Today’s Defence Committee sitting is a one-off evidence session on defence space. It is a pleasure to welcome the two panellists for the first of our two panels today. For the first hour, we will concentrate on certain aspects of defence space, before moving to our second panel at 12.30 pm. A very warm welcome to our first witness, who is here in person; it is a pleasure to welcome Gabriel Elefteriu, who is the deputy director for defence and space at the Council on Geostrategy. A warm welcome also to Juliana Suess, joining us virtually, who is a research associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. Juliana, I believe you are joining us from Berlin today.

I am, yes.

Without further ado, let us get straight into the questioning. We want to start on the threat landscape.

I will ask about the defence space strategy and any changes in the context, given that the strategy was published, unfortunately, shortly before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. There is a question mark over how much the strategy still stands, versus needing to be changed. Will you give us a sense of how relevant that piece of work is in this changed world?

Thank you very much for that question, and thank you very much, Chair, for the invitation. I am pleased that the Committee continues its interest in defence space. It is a vital topic for national defence, which generally does not get the coverage and attention that it should. To your question, the defence space strategy was a very strategic and focused document, and at the time it was a huge step change in UK policy, thinking and messaging about space. It laid out a very logical pathway to UK space power and put in place some very good guidelines for how UK defence space capability would develop. In relation to Ukraine specifically and the influence of the Ukraine war on the defence space strategy, I do not think that is what is making our current strategy for defence space a bit old, let’s say—I don’t think that is the problem. I think the main reason why we might want to look at updating that strategy is simply that the space threat landscape has changed, the global space balance is evolving, and the capabilities, intent and doctrine of major space players in the space domain are changing. That requires a revision of the capability aspect of UK defence space, but also of the way we think about space, looking again at our doctrinal markers for this domain. What I mean by that in particular is the changes that we have seen in recent weeks in the United States with the publication of its new doctrine document, “Space Force Doctrine Document 1”, and also the new “Space Warfighting” framework that the space force has put forward. These two documents indicate a fundamental shift in American thinking about space power. It is a posture shift from a defensive to an offensive posture. We can talk more about that, but I think that in the coming years, it will be really changing the game in space affairs. Now, all the conversation and the thinking—certainly in the United States but, I think, also by our adversaries, who will have to respond to what the United States is doing—are acquiring a much more aggressive angle and dimension. I think the United Kingdom should take note of that and have a conversation about whether we want to focus more on things like space control, counter-space and so on. I will end by saying, just to illustrate the point, that the defence space strategy does not even once mention words like “war”, “combat” or “warfighting”. So, a few years on, I think it is time to revisit the way we think about those things.

Thank you for a very full response. We will come on to ask about American strategy; I am sure colleagues will be asking you about that. It is really interesting that you highlight the fact that the UK’s defence space strategy document does not mention the word “war” at all. Ms Suess, at battlefield level, what lessons have we learned from Ukraine since publishing that document in early 2022, before the full-scale invasion?

Let me also start by thanking the Committee and the Chair for inviting me and enabling me to join you virtually; apologies that I cannot be there in person. You have mentioned the strategy. It is obviously a hugely important strategic document, as Gabriel has already outlined. I just want to add that it is quite broad as a document, so it is really difficult to set it or use it as a benchmark for what happened thereafter. But to talk about the lessons that we could draw from Ukraine for space, in regard to the battlefield, first and foremost is the realisation that the electromagnetic spectrum will be contested, and that that will have an impact on how we communicate and specifically how we navigate and use timing as well. Satellite communications and navigation and timing services from space will be impacted or at the very least restricted. We have seen that in Ukraine time and again. This also has implications for weapons systems, such as HIMARS, as a result of GPS jamming. I know that certain resilience actions have been taken already—the UK has bought anti-jamming devices—but we have really seen the results of electromagnetic warfare in this war. That in itself is not that new, as we have seen GPS jamming in the east of Ukraine since 2014, but we have really seen these temporary and non-kinetic ASATs—or anti-satellite weapon deployments—come to the fore in Ukraine. Specifically, navigation and communications will be impacted, which will obviously have an impact on how the west fights its wars. We are quite used to being able to rely on beyond-the-horizon communications, which are enabled through satellites, and we are obviously reliant on navigation through satellites. We definitely need to rethink how we build a system of systems that is resilient and has in-built redundancies.

As a follow-up question, what is the difference between how the UK is approaching space versus Germany, for example? This is in the context of the UK having left the European Union, and therefore having left various space programmes, such as Copernicus and Galileo, although we are still a member of the European Space Agency. Particularly since 2022, when we have not been in the EU, what is the difference between the direction that we are taking versus other countries such as Germany and other EU members?

I want to start by saying that most of Europe is pretty much in the same boat at the moment. Most of Europe has been very reliant on the United States when it comes to space capabilities, and we were very comfortable in that position. Obviously, there is now a rethink happening that we will discuss later, but generally most of Europe woke up to the fact that space is important militarily at the same time. We saw the establishment of space commands, which most of the time are under similar structures to the UK’s. For example, the space command in Germany also falls under the German air force, similar to how the UK runs its Space Command. When building up these space capabilities, there is an intrinsic advantage to being part of the EU, especially now that PESCO is also picking up space capabilities in its projects. Granted, some of those capabilities are in their very early stages, but it is definitely something to consider. You brought up Copernicus and Galileo; I believe—if I’m not mistaken—that the UK now has access to Copernicus again, but it is a civil capability first and foremost. Galileo is a separate matter for the resilience of navigation services, which I am sure we will go on to discuss. Galileo is an extremely precise navigation service that European states, or states in the EU, have access to at the moment. That is also being improved with sovereign access stations at the moment—that is in process. The current EU rules mean that only members that are fully part of the EEA countries can have access to defence industrial co-operation at large, which means PESCO, EDF and so on.

I am not an expert in the field, so you will have to forgive me. I want to look at bringing the UK’s response up to date with more recent developments, on the back of Fred’s question. I understand that there is a thing called the Space Leadership Council, but it has not met for 900 days—and quite a lot has happened in those 900 days. Is that a body you are aware of, and do you think it should be convened as a matter of urgency?

Under the Johnson premiership, the National Space Council was established. At the time, there were high hopes across the industry that the council could become the focal point for directing the UK’s national space policy across the board, because that is what we really need in this country. We are effectively running two space policies: a civil space policy and a defence space policy. They are integrated on paper but not much in reality. A primary requirement is to build that central brain for UK space policy, and certainly with high-level political sponsorship. The National Space Council, which was established back then, looked to be one answer to this question, but because of events, it has fallen by the wayside. I think it would be absolutely fantastic if that structure could be re-established, perhaps supported by a secretariat that can start to bring together—and bring more coherence to—UK space policymaking across the board, because you need that central authority to direct national policy in this area. Indeed, as many have observed so far, UK space policymaking in general is very fragmented across different Departments, from the MOD and DSIT to the Department for Transport and so on. That leads, of course, to a lack of coherence, and we can perhaps talk more about the waste that results from that as well. The most deleterious effect of all of this is a lack of clear strategic intent for UK space power in general. That strategic intent has to have top-level political sponsorship—it has to come from the centre of Government. A good model for how this should be done for space is the approach that was taken regarding cyber after 2010, which was then led right from the centre of Government, from the Cabinet Office. Over time, within 10 years—and certainly now, 15 years since then—the UK has a very strong cyber capability, and is one of the principal cyber powers in the world. We also have a National Cyber Force, which is a good thing to keep in mind because that should also indicate a potential pathway for space.

Juliana, is there anything you want to add?

No, nothing further, thank you.

Thank you. If it is any consolation, when I worked in the Ministry of Defence, we had two teams working on the single version of the truth, so don’t worry about incoherence in UK space policy.

Anything further on the nuclear anti-satellite weapons?

Yes, moving on, I think it was in 2021 that we saw the Russian testing of a direct-ascent anti-satellite capability, to international opprobrium at the time. How has the threat environment developed since then? What have we seen? Can you bring us up to date on what is happening up there?

It has worsened across the board; Juliana will probably agree as well. With Russia, we have seen intelligence assessments from the United States as to a potential Russian nuclear weapon being deployed in space in the future. It is assessed at the moment that it has not been deployed, but they are working on this capability, so that is one risk that is now on the table, which has to be accounted for.

This is a nuclear weapon constantly loitering—deployed in space for deployment downwards. Is that correct?

No, this would be a nuclear weapon that would be deployed in space, with the view of detonating it in space in that scenario. But it is not deployed yet. That is the standing assessment from the Americans. Apart from that, there has been a range of troublesome behaviours from both China and Russia in terms of RPOs—rendezvous and proximity operations—where satellites exercise close manoeuvres; they will close in with a target satellite and manoeuvre around it. They are learning this capability quite well. Recently, in fact, the leadership of the US space force has started to describe these sort of behaviours as “dogfighting in space”. So there is that element coming up. We have had both Chinese and Russian satellites coming close, performing these sorts of manoeuvres around allied satellites—American satellites—and inspecting them. This is of course assessed as being a security threat, because these satellites can then be used for attack purposes, with a range of different effects applied. The environment is certainly worsening. It is also worsening from the point of view of the expansion of the military satellite capability that is being deployed in orbit, especially by China—not necessarily space weapons, but satellites that are used for remote sensing, that can fix and track joint forces in the western Pacific, for example. There are a lot of electronic intelligent satellites, electro-optical satellites and SAR satellites. That development is very important. We need to recognise that the command of space is becoming foundational for the command of the sea, because it supports long-range strike and missile defence, especially in respect of the new classes of long-range weapons, including the hypersonics that are being developed and coming online. We should be aware of the fact that the space layer of defence is not just something that is added to or simply supports the terrestrial domains and the forces operating in those domains: it is absolutely foundational to the military balance.

So it is foundational and contested.

Yes.

I wanted to add a couple of things. Russia and China have been mentioned as threat actors that we see acting in space. I think we have to view them slightly separately, though. As Gabriel has outlined, China has been using some very sophisticated manoeuvring in space. That obviously gives us concerns that our assets will potentially be observed or photographed. There are also further worries about potential signal interception. It is important to add that, militarily, China needs space for Earth observation and target identification. China does not benefit from a kinetic attack in space, because that would put its own assets at risk. On the other hand, Russia has much less to lose in space and sees an asymmetric advantage in disrupting western space assets in the case of a conflict, as we saw with the cyber-attack against Viasat and the electromagnetic spectrum disruptions. On the concerns about a Russian nuclear weapon, this would be a weapon that is detonated in space, as Gabriel has said, but I want to briefly outline the consequences it would have. We are talking about vast and indiscriminate destruction of the orbit in which it is detonated. Much depends on the exact location, height and size of the warhead, but we are talking about the immediate destruction of the satellites in the immediate vicinity as a result of the gamma blast. We are then also talking about damage to the electronics in that orbit generally, through the electromagnetic pulse and heightened radiation. That would be a much longer process—we are talking about degradation over time here. If we are talking about low Earth orbit, which hosts definitely over 80% and potentially at this point over 90% of all satellites—this includes the vast majority of all commercial satellites, which will not be radiation hardened or EMP hardened to the extent that they would be able to sustain such an attack—then we are talking about an orbit that is potentially unusable for at least a year. That is not to mention the development of space debris, which we would have to contend with.

Does anyone deploy EMP-hardened capability in low Earth orbit?

Generally, military assets would be EMP and radiation hardened, but those are typically satellites that we would see in geostationary orbit. I know that the Americans are debating or thinking about deploying early warning sensors in satellites in low Earth orbit as well. That obviously raises further concerns about the national technical means that might be impacted as a result.

To better inform ourselves as parliamentarians, the Defence Committee has had various discussions and recently visited UK Space Command—we are very grateful to RAF High Wycombe for hosting us. Among the various threats and risks, space debris is a major risk to personnel, as well as to our equipment. How would you categorise the progress on dealing collectively with clutter, given, as you have mentioned, the competing priorities of the various nations, including China and Russia, and Europe and the US? Where are we in dealing with that threat and risk?

The situation is worsening—there is no question about that—and several things are contributing to that. The first is simply the growth in the satellite population in orbit. There are over 11,000 satellites in orbit—perhaps 12,000 now—and that number is rapidly growing. That is the result of the deployment of mega-constellations: there is Starlink, obviously, but also Project Kuiper is starting to deploy, and the Chinese constellations are starting to deploy. That will certainly add thousands more satellites, so more congestion in orbit is coming purely from operational spacecraft. As Juliana says, they are all being deployed in low Earth orbit. Even though space is a very big place, the most useful orbits are in LEO, so everyone wants to operate there—there is a reason why that is happening. At the same time, in recent years we have seen further cases of satellites—old, disused satellites—accidentally exploding in orbit. That happens, so the debris problem also continues to grow in that way. In terms of mitigations for that, there has been some progress in international negotiations on rules and norms of behaviour and so on, to try to impose new standards and regulations on companies—space operators—to de-orbit their satellites at the end of their lifetime. But we are in a race against time, and there is a limit to what international negotiations and rule making can achieve.

Ms Suess, further to that, the Defence Committee also recently visited the international space show in Farnborough, where we saw some companies engaged in technology to help to deal with some of the clutter and debris. Why do you think we have had such a lack of progress collectively?

There are two big problem sets with debris collection. First, there are several technical challenges to actually being able to achieve it. A couple of different technologies have been deployed—some are nets; some are magnetic—but it still requires, at the very least, quite sophisticated manoeuvring to get close enough to a piece of debris to catch it. Specifically in the commercial realm, there has just been a lack of funding. At the moment, the rules around how to deal safely with the satellite are fairly lax. Satellites are, for the most part, not insured as soon as they are in space, so we have not seen the financial incentives to clear up space debris. The typical procedure for de-orbiting a satellite from low Earth orbit is to simply let it be dragged back down through the atmosphere and for it to burn up there. Obviously, we have seen instances where that did not happen and satellites came crashing back down to Earth. I think we simply lack the financial incentive to make sure that space debris gets cleared up sufficiently.

Thank you. Let us move on to the next frontier with Mike Martin.

Ms Suess, I am interested in the conversation about Russia and China and would like to broaden it to the members of the UN Security Council. How would you rate or rank the P5 in terms of their space capabilities?

When it comes to the most sophisticated space actors, the US is still the undisputed No. 1—in terms of funding, capabilities and legacy, it is clear that the US comes out on top—but China has obviously been investing a huge amount of capability and has always been hitting its timelines on civil or military capabilities. As we have outlined, we have seen China come on in strides in the past couple of decades. They have also deployed a space plane similar to the US capability X-37B, which has really raised some eyebrows, in addition to satellites that have robotic arms and can catch satellites. That has only been tested on their own, but they can catch satellites and bring them into what we call a graveyard orbit—a less-used orbit—so that they are not a danger any more, and then return them to their original orbit. That shows the sophisticated manoeuvring they are able to do. Russia has been losing its space power in the past couple of years as a result of sanctions, corruption, ageing infrastructure and a sort of brain-drain problem. We have seen Russia struggle to meet its timelines when it comes to new projects. Yes, they have launched quite a number of new satellites in the last two years, but we have definitely seen that their space power status has been lost to a degree. We know, for example, that they were relying on commercial space imagery for some of their operations in Ukraine, which signifies to me that their trust in their own systems is not what it used to be. Those are the top three that I would rank. As discussed earlier, European space powers are in the same boat at the moment, where we are building up capability. Obviously, there are long timelines and it is quite expensive as well.

So you would put Russia above the UK and France.

At the moment, it is not transparent so we cannot see where Russia is at exactly, but when it comes to, for example, SSA—space situational awareness—I think Russia’s capabilities are still quite strong. That is also a legacy of the cold war. Obviously, the UK and France are gaining through access to the US catalogue, but when it comes to sovereign assets on their own, Russia still has more sophisticated SSA capabilities.

Gabriel, would you agree with that?

Yes, I completely agree with that. That is certainly the ranking: the US, China, Russia, France and the UK. I emphasise that the UK is very far behind. This is one of the most glaring facts about UK space power: there is a huge disconnect between where the UK stands internationally, in terms of its military, economic and diplomatic standing in the world as a world actor, and where we are in terms of space power. It is a huge disconnect. As the Committee’s own report noted when it was published, the UK’s spending on space is somewhere in the bottom half of the first 20 countries. We are the only P5 country without sovereign access to PNT and the only P5 country without sovereign access to launch. Until last year, we were the only country without a Government-owned ISR capability. Last year, we had the launch of the Tyche satellite, which is the first UK Government spy satellite. It is worth underlining the point that the United Kingdom launched its first spy satellite only in 2024. If you look at any measure—whether it is our spending on military space or our capabilities in orbit—we are very far behind our peers, which is a very anomalous situation.

Do all the other P5 countries have a unified space strategy, organisation and so forth? I noticed that you said earlier that we had two strategies.

Yes, they do. I think a good model for the UK, in terms of unifying and cohering our space policymaking and the direction of the national space effort, could be France—in my view, the model is France. The French operate a central space agency that also delivers for defence. They have the space centre at Toulouse, which is where they integrate both civil and defence space capability development and research and development. That one agency really is the directing force for the French space programme.

That is helpful; thank you. Ms Suess, as Fred alluded to earlier, in the integrated review in 2021 we put aside just under £1.5 billion for space defence. Is that being spent on the right priorities and is that capability development on track? How are we doing with that wish list?

Yes, the wish list indeed. As you said, it was £1.5 billion in general for space, but a separate £5 billion was also set aside for Skynet, which makes sense to me as that is a legacy programme that is working quite well. To work through the capabilities one by one, obviously communications is covered through Skynet, but there is also the buying in of commercial services for communications that do not have to be 100% sensitive—for example, welfare services are already covered through commercial. Obviously, the Government share in OneWeb makes sense. For me, an additional question would be about whether we can guarantee Skynet’s resilience, specifically with the upcoming generations. If we think about the timeline of a satellite—from planning to manufacturing, to the time it is actually sent into space—there is a lot of time in between, and the threat assessment to the environment of space has changed quite significantly in that time. Threat assessments should be done regularly to make sure that we are up to date on that. We should specifically think about how long a satellite such as Skynet will remain in space. There has been some thinking around PNT resilience and redundancies since the DSS, but I do not recall specific funding being set aside for that. I think PNT resilience was a blind spot of the DSS at the time. The space industrial plan that was published thereafter has caught up on that, and plans such as MoD Time are showing that the thinking on that is evolving. Again, money was set aside for space situational awareness. From what I have heard, the National Space Operations Centre is nearing full operational capability, which is good news. Obviously, the UK is also benefiting from Fylingdales, being able to share data with the US, and having that mutual dependency and mutual collaboration working there. With £970 million set aside at the time for ISR, it was probably the biggest big-ticket item on the list. In terms of progress, it has been a little slow when it comes to the implementation of constellation ISTARI. It is a little bit delayed at this point and we are looking at full operational capacity in the early 2030s, if we are being optimistic. On the other hand, that is one of the capability gaps that can be most easily filled through commercial partners. Something we have seen in the war in Ukraine is that commercial partners could very easily supply space data imagery, whether that is radar or optical, to Ukrainian forces quite rapidly, partly also through the US. That is something to mention—that the gap there can be plugged in the meantime.

Thank you. Gabriel, do you have any final points to add on that?

I think Juliana gave a very good summary of this. I would just specify a few things. At the moment, the UK is on an upwards capability trajectory. That is absolutely clear. As I have mentioned, we already had the Tyche demonstrator satellite launch last year. We know that a number of other projects are in the pipeline and set for launch in 2026 and 2027. That is satellites like Titania, which will be testing laser communications—optical communications. There will be Juno, which is a follow-on to Tyche—electrical optical sensors. There might be two satellites in that programme. And there is of course Oberon, which is a space radar system; again, there are two satellites in that. As far as we understand at this point, these are demonstrator satellites, so the actual architecture of the ISTARI constellation is still unclear. It is probably normal at this point to still experiment and see how that architecture should evolve. As Juliana says, I do think progress is slow when we look at what other actors are deploying in space, how quickly they are moving in space and how much money they are investing, specifically in military space. On the question of whether the defence space portfolio as laid out in the 2022 Defence Space Strategy is still valid, I think that should be re-examined, in light of what we are seeing from the Americans, who are now, as I mentioned before, moving towards a more aggressive posture increasingly focused now on space control, orbital warfare, orbital strike and indeed terrestrial strike from orbit. This is really the big one. President Trump has, as you know, signed an executive order directing—

We will move on to the US in a little while. I want to go on to other allies. At this point, I want to bring in George Freeman, who is guesting from the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. He was a former Minister for Science, Research and Innovation.

I do not think it is part of that. As we all know, there are significant political issues that are framing the potential for space collaboration between the UK and Europe. The European Union is very focused on its sovereignty and developing its own systems for its own use. From a third-party perspective, negotiations on acceding to those kinds of programmes will be very difficult indeed, and personally, I do not think we have that opportunity. But, at the same time, we should also note that the European conversation on the space layer of the future European defence autonomy vision, which is being debated so much, is very basic at the moment, I think. A lot has been mentioned but only in very general terms about IRIS², for example. Andrius Kubilius has also mentioned, at some point, the need for a ISR constellation. IRIS² is a communications constellation, but there could be an interest from the EU in developing an ISR constellation. That might offer a new point of negotiation for the UK to leverage its expertise in that domain.

As we discussed earlier, the Johnson Government opted for a hard Brexit when it came to structural co-operation with the EU on defence and security. We have seen the EU move forward quite rapidly on space in terms of building its own Earth observation constellation and its own navigation constellation, as well as publishing a security and defence space strategy not so long ago—so also definitely recognising the need for protection and defence of those assets. I agree that I do not currently see where the UK would be able to slot into that. On the other hand, I highlight that NATO as an alliance has also now started to take space more seriously in the defence sector, acting as more of a middleman, being able to bring together what each individual member state has to offer. Obviously, the UK has already offered the Skynet communications service as part of that. For the UK, perhaps NATO, at the moment, seems to be—to me at least—the more realistic avenue for collaboration. With the digital constellation—Aquila, for example, for Earth observation—that is certainly something that would bring a lot of benefit.

I see that time is defeating us, so I ask both our expert witnesses to keep their responses as precise and laser-focused as possible. Moving on to allied co-operation on space, I call Jesse Norman.

Thank you very much. As a Minister for space transport, I was at the last meeting of the Space Council, as was George Freeman as Minister for space research. Ministers at that meeting were quite discontented by an attempt to rubber-stamp a decision, which seemed to me to perfectly reinforce the need for political oversight and therefore the need for the council to exist. At any rate, it didn’t meet after that, so I just flag that as a cautionary tale. I want to ask you first, Mr Elefteriu, a question about the USA. Obviously, in space matters, this country is particularly reliant on the USA for technology sharing and capability. The question is whether or not the US drive for greater autonomy and greater risk ownership and spending in NATO—particularly in Europe—has any implications in the area of space. How do you see those playing out?

With respect to the UK?

Yes.

The main thing that should concern us is, as I said, the shift in US military space policy towards a much more offensive posture. I think the UK needs to look again at its own space posture and see how it reacts to that. We can look at the facts, such as that the United States is now focusing increasingly on space superiority and missions like, as I said, orbital warfare, including orbital strike and terrestrial strike from orbit, which will have far-reaching consequences for warfare. When we look at those things, they are important arguments to keep in mind when thinking about whom the United Kingdom should be working with in space going forward. We have had the conversation about what we can do with the Europeans, but we should not forget the new areas of defence space, which involve space-based interceptors as part of future missile defence—again, a new departure in the space domain. That involves space strike, which is unique to the United States; the Europeans have no competency in that area, or in space warfighting. Also in Europe, there is hardly any conversation about space support for missile defence, especially for future missile defence with the tracking layer to support that future capability. The Americans are at the forefront of those technologies. Strategic space warfare systems are, in my view, the area in which the UK should take a strategic interest going forward, and the Americans are the only game in town on that at the moment. When we look at the situation of the divergence between the United States and Europe and at what that means for space, we need to make that calculation of what matters for UK space technology and space power going forward.

To be clear, it is not just about the funding, although the UK and Europe might be expected to put up more; there is a defence opportunity here for the UK, and it is most of all a matter of posture in relation to the USA. That is what I think you are saying.

Yes. Certainly in terms of the space domain, our funding should prioritise things in our national defence space interest, which by the way is not very clearly articulated in UK policy. That is something we need to look at.

That is very helpful, thanks. Juliana, do you want to comment on any of that?

Yes, I have a quick additional point to make. We have heard that the UK is incredibly reliant on the US—as is every other European nation—for strategic enablers and, specifically, when it comes to military capabilities. I wanted to add that it is also about the processes and the integration level, which would not make for complete isolation. Even if European countries wanted to become more independent, it goes further and deeper than just the capabilities and the funding attached; it is also about how we set ourselves up.

We spoke about our reliance on the US for several things. How much of a vulnerability do you think our reliance is on the US system, GPS?

We are entirely reliant, for military purposes, on the GPS M-code. The UK is unique among allies in having privileged access to the military GPS signal, which is very good. Of course, there is the political question of what, which is definitely a vulnerability, but we must keep in mind that the requirement for PNT in the context of the future battlefield is also changing. Increasingly, we see weapons systems that have their own guidance, rather than relying on external guidance, GPS guidance, and so on. On the Ukrainian battlefield, last year we saw the first fully robot-led assault in the conflict. Those kinds of systems rely on very precise mapping. There is a continued role for space assets in mapping terrain with precision at very high rates, and indeed on a persistent basis, to support navigation. There are also other types of aids for navigation, like quantum compasses, which are in development, and which will be independent of GPS. There are also new technologies being experimented with by the US Space Force, by the Space Development Agency, in terms of signals of opportunity, and so on, which can deliver PNT signals from low earth orbit. Alternatives to GPS—to classic GNSS systems—are being developed. In the long term, the dependency on GPS will reduce from a military and battlefield viewpoint. Obviously, it is very hard to forecast exactly the rate at which that development will evolve.

Okay. Would you seek to gain full access to Galileo again, and what is the likelihood of that happening?

I do not think it is very likely. As we have discussed before, if those kinds of negotiations were to begin, they will be very difficult, and it will come at a very high cost for the UK and probably make it not worth it. It is not something that can be achieved very quickly and in the relevant timeframe, so probably that is not where we want to put our time and effort at the moment.

Thank you. Ms Suess, do you have anything to add to that?

The reliance on GPS is massive. With regard to resilience and redundancy, I do not see the option for redundancy, or building a redundant system independently at the moment, which would obviously be a huge cost and timeline related project. But there are definitely things that can be done to make the system more resilient from a sovereign point of view. As I mentioned earlier, MOD Time is one such way of doing that, while another is enhanced long-range navigation systems. All those options were already mentioned in the navigation framework published in 2023, which I think still stands.

The £1.4 billion that has been allocated for 10 years does seem incredibly small compared to other countries. Do you think this is being taken seriously enough given the amount of funding that has been put behind it?

No, I do not think that is the case. Resources are limited in the UK, but let us not forget that Britain was until recently the highest nation for military spending in Europe; we have since been overtaken by Germany. In terms of military space investments, we are very far behind our allies and peers. Japan, in its 2022 national security strategy, allocated £5.3 billion extra for military space by 2027. In its new military programming act 2024-30, France has allocated £5 billion extra. That is a 45% increase for military space compared to what they had in the previous period. Even Australia is putting in £6 billion by 2036. Countries are investing in this on a very different scale to the UK, and we should question why they are doing that. What do they know that we do not?

Juliana, I know you have written extensively, including in a paper that you submitted to RUSI last year, about the space skills needed by personnel and how they should be embedded in defence, rather than looking at it as a niche area. Given that, what particular challenges exist in recruiting suitably qualified personnel? If you were advising the CDS, what would you tell him to do to recruit more in this domain?

I think that the inherent thing with space is that it is always seen as a separate aspect of defence. Space underpins the most basic capabilities that we have in defence. Without space, we would not see the fundamentals that modern defence currently stands on, but that is not really communicated sufficiently. Because space has been “working fine” for the last 35 years—GPS communications, for example—it has not been something that the UK has had to think specifically about in any conflict. Satcom and navigation were always guaranteed, so that was not really a concern. When looking at space security, we have to think not only about the integration element that space provides but about the potential for space itself to be a battlefield. I think that the communication does not always really add up in that sense, so space is sometimes seen too much as a battlefield of the future, even though we have concerns that we need to address now, and resilience that need to be built up now. That is, in part, due to communication. The setting up of the UK Space Academy, which is running space courses as part of the UK Defence Academy, is a good first step. It is about saying that space is a part of defence just like air, land, sea and cyber. Also, we need to think about space security almost how we think about cyber security. Any employee of any company gets taught about the dangers of opening an email that could be a potential phishing threat. Equally, in the military we should think about how we detect and track potential space threats. They are not something unique that happen to other states or militaries; they are something that we need to contend with today.

What is your assessment of the efforts to increase space literacy across defence more broadly?

I think it is getting better, but again it is a case of integrating it. Space Command can play a huge role in that. I know space liaison officers have been stationed in different parts of the military, but that can lead to the wrong assumption that space is so special and complicated that it can be handled by only very few people. I think that sends the wrong message, when space is actually important to all parts of the military, so it is just something that needs to be embedded earlier as a regular part of the military. Again, UK Space Command has done some great work in that realm, and the UK Space Academy will also do its bit. It is more about normalising space, rather than putting it on a pedestal as a very special part of defence, because it is not.

May I add something on that, because this is an important angle in the conversation? The way to attract more people to space in general is to have a stronger national narrative about space, including what this country wants to do in space and whether we want to be a major space nation in the 21st century. There is absolutely no question that the space domain is going to be one of the big stories in the coming decade, from both a national security point of view and an economic point of view. We do not yet have that narrative in the UK. We do not have it anywhere near what you see in countries such as India or France, not to mention China. For example, there was an opinion poll a few years ago that looked at what children in China, the United States and the UK wanted to be when they grew up. In China, they wanted to be astronauts—or taikonauts, as they call them—but in the UK and the United States, they wanted to be media influencers. There is a strong correlation between the national narrative that a country has about its space aspirations and the amount of interest elicited from the young generations in going into this area. This is a task for political leaders—for politicians—to talk more about space and to have that conversation informed by the national interest in space. There is a UK national interest in our country being a stronger space power in the future. As I said, there is an economic interest in that, and there is a national security interest in that. Human spaceflight is also a very important angle to this. To date, we have only had one UK astronaut going to the ISS—Tim Peake. Just one. There are so many other countries—much smaller countries—that have had multiple astronauts go there. We have been running a very marginal conversation on space so far. Our UK space policy model has always relied on Europe for scientific and civil space exploration activities, and on the Americans for defence space activities. That has not left much room for the articulation of a national interest and a national vision for what the United Kingdom as a country wants to achieve there. We do not really have end-to-end UK-flagged space exploration missions going out there—a rover with the Union Jack on it going to the moon. I know it might sound a bit silly at some point, but that is what other nations do, and it is effective.

Thank you very much for that. We could have a whole new session just on that one question, but thank you for your answers.

Thank you very much, Mr Gabriel Elefteriu and Ms Juliana Suess, for your expert evidence today. With that, I bring the first panel of our Defence Committee session to an end. Witnesses: Doug Liddle and Toby Harris.

Welcome to the second panel of the Defence Committee’s evidence session on defence space. We have Doug Liddle, the chair of UKspace, with us, and I also extend a very warm welcome to Toby Harris, who is also from UKspace, but is the chair of the space domain working group. Let’s go to George Freeman for the first line of questioning around the MOD procurement.

Please, do not feel compelled to both answer each question. You can tag team as appropriate.

It is a really good question. I think that we have all the pieces, but not in a joined-up fashion. Inside defence, we have Space Command and StratCom, which are both involved in defence procurement, alongside a number of different mechanisms for procuring things—whether that be Defence Digital, DE&S or another. In the civil world, we have DSIT, DBT and other organisations that are interested in space, and a split between DSIT and the UK Space Agency, where there is often a blur of lines. We have some good strategies. The defence base strategy, in and of itself, is good; it provides some clarity. We have a national space strategy, which has been refined through the industrial plan, and has brought us down to a number of key capabilities that we are prioritising—although those priorities are still quite broad. We have lots of pieces in different places. That makes it hard to have coherent signals for industry. It means that we are not getting efficiencies because, space being inherently dual use, often we in the sector are developing something for the civil world that is very similar to something that we could develop for the defence world. We are looking for funding for those things twice, which is kind of crazy. In fact, the nature of space funding in the UK means that we are not being funded for that development at all because it is out of scope or out of budget, so we miss out on opportunities. That weakens us as a potential international ally. Coming back to your question: does our framework allow us to play a role in European defence? It does, but a marginalised role, and not as strong a role as we, as a sector, could play.

That is tricky. I am not sure that we are giving a good signal at the moment on how we should invest in space defence. Certainly in my own area of expertise—space domain awareness—we still need to do more work to try to understand, first, where we want to go with SDA and, secondly, how to get more investment into that area. On European defence, we were removed from the EU SST programme after Brexit. That is an area where a lot of UK companies wanted to integrate and provide services but are now unable to do so. No UK company can directly put SDA data or capability into that area.

I would like to see a couple of things: first, a single voice for space inside Government. Do not take it away from the Departments but it should join up somewhere. It should not join up at the Prime Minister. Perhaps, logically in the Cabinet Office, there could be a single voice who could look across all space spending and procurement. The other thing would be to look at how we could implement something along the lines of a national space enterprise, in which industry could work alongside Government. A lot of the expertise lies in industry at the moment. We have thousands of people who deeply understand space, what we can get from it and how we can deliver value, security and growth from it. We need to work with industry alongside Government to make sure that we catch up and fulfil our promise. We have some very smart people in this country, coming out of some very good universities, creating some excellent start-ups and small companies and working in some amazing primes, yet we are not punching at our weight, never mind above it.

Did UKspace make a submission to the defence review?

Yes.

When our predecessor Committee looked into this area, it heard that there was not much meaningful engagement with SMEs, and a lot of SMEs said that a lot of their engagement was through key strategic partners. There was a lot of disappointment there. Now that the MOD has recognised, avowedly, that it needs to improve the acquisition process to deliver operational space capabilities at speed, what progress has been made already, in your opinion, Mr Liddle? How much have recently announced changes affected the delivery of space capabilities, for example the creation of a National Armaments Director post and changes to defence acquisition processes?

I think the proof will be in the pudding. We have not actually experienced these changes yet in industry to any degree. Historically, I have been an SME going through procurement processes, and you can get there, but it is hard work. There are a number of barriers presented to SMEs, whether that be security clearances or the defence conditions—the DEFCONs—where all the IP might be owned by the authority, the state. For small companies, IP is lifeblood and it allows them to scale and grow. The barrier could be payment plans: a large company can tolerate not being paid at kick-off, whereas a small company cannot wait 12 months for their first payment. A number of things make it very challenging as an SME to take a Government contract, particularly an MOD contract. Historically, they have been very good at trying to work around that—but having to find workarounds rather than it being part of the baseline process is the problem.

It is our intention as a Committee to hold the Ministry of Defence’s feet to the fire on this—to make sure that the proof is in the pudding, as you said. Mr Harris, what role do small and medium-sized enterprises play within the defence space capability and what hurdles do they face in engaging with the Ministry of Defence? Could you come up with examples?

About 90% of UKspace commercial companies are SMEs or start-ups. It is a huge number. They are fundamental in coming up with innovative approaches to very difficult and complex problems. Space is a difficult domain to work within. A lot of the SMEs and start-ups have good collaborations with universities so they can come up with new and innovative solutions to some of the problems. They are fundamental in trying to develop technologies that might be considered too high risk for larger primes, for example, that do not have the time, money or direction to do so. In my own experience, and from my experience of being on the SDA group, which is made up predominantly of SMEs, the many access points into government for procurement make it very confusing and complicated. There is a whole host of different ways for procurement to happen. A lot of those different portals and frameworks and so on are very high bar for an SME or start-up. That makes it very difficult for them to input appropriately and to put tenders in and that kind of thing. There is a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy for smaller companies as well, which makes it very difficult. Sometimes I think SMEs feel like they are on the back foot in trying to put innovative and extremely useful solutions in to defence.

We will now move on to skills. Alex Baker, please.

The Government have recognised that there is a skills challenge facing the space sector, though obviously that is not exclusive to the space sector. Some plans have been put in place to address these issues: skills feature in the national space strategy and in the space industrial plan. Have we seen any material difference off the back of that work?

I would say we are probably still waiting to see the impact. These things tend to take a few years to trickle down. There has been some really good cross-sector work done between the Government, industry and academia to address some of the skills issues and to develop a strategic workforce action plan, which is now going through its execution phase. We just have to be mindful of attacking the right things because, as you say, the skills deficit is probably true across a lot of high-tech industries. One area in space, for instance, is that as satellite processing capability is improving, where we are struggling is because we would like to use machine learning and AI in space, but we are not going to pay the salaries that are paid in other industries and other sectors. There are some very niche skills around RF software-defined radio—some of them are particular to space—and there are some things around being able to orbit other satellites that are obviously, again, very niche. We can focus on those, but it is a bigger problem about the workforce. It goes back to, as Gabriel said, that national story. How does the UK see itself? How do our citizens see themselves, and do they want to be part of a high-tech industry? We often talk about how, at a young age, it is very easy to enthuse children with rockets and dinosaurs, but when they get to choosing their GCSEs, A-levels and degree courses, they do not think there are jobs in space. It is about making sure that people, particularly parents, realise that there are jobs in space, so that our young people start to follow those career lines. Then, by the time they are out of schooling and academia and are going into the workforce, they will know that they want to work as a satellite engineer, because there are jobs—because Uncle Bob down the road works as a satellite engineer, so there is surely a job there. I have been at STEM events in sixth forms where parents will stand next to a child and say, “No, no, don’t do that. There’s no job in that. Go into oil and gas. Go into banking.” I don’t have anything against banking or oil and gas, but space is a valid career. We need to make sure that people nationally understand—in the same way that they would in France, Germany, the US, Japan and all those other countries—that there is a career in space.

I agree with everything that you have said, but some of that is very long-term, big vision stuff. We have a space strategy that is about what we can deliver by 2030. That gives us five years. What do you think is achievable by 2030?

It is a bit chicken and egg, because we have not been spending money in space at a Government level for the last few years. We talk about this £1.5 billion and say that it is not much money for defence space, but very little of that has been spent so far in the last three or four years since the defence space strategy came along. Some of our companies have actually downsized in that time. We can make predictions about what careers and what people we will need, but at the moment, we are not crying out for them. The sad truth is that, to be frank, we have struggled a bit in the last few years in the space sector: the Government have promised, companies have geared up against those promises, industry has invested and VCs have invested—we have all been ready to go—but the programmes have not appeared. I would throw it back and say, “Yes, if that investment comes, we will react and do a lot of local stuff.” There are very tactical spacecraft systems engineering apprenticeships going on at the moment, which are degree apprenticeships that will kick out really capable engineers in the next two to three years. That is brilliant, and those sorts of things will work really well, but we are not going to suddenly gear up and do hundreds of them until we are sure that the country is coming with us. The industry is ready—it is poised and pregnant ready to do this—but we need the Government to come with us.

Obviously we have had a new Government over the last nine months. In the conversations you have had with that new Government, do they get that agenda?

Our feeling is yes, but it is a tentative yes, as ever. We are early in the first term of this Government, so we need to understand where their intentions truly lie. At the moment we have confusion, with multiple Ministers still having responsibility for space. It is often very hard to know quite who to talk to, to be frank. We need to have some clarity in those asks, and some clarity and direction to be able to understand whether we will get what we hope we will get. But we will continue to invest and gear ourselves up to be ready.

If the Government could make one intervention to move us forward, what would you like that to be?

A single person in Government—the same answer as earlier—who has oversight of all the different activities going on across Government.

We will now come on to commercial collaboration.

I just want to run the tape on my understanding of the role that Starlink played in Ukraine. As a couple of experts, you might confirm that this version is the right one: the Russians took out the Ukrainian satellite-based internet capability and Starlink, a SpaceX company, provided it, including to the tune of about 47,000 terminals. But when the Ukrainians wanted to push into Crimea, SpaceX said that they could not do that because of the US sanctions regime on Russia. The long and the short of it was that the operational plan was hindered—or Ukraine’s aspirations were—by their access to a civilian capability paid for by the Pentagon. There is now a more military version of it—Starshield, I think. I am getting warm body language so far; is that your understanding of where we have got to?

That is my understanding.

Agreed, yes.

That brings us into the realm of sovereign nations having huge reliance on commercial capability for the prosecution of self-defence. You might say that ’twas ever thus, but it is obviously not a national capability of Ukraine; they are reliant on the commercial sector. Can you give us a sense of the concentration risk? How much of a marketplace is there out there? Could the Ukrainians have gone to anyone else in order to get that capability in short order?

I will start, and you can correct me, Doug. At the time, Starlink was probably the only real capability available that could provide that, given the fact that it is a comprehensive satellite network. There were probably several other options, but they would not have had quite the fidelity, accuracy or capability that were required, so at the time it was probably the only real feasible option. If that were not available, they would probably have had to go with something else, which might not have had the same capability.

Are those commercial companies all US-based, or are other options around in the marketplace up there?

Technically, OneWeb had some capability at the time. That is obviously not US-based, so that could have been an option. The majority would have been US-based, though. Doug?

In addition, there were things like the Inmarsat, now Viasat, terminals, some of which offer a lower data-rate capability in a small terminal size. The key to Starlink is that the size of the terminal is tiny—if you held one, this is a small terminal! They cracked the user terminal issue, which is normally the thing that kills comms—you need a three-meter dish outside your house to be able to talk to these things. Having solved that, they became trailblazers; it is a different model from the OneWeb model, which is more about connecting to a hub and distributing the capability, whereas Starlink is very much a B-to-C play, so a single user can just put out a terminal. So, yes, at the moment that was probably the Ukrainians’ best option. Is there a risk in being beholden to a commercial organisation? Absolutely. It will have its own national politics, which provides regulatory control of how that system is used, as well as commercial interest, and those two things will always compete. Unless you are a state owner and the company is registered in your country, you do not have control. That goes for everything from sovereign systems, whether that is comms, earth observation or launch. If you do not have control, someone can turn off your access overnight.

Have any other market entrants replicated SpaceX Starlink’s capability since that monopoly of one became apparent?

OneWeb could be used in a similar way, but it would need slightly different ground architecture. So could Kuiper, when it appears. Obviously that is a US system, but other entrants have tried to raise the money. There is a problem with these kinds of systems for satellite communications. Unlike with, say, an earth observation system with a camera—a spy satellite—you can put up one, in the case of Tyche, and you start to get useful data; you put up two, you get more data. To make a communications constellation in LEO work, you have to put up a lot, first of all. You cannot put up 20, because you will have massive periods where you cannot talk any more, so you end up needing hundreds or thousands, immediately. That is a massive capital investment, so companies struggle. Unless you are somebody who is incredibly rich and can leverage a lot of money, in the same way that a Musk or a Bezos could, it is very difficult to create a competitive or competing constellation.

Have any nations done it as a sovereign capability?

No, not yet.

Is there any particular reason?

It is expensive and hard. It was a hard problem to solve. You also had to be prepared to fail fast. One thing that Musk has done with the funding that he has had: he has had the ability and confidence to fail fast.

My colleagues and I have been doing a lot of work around barriers to defence finance. I have been looking at some of the barriers for SMEs in getting banking facilities to get the finance they need. I have talked to various SMEs who are not even bothering to go through the process of getting VC in this country, and are going to the US to get their money. How much do you see those issues in the space sector and space defence, in particular?

From my perspective, for a lot of smaller companies VC is a last resort. If they can get the grant funding to get the low technology capability up and running, that is great. The problem is that, if it is not then bought as an operational contract by, for example, the MOD, there is that interim period where further development is required. That is perhaps where you need to get additional investment, and that is maybe where VC is sought after.

In general, are companies getting their VC in this country or are they going elsewhere?

Again from my experience, some try to do it in this country, to try to keep the headquarters of the company in the UK, but I have also seen others go elsewhere, including the US. In fact, within the world of SDA quite a few of them focus on the US to try to get funding.

Have you come across any of the banking issues, with SMEs struggling to get bank accounts? Is that something that you have seen feature in the sector?

I have not.

Having done that and debt financed a company for myself, it was not so much a problem getting a bank account, more a problem trying to get a line of credit, because space is not understood. It seems like a very risky thing to a bank manager. You need quite a lot of guarantees on those loans to be able to get them, and the interest rates are not great, so it is a challenge. We have talked about it in the sector before, back when George Freeman was Minister, and discussed what we could do. Are there loans that could be backed by the British Business Bank, for instance? We are not asking for free money; we are just asking for a lender who understands space, and does not see it as high risk. It is back to that national narrative again; whether on skills, lending or whatever, space is just not understood as a proposition in the UK—not broadly, anyway.

Thank you very much. On to George Freeman.

Disappointingly, while I would love to be a ray of sunshine on this, I do not believe I can be. I agree with your analysis. We are seeing an EU that is setting itself up to be independent. If we were to look to buy our way into anything, it would probably be by turning up with our own system and bringing something in kind, rather than asking if we could rejoin Galileo or join IRIS. We would have to think very strategically as to which partner we work with and how we can best access that capability.

The fact that the National Space Operations Centre was stood up last year is a good step in the right direction. They have now developed their cross-Government space domain awareness requirements, which have been essential in trying to define what the country actually needs in terms of SDA capability. But, as far as I can tell, there is not a consistent strategy across Government about how to implement those requirements and develop the capability that we need. There is a lot of discussion about using the “own, access, collaborate” approach, but how that is going to be partitioned, where the commercial and industrial input into that is, what it looks like and how much it is going to cost are all unknown at the moment. They need to nail that down in a lot more detail, and also to expedite it. I think we probably could have got to this stage a bit earlier, so it is a question of working a little bit faster. Sorry—I have forgotten the other part of your question.

We are incredibly reliant on the US at the moment, and I do not see that changing much in the near future. We have already developed a huge amount of commercial capability that can be used by the MOD, but this is a great opportunity for the UK, and UK industry, to set out an area that we are shown to be good at. We have a lot of innovative people and companies in space domain awareness. As you mentioned, the domain is becoming contested and congested, and we have got large constellations, both commercial and state. That capability is going to be essential, but we need to target it in a niche area that has not been developed in detail: perhaps an area characterising particular space objects, or an area that could help support some of our other military aspirations for command and control and Space Command. It should be an area that can be seen as very valuable to our allies, so that we are participating in a global picture, rather than just trying to do everything ourselves and reinventing the wheel at great cost.

Yes, definitely. It is mentioned as a priority in several of the documents. I have not seen it realised as a priority, but I think it should be, because I think we can do this really well in the UK.

Finally, I want to look into the sovereign UK launch capability for satellites. A lot of work was done by our predecessor Defence Committee in its inquiry, and the Scottish Affairs Committee has also launched an inquiry into this issue. There have been various voices cautioning against over-reliance on the US, given that apparently they have booked all the launches from the States until 2030, so if we want to launch UK satellites, we need to up our game and to invest in this capability. I understand from a House of Commons Library report that despite the UK “leading the world in satellite manufacturing and data processing, it has not had the capability to send these objects into space from the UK.” Mr Liddle, in your opinion, how would a sovereign UK launch capability benefit UK defence?

First, you made a point about launches being booked up till 2030. That is not necessarily quite true; it doesn’t quite represent the truth, in that a lot of those launches, for different-sized satellites, will still have spaces available. In many cases, launch brokers will have bought the slots on those satellites and will be reselling that capacity, so there are still—

I was merely quoting the deputy chief executive of SaxaVord in his evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee. I am glad that you have corrected that for the record.

Thank you. The question is really about having the ability to control your launch. I have had experiences both working with the UK Government and as a private individual, as a company CEO. We have been in situations where a US-owned launch company can push you down the priority list—can slip you to a later launch—because a US Government satellite payload will take priority. That is just built in. If you are launching off a US launcher, the US Government has the right to kick you off the launch and put you on a later one. It is really important; it doesn’t matter which launcher we are using and what our relationships are like. These were in very friendly times with the US Government—not quite as tense as they are today. We have to be aware that if we want to have free and ready access to launch as a nation, as a Government, we need to have sovereign launch capability. So yes, it is clear that we need to have it. Whether what we are going to have from SaxaVord is sufficient is another question. The scale of the launch that we might need—we are not going to launch a Skynet from SaxaVord, but we could launch a whole host of spy satellites, as discussed earlier: Tyches, Titanias and so on. The question really is this: what is our requirement going forward? For a lot of the stuff where it is quite a tactical requirement, having the Shetland capability and perhaps another site in the UK would be a very powerful thing for us to have.

I think we would all acknowledge that space is definitely not just the final frontier; it is very important for us, as it is the next frontier, to be spearheading in that regard. I also note that we have the launch proposed in the Shetland Islands later this year. Mr Harris, we had the previous launch in Cornwall, and that did not quite go to plan, we are told, because of an anomaly. Now, we have also signed, with the US and with Australia, for the deep space radar capability. The Defence Committee will be looking into that in our inquiry into AUKUS, especially with regard to pillar 2 capabilities. Given what happened in Cornwall, what is the likelihood of that happening again? And how can we move on from that to make sure that we can actually deliver on a successful launch in the very near future?

Space is hard. There is always a risk that it will not succeed. The launch in Cornwall was a horizontal launch, so it was quite novel in that regard. The SaxaVord one will be a vertical launch. That should be, if I hazard a guess, more routine. Again, it will be the first rocket launch from the UK ever, effectively. There is always a risk of something like that happening. As I say, space is hard. But these things happened in the past as well.

Our very best wishes for that launch. Mr Liddle, do you want to come in?

If I can add to that, I was at the Cornwall launch. I had two satellites on that launcher—rest in peace.

Rest in pieces!

In a fireball. Importantly, we were in a situation where we could not just go again, and you have to go again. You have to fail fast and go again and again, and it will become reliable. We have to accept that it is expensive and it is hard. As Toby says, space is hard, but you have to keep trying. The problem with how we as a nation had financed the Cornwall activities was that we were left with no legacy. So when Virgin Orbit unfortunately had their own financial problems and left, we were left with tumbleweed and a building. We need to make sure that whatever we do with Australia, the US and DARC and all of these things, there has to be legacy from it if it does not work first time.

Definitely. I very much agree with you on that. Lincoln Jopp wants to come in.

Very quickly, if you wanted a British launch capability, would you put it in Britain, necessarily? We have a large number of overseas territories. Have they not got greater natural advantages as a launch centre compared with putting it somewhere in the UK?

It does have value in terms of specific orbits. If you were going to launch into a polar orbit, which a lot of earth observation satellites and communication satellites go into, it is not a terrible place to have it. It is absolutely fine. If you want to go to an equatorial orbit for a geosynchronous communication satellite, that is not the right place. You need to do it somewhere nearer the equator in order to be more efficient.

The Chagos islands, or somewhere like that.

Yes, potentially. It varies a little bit depending on the type of orbit you want to go into and the type of payload you want to put into that orbit in the first place.

Some of this is around the transport links you have there. It might be great to stick it in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, but if you have to go by boat and it takes you however many days to get there, and you have to ship in fresh water and all this stuff, it becomes problematic. I think there is an argument for using our other overseas territories to expand our space capabilities, although an appropriate one with an appropriate downrange where a rocket failure is not going to kill people would be a great thing. To have somewhere geographically different to the UK is an excellent idea that you pointed out. Also, providing communications architecture and ground stations gives us more diversity and resilience. All of these things are good things. If we can afford to do it as a country, we should.

Thank you very much. This has been a very productive evidence session. I am grateful to you both for giving evidence today. With that, I bring our evidence session to a conclusion.