russia had taken down internet and cellular networks.

Kevin Seybert, government sales manager at SpaceX, described challenges SpaceX faced operating their service in an environment where the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signal was jammed by Russia.

“It was really the first time that we had seen our terminals operating in a GNSS-denied environment,” Seybert said. “With many terminals active all at the same time and seeing very similar kind of impacts, we realised that the GNSS-denied environment was causing performance issues. It was causing issues with terminals being able to enter the network and maintain our connection to the network.”

SpaceX solved the problem with software updates, finding a way to use Starlink’s own Ku-band signals to ascertain location “down to the point where we could maintain that communications connection quite closely”.

Since then, the company has worked on improving its positioning, timing and navigation (PNT) solution, relying solely on the signals transmitted by the constellation’s 7,000 interlinked satellites.

Such resourceful approaches, experts agreed, would prove vital in the future to maintaining access to indispensable satellite services for military and defence forces, governments and ordinary civilians.

On the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian-made malware disabled terminals of US satellite communications provider ViaSat across not just Ukraine but the entire continent of Europe. Such attacks are happening “at least two or three times a month”, according to David Davis, technical director – global government, at ST Engineering iDirect.

Space systems architects and operators need to increase the resilience of the services by being able to operate on multiple frequencies to avoid jamming and being able to switch satellites, as well as having satellites in multiple orbits.