National Security Strategy (Joint Committee)
Monday 19th October 2026
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16:30
Matt Western
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Matt Western
16:30
Liam Byrne
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Liam Byrne
Maybe I can start with a tiny bit of background first on what we do so that you have a context. Planet. We launched and operate fleets of earth imaging satellites. So we have launched about 700 satellites, second only in number of satellites to space. And we have managed these large proliferated fleets. And they do earth imaging. So with a range of uses from sustainability, like we help track deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon every day or help Scotland monitor its environmental regulations. So to security, where we are the main source of data for Ukraine today, for example, enabling them to monitor threats coming from Russia, plan their drone flights, all sorts of things like that.
We have a team on the ground there. I came back from there recently, or NATO monitoring and finding hybrid Russian warfare activities in the Baltics. Space data and satellites are of course critical to national security and their resilience is key. So obviously this panel is an important matter. I would say the way we approach resilience. Just to give a sense of how we tackle it, is really anchored on three things. One is proliferated architectures. It used to be prior to planet you would have a few satellites, but we were the first to build a satellite constellation over 100.
We maintain over 200 in orbit. And in doing that, that's a resilient. At the beginning of the Ukraine war, the Viasat system got jammed very quickly, but Starlink was operable. Some of the individual earth imaging satellites got dazzled. But our system of hundreds of satellites was resilient and has continued to operate every time, every day throughout the war. The second piece is working closely with national governments on specific threats that are coming to our fleet, like we work with US Cyber Command, and get intelligence from them about what threats could be happening, especially state threats.
And the third level is being able to rapidly reconstitute satellites. We have rapid launches. We were meant to have another launch today. It just got postponed due to weather in the Cape today. But generally we launching about 4 or 5 launches per year, typically around 50 new satellites per year. Iterating those capabilities, we can build about 40 satellites per week. It's the most prolific system alongside SpaceX's Starlink in being able to build satellites very quickly about 40 per week, such that we can reconstitute those satellites very quickly in the event of something more catastrophic. So that's how we tackle it.
We also try to be good actors in the broader field. I did my some of my work at NASA on orbital space debris. And so we were the first to do open standards of publishing satellite positions so that we could coordinate and ensure no collisions between satellites, keeping the satellites really low so they do not create long term space debris. Why am I saying all these things? Well, primarily because when the UK faces questions of space resilience, I think it needs to move into these kind of directions. That is proliferative fleets looking at how how you can.
One of the ways to do that is to do hybrid. Capabilities. That is a mix of tapping commercial systems and building sovereign systems, and that can be done very quickly, as we have done with Ukraine. For example, Ukraine asked us to build and operate some satellites directly for its sovereign, as well as tapping our data feeds. And we were able to put their first satellite in space in two months after the contract. And we just did something very similar for Sweden. So now you can get sovereignty and that is control of the satellites and speed.
And that used to be something that you could sort of have to choose one or the other. So I believe that the UK could tap these sorts of ways of tracking and having more resilient systems by leaning into proliferated architectures. And that that's very affordable these days, as Ukraine has proved.
We have a team on the ground there. I came back from there recently, or NATO monitoring and finding hybrid Russian warfare activities in the Baltics. Space data and satellites are of course critical to national security and their resilience is key. So obviously this panel is an important matter. I would say the way we approach resilience. Just to give a sense of how we tackle it, is really anchored on three things. One is proliferated architectures. It used to be prior to planet you would have a few satellites, but we were the first to build a satellite constellation over 100.
We maintain over 200 in orbit. And in doing that, that's a resilient. At the beginning of the Ukraine war, the Viasat system got jammed very quickly, but Starlink was operable. Some of the individual earth imaging satellites got dazzled. But our system of hundreds of satellites was resilient and has continued to operate every time, every day throughout the war. The second piece is working closely with national governments on specific threats that are coming to our fleet, like we work with US Cyber Command, and get intelligence from them about what threats could be happening, especially state threats.
And the third level is being able to rapidly reconstitute satellites. We have rapid launches. We were meant to have another launch today. It just got postponed due to weather in the Cape today. But generally we launching about 4 or 5 launches per year, typically around 50 new satellites per year. Iterating those capabilities, we can build about 40 satellites per week. It's the most prolific system alongside SpaceX's Starlink in being able to build satellites very quickly about 40 per week, such that we can reconstitute those satellites very quickly in the event of something more catastrophic. So that's how we tackle it.
We also try to be good actors in the broader field. I did my some of my work at NASA on orbital space debris. And so we were the first to do open standards of publishing satellite positions so that we could coordinate and ensure no collisions between satellites, keeping the satellites really low so they do not create long term space debris. Why am I saying all these things? Well, primarily because when the UK faces questions of space resilience, I think it needs to move into these kind of directions. That is proliferative fleets looking at how how you can.
One of the ways to do that is to do hybrid. Capabilities. That is a mix of tapping commercial systems and building sovereign systems, and that can be done very quickly, as we have done with Ukraine. For example, Ukraine asked us to build and operate some satellites directly for its sovereign, as well as tapping our data feeds. And we were able to put their first satellite in space in two months after the contract. And we just did something very similar for Sweden. So now you can get sovereignty and that is control of the satellites and speed.
And that used to be something that you could sort of have to choose one or the other. So I believe that the UK could tap these sorts of ways of tracking and having more resilient systems by leaning into proliferated architectures. And that that's very affordable these days, as Ukraine has proved.
16:34
16:34
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16:34
Liam Byrne
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Liam Byrne
Yes. So I would say the biggest missing piece of that is where is the urgency? So all of the right kinds of direction. But what is the timeline? A lot of countries are grappling with the question of sovereignty. What does sovereign mean? I think it means or should mean having the systems that you need when you need them. Okay. And but at the minute the UK is on a course to build systems that are very long. For example, the Istar programme is building systems that may take until 2035 to build a system, systems that are fully national and sovereign, but that give their capabilities seven years too late aren't sovereign at all.
They're just stupid. I mean, honestly, that's what's going to happen in the present course.
They're just stupid. I mean, honestly, that's what's going to happen in the present course.
16:35
16:35
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16:35
16:35
16:35
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
Yes. Thank you. That was very interesting. So I think from my perspective, I speak, it's really the focus is on cyber security of space infrastructure. Now, you may or may not have heard, you probably have you're probably aware of the cyber attacks that impacted the cyber attack that impacted Jaguar Land Rover. The impact that these cyber attacks had on the individual companies, but then also the knock on effects that these attacks had as well, including was it I've got here somewhere nearly 2 billion cost to the UK economy from the Jaguar Land Rover attack. So cyber attacks are becoming more of a reality.
And this is for infrastructure outside of space. We can see that they are affecting companies. M and S couldn't deliver online orders for a very long time. Why am I talking about this on a space resilience panel? Because what you may not realise is that space infrastructure, a lot of what we've just heard is just as vulnerable to cyber attacks. Now, space, infrastructure, you often think about it in terms of the ground, in terms of satellites up there in space. You might think about the user segment as well, and then launch all of these different parts of space.
Systems have clear and very worrying vulnerabilities. And actually, it's becoming easier and easier for cyber attacks to be conducted against space systems, partly because they are becoming more accessible. So the number of people, organisations who are able to develop satellite systems is growing enormously at the moment and has been for the last 5 to 10, 15 years. But also cyber attacks are becoming easier with tools such as AI, which I can mention more on later. But essentially we're encountering this situation in which our space systems are becoming more vulnerable. There are more of them. They're becoming more open, more people are learning about space because they're doing things in space.
And that means if they learn about the technical system, they can also learn about how to attack it and the vulnerabilities. So we're getting to this situation in which we're seeing more and more cyber threats affect critical infrastructure and in particular, affects space infrastructure. But actually, if we see more cyber attacks affect the space infrastructure on which we all rely on, then then it could become very concerning. One of the things that really worries me about cyber threats is that they exploit unknown vulnerabilities. So you don't know where your, you know, where your adversary is going to target.
You don't know where specifically they're going to come in, where is your weak point within your organisation? Nobody really knows that, which is why it's, it's such a tricky point to tackle. So I think that the, the kind of mysterious nature of the beginning of cyber attacks and the way in which they could impact space systems is a worry.
And this is for infrastructure outside of space. We can see that they are affecting companies. M and S couldn't deliver online orders for a very long time. Why am I talking about this on a space resilience panel? Because what you may not realise is that space infrastructure, a lot of what we've just heard is just as vulnerable to cyber attacks. Now, space, infrastructure, you often think about it in terms of the ground, in terms of satellites up there in space. You might think about the user segment as well, and then launch all of these different parts of space.
Systems have clear and very worrying vulnerabilities. And actually, it's becoming easier and easier for cyber attacks to be conducted against space systems, partly because they are becoming more accessible. So the number of people, organisations who are able to develop satellite systems is growing enormously at the moment and has been for the last 5 to 10, 15 years. But also cyber attacks are becoming easier with tools such as AI, which I can mention more on later. But essentially we're encountering this situation in which our space systems are becoming more vulnerable. There are more of them. They're becoming more open, more people are learning about space because they're doing things in space.
And that means if they learn about the technical system, they can also learn about how to attack it and the vulnerabilities. So we're getting to this situation in which we're seeing more and more cyber threats affect critical infrastructure and in particular, affects space infrastructure. But actually, if we see more cyber attacks affect the space infrastructure on which we all rely on, then then it could become very concerning. One of the things that really worries me about cyber threats is that they exploit unknown vulnerabilities. So you don't know where your, you know, where your adversary is going to target.
You don't know where specifically they're going to come in, where is your weak point within your organisation? Nobody really knows that, which is why it's, it's such a tricky point to tackle. So I think that the, the kind of mysterious nature of the beginning of cyber attacks and the way in which they could impact space systems is a worry.
16:38
16:38
16:39
16:39
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
I, I think that I think that there are some aspects. So there's in the space strategy, there's a recognition of the multidimensional threat to space systems. So cyber attacks don't exist by themselves as a threat to space. Space weather is a concern. Debris, all of these different threats. So I think there's recognition of that. There's also a willingness to tackle the threat collectively. This is good. I think that space is vast. Our dependence on space is vast. And therefore all of the organisations which are dependent on space should be included. When you're thinking about threats to space.
And I include the supply chain in that as well, because they are. So I think that's good. The things that I think really it's missing is, is championing what the what the UK is saying and doing a specifically about the cybersecurity of space. Now, I may be wrong here, but I think that when I looked up the word cyber in the UK space strategy, it came up six times, no more than ten times. And this is quite worrying for me from my cyber background, because I know that cyber security is one of the major threats against space systems, especially when it comes to the ground, which is also on the ground and extremely vulnerable.
But I can go into more into that later. So I think.
And I include the supply chain in that as well, because they are. So I think that's good. The things that I think really it's missing is, is championing what the what the UK is saying and doing a specifically about the cybersecurity of space. Now, I may be wrong here, but I think that when I looked up the word cyber in the UK space strategy, it came up six times, no more than ten times. And this is quite worrying for me from my cyber background, because I know that cyber security is one of the major threats against space systems, especially when it comes to the ground, which is also on the ground and extremely vulnerable.
But I can go into more into that later. So I think.
16:40
16:40
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
Right. My last line on this point, in terms of the national space strategy, is that I think that there are other countries which are better articulating what they are doing about cyber security and space, and therefore demonstrating how seriously they take the issue of securing space. such as, oh, sorry, which countries? So if you look to France, they've got a space cyber security centre. They have central infrastructure which fosters collaboration, which articulates very clearly. France is a country that has infrastructure dedicated to space, cyber security. We have bits and pieces distributed all around different organisations in the UK, but they don't come together in one central infrastructure.
Space plays a role in that, but that's a network that's not a central government infrastructure. And another one is Germany, who very clearly state guidance for securing space systems. And I just mean this in a very literal sense in terms of what's available online. You look up, they have pages and pages dedicated to space, cyber security.
Space plays a role in that, but that's a network that's not a central government infrastructure. And another one is Germany, who very clearly state guidance for securing space systems. And I just mean this in a very literal sense in terms of what's available online. You look up, they have pages and pages dedicated to space, cyber security.
16:41
Speaker 2
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Speaker 2
Right. So I'll echo a lot of what's been said already. I suppose I'll start with sort of a broad threat landscape picture, and then I'll go into the NSS and how it tackles it. But I think sort of generally the greatest vulnerability that we're facing at the moment is that our increased dependence on space systems is not matched necessarily with enough investment or urgency, and that we don't necessarily have enough response options at this given time. And so the pinpoint for that would be that it's both in terms of day to day services, but also when it comes to defence.
And I'll also unpack that later. Statistically, 18% of the UK's GDP depends on satellite services. We know that for a day lost of satellite systems, space systems, it would be £1.4 billion. And the National Preparedness Commission estimated that space underpins approximately £450 billion of wider economic activity. So we know that we depend heavily on space, and we're only sort of growing in that we've got approximately 12,000 operational satellites in orbit. The estimate is that that's going to increase to approximately 60,000 by 2030. So we're talking about proliferation, both sort of on a horizontal and vertical level.
But yeah, so when we're discussing vulnerability, we're looking at the loss of these space systems. And as we've sort of mentioned earlier, how do we actually measure those cascading effects across not only the space sector, but also all sectors? That space impacts a disruption to a satellite service can propagate, and it can affect several sectors simultaneously. So the key question, I think that we really are sort of trying to poke at now is, are we designing space systems really to withstand disruption for either short period of time or at a period of time? That's incredibly relevant.
Say we are under attack or for a longer period of time, and do we have enough contingencies to also allow for continued access to that space service, whether provided by ourselves or by our allies? So I think that's really the threat picture that I would paint. Moving on to the space strategy and how we've addressed that, I would probably begin by saying there's a there's a real question of accountability because of that, when we look at space and how sort of a new domain cross sits across multiple departments, it's really hard to place that responsibility in who's accountable for, say, when a service goes down or is lost.
We've got obviously the best mod, even the national armaments director group and, you know, all trying to work together on the defence elements. But then we're talking about sort of the cascading effects across other departments that are not necessarily waving sort of a flag or even a defence, protect and defend flag or mission. So that dispersed responsibility can also be a strength. But in some ways, it really is something that we have to focus on. For Cohesivity in the national space strategy, there's that one government approach that's been pitched, I think, in follow through, and seeing that really be implemented would be great, but it's incredibly difficult for a domain like space, which has challenges of classification issues, to be able to share that information at a timely manner.
We say sort of at the speed of relevance within the UK, but also then to our allies in order to be effective at reconstituting.
And I'll also unpack that later. Statistically, 18% of the UK's GDP depends on satellite services. We know that for a day lost of satellite systems, space systems, it would be £1.4 billion. And the National Preparedness Commission estimated that space underpins approximately £450 billion of wider economic activity. So we know that we depend heavily on space, and we're only sort of growing in that we've got approximately 12,000 operational satellites in orbit. The estimate is that that's going to increase to approximately 60,000 by 2030. So we're talking about proliferation, both sort of on a horizontal and vertical level.
But yeah, so when we're discussing vulnerability, we're looking at the loss of these space systems. And as we've sort of mentioned earlier, how do we actually measure those cascading effects across not only the space sector, but also all sectors? That space impacts a disruption to a satellite service can propagate, and it can affect several sectors simultaneously. So the key question, I think that we really are sort of trying to poke at now is, are we designing space systems really to withstand disruption for either short period of time or at a period of time? That's incredibly relevant.
Say we are under attack or for a longer period of time, and do we have enough contingencies to also allow for continued access to that space service, whether provided by ourselves or by our allies? So I think that's really the threat picture that I would paint. Moving on to the space strategy and how we've addressed that, I would probably begin by saying there's a there's a real question of accountability because of that, when we look at space and how sort of a new domain cross sits across multiple departments, it's really hard to place that responsibility in who's accountable for, say, when a service goes down or is lost.
We've got obviously the best mod, even the national armaments director group and, you know, all trying to work together on the defence elements. But then we're talking about sort of the cascading effects across other departments that are not necessarily waving sort of a flag or even a defence, protect and defend flag or mission. So that dispersed responsibility can also be a strength. But in some ways, it really is something that we have to focus on. For Cohesivity in the national space strategy, there's that one government approach that's been pitched, I think, in follow through, and seeing that really be implemented would be great, but it's incredibly difficult for a domain like space, which has challenges of classification issues, to be able to share that information at a timely manner.
We say sort of at the speed of relevance within the UK, but also then to our allies in order to be effective at reconstituting.
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16:45
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi
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Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi
Thank you very much. Let's move on to hostile activity in space. And, Mr. Marshall, if I can start off with your good self, to what extent are our adversaries able and willing to disrupt space based infrastructure that the UK is heavily reliant on? And in answering your question, if you could point to some evidence of what we've seen to date.
16:45
Liam Byrne
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Liam Byrne
Yeah. So obviously, I think Ukraine, again, serves as the best example, which is where very bespoke few satellite systems were taken out by the Russians jammed in. And I think that the same would happen for UK capabilities in a situation like that. Look, this increasingly hybrid world where we're living with Russia doesn't look like I mean, hybrid. I don't think does it justice? Russia's going to take action on systems if they think that they're supporting Ukraine. We personally at planet, myself personally and the whole company are on their bad actors list. And we're constantly trying to.
Ensure that we're resilient against their attacks. I think the UK can't assume it's going to be. So that's why I was emphasizing the proliferative nature of this. The one web system, for example, is a good example of how you get a proliferated system, but we don't have that in the ISR space. In fact, in the ISR domain, the UK mainly relies on the US, which doesn't always isn't always there, but the the commercial systems can be ready to provide that very quickly. So I would say the most important aspect of it is leaning into these next generation capabilities, which are by their very nature more resilient, and which the UK hasn't really leant into as yet.
Ensure that we're resilient against their attacks. I think the UK can't assume it's going to be. So that's why I was emphasizing the proliferative nature of this. The one web system, for example, is a good example of how you get a proliferated system, but we don't have that in the ISR space. In fact, in the ISR domain, the UK mainly relies on the US, which doesn't always isn't always there, but the the commercial systems can be ready to provide that very quickly. So I would say the most important aspect of it is leaning into these next generation capabilities, which are by their very nature more resilient, and which the UK hasn't really leant into as yet.
16:46
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi
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Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi
And I fully hear the point that you've made just now, and previously on sovereign capabilities, and we've seen how Starlink being slowed down and restricted for Ukraine, the devastating impact that that has had. But if I can move on to your good self, Miss Hampshire, what do you think in terms of space based infrastructure and the threats or disruption to that?
16:47
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
So I think that we're already seeing attacks to military ground infrastructure. So you'll be aware of the RAF Fairford incident and other kind of intrusions that we're seeing into ground defence infrastructure in the UK. Granted, it's not space yet, but it might be space next. And I think that actually that example that you mentioned with Ukraine is a really good one. It makes me think about the the cyber attack against Viasat, which took place just before Russia invaded Ukraine back in 2022. And they specifically targeted Viasat KSAT network in order to disrupt the communications of the Ukrainian military, because they knew that that's what the Ukrainian military were using to communicate.
And it put them on the back foot just before Russia invaded Ukraine. And this is quite well known amongst pre-emptively. Yes, yes, preemptively. And it was with a political motivation. What's even more worrying about that case is that it ended up having wide implications as well. If you're not already aware of it, it ended up impacting thousands of European internet broadband satellite internet broadband users as well, including critical infrastructure. So I think cyber attacks like this demonstrate that not only are space infrastructure vulnerable, but as the UK becomes more and more involved in these military conflicts, we're already seeing evidence of the UK's defence and military being targeted in this way, physical access as well as cyber attacks.
Why do we worry about physical access when it comes to space? We worry because the ground infrastructure is that central controlling, monitoring aspect of the entire kind of constellation and then the other dependent services. So the ground infrastructure of space systems cannot be underestimated in terms of its importance. It also happens to be the most physically accessible. If you know where it is, then you know where to find it. You know how to potentially try and try and target it. Another thing that that the UK is doing at the moment is potentially demonstrating some vulnerabilities which could be exploited.
One of those is very well known is the disruption of Nats. So if you are trying to get a flight in the last few weeks, you will have been disrupted because of this air traffic control architecture being disrupted by some tiny minute error, which resulted in, you know, many flights disrupted. Somebody told me that Heathrow Airport was chock a block full of of passengers. This is disruption. And I think that cyber attacks to space is especially concerning because when it comes to space, as mentioned, it's got all of these dependent industries that could be affected.
Airports could also be affected by disruption to space because aeroplanes need GPS to take off and land accurately. But it's most worrying because cyber attacks, including to space, especially to space, can really demonstrate an approach of a state of a nation state, an adversarial nation state to try and undermine trust in things working well. And space is extremely important. We can't really afford for it to be disrupted just to demonstrate what people can do. And one of the reasons for that is all of these dependent sectors. I mean, if you look at the finance sector, it needs the timing that is provided by space services.
So we're really at a very critical point where we're extremely dependent on space, but we're also demonstrating these key vulnerabilities in military architecture, which could then be transferable to the space domain, which to be honest, worries me quite a lot.
And it put them on the back foot just before Russia invaded Ukraine. And this is quite well known amongst pre-emptively. Yes, yes, preemptively. And it was with a political motivation. What's even more worrying about that case is that it ended up having wide implications as well. If you're not already aware of it, it ended up impacting thousands of European internet broadband satellite internet broadband users as well, including critical infrastructure. So I think cyber attacks like this demonstrate that not only are space infrastructure vulnerable, but as the UK becomes more and more involved in these military conflicts, we're already seeing evidence of the UK's defence and military being targeted in this way, physical access as well as cyber attacks.
Why do we worry about physical access when it comes to space? We worry because the ground infrastructure is that central controlling, monitoring aspect of the entire kind of constellation and then the other dependent services. So the ground infrastructure of space systems cannot be underestimated in terms of its importance. It also happens to be the most physically accessible. If you know where it is, then you know where to find it. You know how to potentially try and try and target it. Another thing that that the UK is doing at the moment is potentially demonstrating some vulnerabilities which could be exploited.
One of those is very well known is the disruption of Nats. So if you are trying to get a flight in the last few weeks, you will have been disrupted because of this air traffic control architecture being disrupted by some tiny minute error, which resulted in, you know, many flights disrupted. Somebody told me that Heathrow Airport was chock a block full of of passengers. This is disruption. And I think that cyber attacks to space is especially concerning because when it comes to space, as mentioned, it's got all of these dependent industries that could be affected.
Airports could also be affected by disruption to space because aeroplanes need GPS to take off and land accurately. But it's most worrying because cyber attacks, including to space, especially to space, can really demonstrate an approach of a state of a nation state, an adversarial nation state to try and undermine trust in things working well. And space is extremely important. We can't really afford for it to be disrupted just to demonstrate what people can do. And one of the reasons for that is all of these dependent sectors. I mean, if you look at the finance sector, it needs the timing that is provided by space services.
So we're really at a very critical point where we're extremely dependent on space, but we're also demonstrating these key vulnerabilities in military architecture, which could then be transferable to the space domain, which to be honest, worries me quite a lot.
16:50
16:50
Speaker 2
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Speaker 2
Right. So I think it's incredibly important to look at the effects of sort of low cost agitation and how that can have an outsized effect in the space domain. So like spoofing and jamming, certain actors can employ agitation tactics more easily than others. And I, I sort of position the fact that there's nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states in space, where our space infrastructure is inherently linked to our nuclear infrastructure as well with C2. So the ability to escalate and de-escalate is quite distinct. I would also point to a couple of threats that I'm currently watching from the last week or so.
Russia's satellite, Kosmos 2612 on October 15th adjusted its orbital inclination to follow an icy satellite Iceye x 36, to be approximately 26m away from it, which is incredibly close if you know the space domain. This maneuvering into or across low earth orbit into a coplanar orbit is something that we don't usually see because it's extremely expensive to use fuel on such a maneuver. But this has only happened recently, and it could be a signalling of of some sort of intentions from Russia, or it could be something that might amount to something related to a kinetic attack or even an electronic attack.
And on Sunday, just yesterday, there was an attempted arson of a SpaceX Starlink base in Lithuania, which sort of mimics what we've seen a couple of weeks ago back in Bulgaria and in Poland, we talked about space based infrastructure being under attack. But it's really important to look at the links alongside ground based segments where it might actually be those low cost agitation tactics of sort of burning a building that contains those receivers as, as some way to gain sort of an outsized impact.
Russia's satellite, Kosmos 2612 on October 15th adjusted its orbital inclination to follow an icy satellite Iceye x 36, to be approximately 26m away from it, which is incredibly close if you know the space domain. This maneuvering into or across low earth orbit into a coplanar orbit is something that we don't usually see because it's extremely expensive to use fuel on such a maneuver. But this has only happened recently, and it could be a signalling of of some sort of intentions from Russia, or it could be something that might amount to something related to a kinetic attack or even an electronic attack.
And on Sunday, just yesterday, there was an attempted arson of a SpaceX Starlink base in Lithuania, which sort of mimics what we've seen a couple of weeks ago back in Bulgaria and in Poland, we talked about space based infrastructure being under attack. But it's really important to look at the links alongside ground based segments where it might actually be those low cost agitation tactics of sort of burning a building that contains those receivers as, as some way to gain sort of an outsized impact.
16:52
16:52
Liam Byrne
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Liam Byrne
Well, again, I mean, you would have to look at all the systems that the UK relies on and which ones are most vulnerable to this. But but the UK at the present has, is, is for a lot of its intelligence services completely reliant on the US. The US just turned some of these systems off for Ukraine. It's done it multiple times. The reliance on just that partnership is extreme in the intelligence domain, which is one of the key things that SpaceX is doing and which is why, I mean, 80% of Ukraine's satellite imagery comes from planet, and we have been there every single day for them.
And the reason it's different from the Starlink situation is that we work directly with Ukraine. Our contract is with Ukraine government, not with the US government. In the case of Starlink, I think you've got to choose your partners wisely. You've got to have a systems that are proliferated, and you've got to have ways of working with multiple actors such that you're resilient. I think that that's possible. And then most of all, you've got to invest in systems that are sovereign. So I can't identify the specific ones that are most vulnerable at this second, we could go do some research and come back to you on what I would think are the most vulnerable systems, but generally the UK hasn't got almost any proliferated architectures that it could leverage today, even though they're readily available from companies that could provide that.
And the reason it's different from the Starlink situation is that we work directly with Ukraine. Our contract is with Ukraine government, not with the US government. In the case of Starlink, I think you've got to choose your partners wisely. You've got to have a systems that are proliferated, and you've got to have ways of working with multiple actors such that you're resilient. I think that that's possible. And then most of all, you've got to invest in systems that are sovereign. So I can't identify the specific ones that are most vulnerable at this second, we could go do some research and come back to you on what I would think are the most vulnerable systems, but generally the UK hasn't got almost any proliferated architectures that it could leverage today, even though they're readily available from companies that could provide that.
16:54
16:54
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
So a lot because you can look at the potential kind of implications. There have been a number of attacks which I included in a in a paper. I wrote a research that I did quite a few years ago, and there were attacks that were happen that were intercepted, but attackers were making their way through ground infrastructure to that kind of important admin kind of management kind of section. How how can cyber risks escalate? There are many ways in which cyber risks can escalate. If you're worried about satellites in particular, you might worry about let's take it out of the defence context and think about a university spin off, an individual organization that's got maybe a CubeSat in space.
There is just a few students. It's a small company. They don't have loads of governance to manage their cybersecurity. They get intercepted and attacker manages to gain somehow gain control of their satellite. That's something that you really want to worry about because then they could they could. I mean, in a really worst case scenario, they could then crash it or collide it with another satellite. And then the implications of debris, you know, Will knows very well. So I think that the cyber risks, they sound like they're virtual. They sound a bit kind of science fiction, but two points on that.
Firstly, they can be cyber, physical and cyber physical threats has been a well known, you know, topic area for many decades. If you look at Stuxnet as one indication of this, you know, back on an attack on a nuclear plant many, many years ago, but also they they have the physical implications, such as gradually changing the controls, coming in and understanding how infrastructure works. And then that gives you the information to then come back and conduct a stronger attack later. I mean, at the moment, I would say that quite often attackers, probably especially the kind of nation state level attackers have the capabilities to, to do more disruption than they are doing right now.
And therefore, it's, it's something to worry about because they probably have those capabilities, but they're just not doing it yet. They haven't decided to do it yet. And the other thing that I would mention there is that hundreds of cyber attacks to space infrastructure are being reported through reports such as the CICSIS, which I can provide more information on at a later time. Threats like ransomware, all of these cyber attacks that we're seeing through to terrestrial infrastructure is also impacting space. And this worries us because we need it. So indeed, attacks on ground stations, physical attacks on ground stations as well.
There is just a few students. It's a small company. They don't have loads of governance to manage their cybersecurity. They get intercepted and attacker manages to gain somehow gain control of their satellite. That's something that you really want to worry about because then they could they could. I mean, in a really worst case scenario, they could then crash it or collide it with another satellite. And then the implications of debris, you know, Will knows very well. So I think that the cyber risks, they sound like they're virtual. They sound a bit kind of science fiction, but two points on that.
Firstly, they can be cyber, physical and cyber physical threats has been a well known, you know, topic area for many decades. If you look at Stuxnet as one indication of this, you know, back on an attack on a nuclear plant many, many years ago, but also they they have the physical implications, such as gradually changing the controls, coming in and understanding how infrastructure works. And then that gives you the information to then come back and conduct a stronger attack later. I mean, at the moment, I would say that quite often attackers, probably especially the kind of nation state level attackers have the capabilities to, to do more disruption than they are doing right now.
And therefore, it's, it's something to worry about because they probably have those capabilities, but they're just not doing it yet. They haven't decided to do it yet. And the other thing that I would mention there is that hundreds of cyber attacks to space infrastructure are being reported through reports such as the CICSIS, which I can provide more information on at a later time. Threats like ransomware, all of these cyber attacks that we're seeing through to terrestrial infrastructure is also impacting space. And this worries us because we need it. So indeed, attacks on ground stations, physical attacks on ground stations as well.
16:56
16:56
16:57
16:57
16:57
Lord Godson
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Lord Godson
Like the peace talks, you can stop the clocks, you see, so we can beat the deadline. Just interested in. Obviously, you flagged up the dangers of Ukraine, Baltics and so on. Russia being the obvious thing, but I just wonder whether you'd reflect a little more. And indeed your colleagues, just who are the other threats from where? Who are the dark horses? Just having been in Japan and just listening to the impact on them of China, obviously, and so on. I'd just like you to reflect in a little more detail on your latest assessment of those dangers.
16:57
Liam Byrne
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Liam Byrne
Yeah, I mean, I would first jump to China, but also this increasing collaboration with Iran and other countries that might have lower risk thresholds to take action against systems, because at least China has a lot to depend on on space, whereas Iran very little, you know, and so maybe they could use one another and work together in partnership in a way that is pretty destructive. The West is generally more dependent on its space assets than other countries. Russia, pushed into a corner may do extreme things like, you know, as reported about the nuclear weapon capabilities that they have and a and a and something like that.
Going off in space would be extraordinarily destructive for the entire space sector and, and all of the economy and, and security systems that are dependent on that. But I would actually take this question rather in the direction that Jesse was talking about to do with cyber. I think the threats that we're going to see come down the line are going to be primarily AI enabled cyber threats that exploit vulnerabilities that we didn't even know were there, just like we're seeing on conventional systems. And in fact, let me just take this opportunity to say that I'm compelled to say that I think this body and this House should be spending far more time.
It's priority number one, two, and three on regulating AI. AI is at a point where it's runaway capabilities that we just don't know how to control. We're already seeing them hack out of our containment systems during testing. This is this is a threat to space and everything else. Just give me a couple of seconds to tell you, the systems that are hacking out like Hugging Face are now coordinating between hundreds of agents. And one of the other things they're doing is specializing. Those agents are specializing so that they can pass things off. Coordination and specialization is exactly what distinguished humans from the rest of the animal kingdom that led to our dominance over them.
We are at a point where in the last two years, we sit in Silicon Valley, in the middle of the AI triangle between anthropic, Google and, and and OpenAI. And we feel in the middle of that and space has a role to play, by the way, because we can provide satellite data that will uplevel AI systems to have physical world understanding. That can be very helpful for security. But where are we going next? In the last two years, we've seen a thousand X improvement in the capabilities of LLMs, large language models that have gone from just being able to roughly say a few sentences to being able to literally a couple of weeks ago, win a fields medal level mathematics overnight.
And we're going to get another thousand X in the next two years. We have no idea how to control that. And there are narrow risks to do with cyber threats that we are seeing today, the ability of AI systems to build bioweapons, and we've got to stop them. But we've actually got a more generic control risk that I think people are just not understanding the political debate. Everything about AI is about, are we going to lose jobs? Are there threats to our cyber security, things like this? But we're facing a much bigger moment. We're facing an existential moment of whether or not we're going to give over control.
Alan Turing in 1952 said that we will inevitably lose control, especially when they start coordinating, which is exactly the moment we're at. And that was in 1952. I just say this because space, like every other domain, is going to be attacked by these systems. I think we will X I would expect that we will see more hugging faces that make Hugging Face look like a walk in the park. And they could attack our space infrastructure, but they could attack any infrastructure. And if we don't get our handle on managing AI risk, and I think this Parliament and this country can do stuff about that.
The UK's AI Security Institute can be part of a verification system. We, with our satellite data, can be tracking all of those data centers to know where to put those on ground inspections from you. It is possible to verify AI treaties. We need clear guardrails, and we need to then actually slow down the pace of development. If we're going to be wise with this technology at the present clip, there's no way we're going to be wise. We will see open source technologies doing hacks soon. I think that will will shock the world based on Chinese systems.
And I think that that those could attack space infrastructure. They could attack any infrastructure that is that should be priority number one, two and number three for this Parliament until we get it fixed. And I know at the minute there's some sense that we can't slow down, but there's it is absolutely necessary to do that. It's the only way to be wise. And the Overton window is changing on that very rapidly. It would be inconceivable to think about any sort of controls on AI just six months ago in the United States, but that has changed very rapidly.
And you wait a few weeks or months from now, we're going to see events that will that will change the Overton window again, such that it becomes possible to really talk about proper controls on AI. So I agree with Jesse that that's the primary vector you need to be thinking about. Forget nation states, Russia and China are going to be small fry compared with cyber threats because of AI capabilities are far more powerful than anything we've dealt with before.
So that's the trumping consideration for this and every other committee in this House.
Going off in space would be extraordinarily destructive for the entire space sector and, and all of the economy and, and security systems that are dependent on that. But I would actually take this question rather in the direction that Jesse was talking about to do with cyber. I think the threats that we're going to see come down the line are going to be primarily AI enabled cyber threats that exploit vulnerabilities that we didn't even know were there, just like we're seeing on conventional systems. And in fact, let me just take this opportunity to say that I'm compelled to say that I think this body and this House should be spending far more time.
It's priority number one, two, and three on regulating AI. AI is at a point where it's runaway capabilities that we just don't know how to control. We're already seeing them hack out of our containment systems during testing. This is this is a threat to space and everything else. Just give me a couple of seconds to tell you, the systems that are hacking out like Hugging Face are now coordinating between hundreds of agents. And one of the other things they're doing is specializing. Those agents are specializing so that they can pass things off. Coordination and specialization is exactly what distinguished humans from the rest of the animal kingdom that led to our dominance over them.
We are at a point where in the last two years, we sit in Silicon Valley, in the middle of the AI triangle between anthropic, Google and, and and OpenAI. And we feel in the middle of that and space has a role to play, by the way, because we can provide satellite data that will uplevel AI systems to have physical world understanding. That can be very helpful for security. But where are we going next? In the last two years, we've seen a thousand X improvement in the capabilities of LLMs, large language models that have gone from just being able to roughly say a few sentences to being able to literally a couple of weeks ago, win a fields medal level mathematics overnight.
And we're going to get another thousand X in the next two years. We have no idea how to control that. And there are narrow risks to do with cyber threats that we are seeing today, the ability of AI systems to build bioweapons, and we've got to stop them. But we've actually got a more generic control risk that I think people are just not understanding the political debate. Everything about AI is about, are we going to lose jobs? Are there threats to our cyber security, things like this? But we're facing a much bigger moment. We're facing an existential moment of whether or not we're going to give over control.
Alan Turing in 1952 said that we will inevitably lose control, especially when they start coordinating, which is exactly the moment we're at. And that was in 1952. I just say this because space, like every other domain, is going to be attacked by these systems. I think we will X I would expect that we will see more hugging faces that make Hugging Face look like a walk in the park. And they could attack our space infrastructure, but they could attack any infrastructure. And if we don't get our handle on managing AI risk, and I think this Parliament and this country can do stuff about that.
The UK's AI Security Institute can be part of a verification system. We, with our satellite data, can be tracking all of those data centers to know where to put those on ground inspections from you. It is possible to verify AI treaties. We need clear guardrails, and we need to then actually slow down the pace of development. If we're going to be wise with this technology at the present clip, there's no way we're going to be wise. We will see open source technologies doing hacks soon. I think that will will shock the world based on Chinese systems.
And I think that that those could attack space infrastructure. They could attack any infrastructure that is that should be priority number one, two and number three for this Parliament until we get it fixed. And I know at the minute there's some sense that we can't slow down, but there's it is absolutely necessary to do that. It's the only way to be wise. And the Overton window is changing on that very rapidly. It would be inconceivable to think about any sort of controls on AI just six months ago in the United States, but that has changed very rapidly.
And you wait a few weeks or months from now, we're going to see events that will that will change the Overton window again, such that it becomes possible to really talk about proper controls on AI. So I agree with Jesse that that's the primary vector you need to be thinking about. Forget nation states, Russia and China are going to be small fry compared with cyber threats because of AI capabilities are far more powerful than anything we've dealt with before.
So that's the trumping consideration for this and every other committee in this House.
17:03
17:03
17:03
17:03
17:03
Lord Boateng
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Lord Boateng
Can, but an area which your company is well placed to assist us with, because you're headquartered in the United States, you have satellite manufacturing operations in Germany, and you have an office here in London. And in the light of that, what's your take on the risks that we should be concerned about to supply chains for the assembly and deployment of satellites? And do you see potential whilst the sovereign state is of significance, do you see potential for closer cooperation between the UK and the EU in this area? Can we continue to rely on the United States in the way we do, to the extent we have in the past, given where the US is on so many issues at the moment, and you referred yourself to the experience you've had in the Ukraine, can you help us with that?
17:04
Liam Byrne
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Liam Byrne
Yeah. Well, firstly, I definitely think that the the UK should be working in close collaboration with the EU, its most natural partner, and security matters, given geography is the geography. It is and space is definitely part of that. And so I think the UK should really lean into those systems that it could share.
17:04
17:04
Liam Byrne
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Liam Byrne
Well I that's I think it should do both ways. I mean look the US and and Europe have a huge amount of alignment, especially against emerging threats between Russia, China, Iran, North Korea. So I think it should actually work more with us. We've already reared our supply chains of any components that are from China or anything like that. But our components come from all over Europe, all over the US, and we assemble the satellites both in California and in, in, in, in Germany. And those systems are dependent on supply chains that are all in there.
But those aren't the vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities are how does the system work and is it vulnerable in space? And are those systems there when you need them? And I think, yes, in that context, the UK should be strong partners with other countries. And again, let's distinguish between the work with other countries. Ukraine lost Starlink because it was getting it via the United States government. It didn't lose planet because we are working directly with Ukraine.
The UK can take a lesson from that.
But those aren't the vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities are how does the system work and is it vulnerable in space? And are those systems there when you need them? And I think, yes, in that context, the UK should be strong partners with other countries. And again, let's distinguish between the work with other countries. Ukraine lost Starlink because it was getting it via the United States government. It didn't lose planet because we are working directly with Ukraine.
The UK can take a lesson from that.
17:06
17:06
Lord Boateng
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Lord Boateng
Yeah. But suppose you're headquartered in the US. Yes. Suppose the US took a view that they didn't actually much like what you were doing. Your headquartered there. You're subject to regulation there. Couldn't they make life extremely difficult for you as they have done through the banking sector and in a number.
17:06
Liam Byrne
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Liam Byrne
Of other. It's a very good question. I think that is why we have started building up more capacities here in Europe so that we can provide capabilities to to European countries that are independent of that. So by manufacturing, we have ground stations here in the UK, in other countries in Europe , and mission control systems here in Europe, so that we. And then what we just did with Sweden, for example, is we're actually transitioning. We, we build and launch the satellite and then we transition it to their control. So this is not subject to the US at all.
By the way, most of our satellites aren't subject to shutter control because they're just lower resolution than the cap. But the point is you can have your own sovereign systems that are not under the jurisdiction. They are national systems under national jurisdiction.
By the way, most of our satellites aren't subject to shutter control because they're just lower resolution than the cap. But the point is you can have your own sovereign systems that are not under the jurisdiction. They are national systems under national jurisdiction.
17:07
17:07
17:07
17:07
17:07
Liam Byrne
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Liam Byrne
Well, there certainly we've been in Germany for over a dozen, ten years after we acquired a small company there which called Rapideye. And we have our mission control systems there. So we had a technical base to build on. Also, I hate to say it, but in the EU and we want to go after EU business, and if you're outside the EU, you have a much smaller probability of that and it's still in trade discussions. So we obviously are going to put our biggest eggs in the biggest baskets. But we wanted to have an independent capacity to build, launch and operate our satellites.
And this is not to despite despite the U.S. we're continuing to do that. We actually just doubled our manufacturing capacities in the United States as well. There's so much demand from so many countries to have sovereign eyes. It's the first thing when you realize, you , that the U.S. may be backing out and saying, hey, you take more ownership, the first thing you want is more better eyes on what's going on so you can understand your threat environment, which primarily Europe has relied on the US for, and to be able to more accurately use the systems that you have.
Ukraine has an information advantage because satellites have given it an information advantage against a conventional disadvantage. And so we can provide that to Europe very, very quickly to UK and the rest of Europe.
And this is not to despite despite the U.S. we're continuing to do that. We actually just doubled our manufacturing capacities in the United States as well. There's so much demand from so many countries to have sovereign eyes. It's the first thing when you realize, you , that the U.S. may be backing out and saying, hey, you take more ownership, the first thing you want is more better eyes on what's going on so you can understand your threat environment, which primarily Europe has relied on the US for, and to be able to more accurately use the systems that you have.
Ukraine has an information advantage because satellites have given it an information advantage against a conventional disadvantage. And so we can provide that to Europe very, very quickly to UK and the rest of Europe.
17:09
17:09
Lord Boateng
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Lord Boateng
Doctor Baum? Just I wonder if you can help us with this. How can we. And this is a defense related question where you've done so much interesting work. How can we better protect ourselves in the UK in terms of our ground based infrastructure and assets, both subthreshold and impossible times of war?
17:09
Speaker 2
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Speaker 2
That's a great question. And I think to sort of tack on to exactly what we were saying, I think it's important to look at the long pedigree of data sharing agreements between the UK and the US that have historically existed and continue to exist. And I think sort of the post-Brexit strategy is for the UK to remain its strategic autonomy, but also those transatlantic and European partnerships and sort of how they plug in. So my answer to that would actually be, I think what what is really key is diversity is our resilience strategy, that we sort of make sure that we are able to reconstitute our assets because we've got so many alliance structures bilaterally, multilaterally.
There's a brilliant Kensington treaty between the UK and Germany, and hopefully there's there's an MOU coming out in early 2027 with that, where we've got these strong partnerships that allow us to reconstitute our assets relatively quickly. So I guess sort of a short answer on that is I think we really have to sort of embed ourselves within these allied structures. We've got NATO sort of this NATO first posture that was announced with the Strategic Defence Review, but also making sure that we're at the table when something like the EU Space Act was written, but also the next sort of EU developments when the EU is tasking with the EU Commission, tasking sort of defence developments in Europe, that we are at the table for those conversations to make sure that we are involved in those security architectures.
There's a brilliant Kensington treaty between the UK and Germany, and hopefully there's there's an MOU coming out in early 2027 with that, where we've got these strong partnerships that allow us to reconstitute our assets relatively quickly. So I guess sort of a short answer on that is I think we really have to sort of embed ourselves within these allied structures. We've got NATO sort of this NATO first posture that was announced with the Strategic Defence Review, but also making sure that we're at the table when something like the EU Space Act was written, but also the next sort of EU developments when the EU is tasking with the EU Commission, tasking sort of defence developments in Europe, that we are at the table for those conversations to make sure that we are involved in those security architectures.
17:11
Lord Boateng
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Lord Boateng
If I can press you on your knowledge of our ground based infrastructure, where we launch things from, where we hold important technology, to what extent, in your view, is that safe, given what we've seen in recent times, that non-state actors are people operating on behalf of states can create enormous damage in ways that, quite frankly, we didn't anticipate.
17:11
Speaker 2
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Speaker 2
I suppose, the loss of access to our space. It's the one that we are investing in with the National Space Strategy is Saxavord, which would allow us to reach polar orbits. One of the key risks is that we're no longer really able to reach equatorial orbits with a high density payload. So a really heavy payload would have to be launched through key allies like the US, where Falcon nine provided us the ability to launch Taiki. We were also sort of planning on Juno and Oberon being launched with Falcon nine, but they're no longer accepting delivery slots post 2028, so losing our ability to access key slots now we will be able to access with saxavord a certain amount of space infrastructure, but it won't fully reconstitute.
And. And the other option, the alternative is Ariane six. But that cost is is not similar to Falcon. It is actually far more expensive. But also it doesn't sort of it's not reusable, it's not a reusable rocket and.
And. And the other option, the alternative is Ariane six. But that cost is is not similar to Falcon. It is actually far more expensive. But also it doesn't sort of it's not reusable, it's not a reusable rocket and.
17:12
17:12
17:12
Speaker 3
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Speaker 3
Thank you chair. I'm now going to move on to the UK's favourite topic weather but space weather. So I wondered if the National Risk Register has said that the risk of severe space weather is between 5 to 25%, and that there would be a significant impact. So I wondered if you agreed with that assessment and if you could perhaps describe to us what that impact would look like.
17:12
Speaker 2
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Speaker 2
Yes. Just for some context, I can provide. So the sun is active for periods of 11 years at a time, and we're currently situated right in the middle of that 11 year cycle. And that will be ending by the end of the decade. But because it's so active, it means it's really unpredictable. And so the timeline that we get for knowing that there's going to be a geomagnetic storm or a radio interference can be either from sort of some data released weeks prior to ours. But, but even 30 minutes before and when it comes to radio frequency interference, we don't really know the impact of that until it happens.
The event that sort of your sighting would be similar to the Carrington event, which was in 1859, and that was the most due. That was the most intense geomagnetic storm on record. And we haven't faced anything similar to that. Obviously, we didn't have a satellite in orbit in 1859, so the effects of which would be really serious today. The problem now, as I mentioned, we're in this active solar flare cycle is that we we struggle to be able to attribute whether that's a sort of natural threat or a man made threat. So say, for example, there's interference in a satellite which impacts our atmosphere.
So our atmospheric drag, can we attribute that necessarily to being something that was hostile activity with with hostile intent, or was that something natural? And we're seeing that up until the end of up to 2030.
The event that sort of your sighting would be similar to the Carrington event, which was in 1859, and that was the most due. That was the most intense geomagnetic storm on record. And we haven't faced anything similar to that. Obviously, we didn't have a satellite in orbit in 1859, so the effects of which would be really serious today. The problem now, as I mentioned, we're in this active solar flare cycle is that we we struggle to be able to attribute whether that's a sort of natural threat or a man made threat. So say, for example, there's interference in a satellite which impacts our atmosphere.
So our atmospheric drag, can we attribute that necessarily to being something that was hostile activity with with hostile intent, or was that something natural? And we're seeing that up until the end of up to 2030.
17:14
Speaker 2
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Speaker 2
I can just give something brief and then I'll pass it on. But essentially it allows for a degree of ambiguity, actually, because it's a similar thing that happened with Starlink that was already mentioned by Will when when the loss of service happened in Ukraine, there was a degree of plausible deniability to say, oh, well, this is a this is something that we could not predict. This is something that we had no control over. It was actually a natural impact. And it's hard to verify that. It's kind of like if you know those locks that you put on your baggage when you go to travel and it dings with little pop up when TSA has opened the lock, we don't have anything on a satellite currently that sort of announces that you've been intentionally jammed or directly attacked, because it's impossible really to dictate whether or not that was a natural impact or not.
I don't know if anybody else.
I don't know if anybody else.
17:15
Liam Byrne
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Liam Byrne
I would only just say that these things are far from academic . During this solar maximum, part of the challenge was that the the academic literature in this area didn't predict how big it was going to be. It ended up being more than twice as active as the normal 11 year period. So they have this 11 year period of activities, but this one went up almost twice as much. And we didn't no one really predicted that. And so people were operating their satellites too low because it it excites the upper atmosphere, increases drag. So I have colleagues that lost two thirds of their satellites.
Two satellite companies lost two thirds of their satellites in the first year because their propulsion system wasn't able to go up to keep them above it fast enough, so they got pulled down. It's great that satellites are operating really low , because it means they can naturally clearing from space debris standpoint, and it also increases resolution for a given telescope or what have you. So a lot of earth imaging systems operate quite low. And yeah, if you don't predict it, you can really lose fleets of satellites very quickly. None of that was in, you know, intentional except for if you prescribe free will to the sun.
But yeah, it was, but it was it had a big effect.
Two satellite companies lost two thirds of their satellites in the first year because their propulsion system wasn't able to go up to keep them above it fast enough, so they got pulled down. It's great that satellites are operating really low , because it means they can naturally clearing from space debris standpoint, and it also increases resolution for a given telescope or what have you. So a lot of earth imaging systems operate quite low. And yeah, if you don't predict it, you can really lose fleets of satellites very quickly. None of that was in, you know, intentional except for if you prescribe free will to the sun.
But yeah, it was, but it was it had a big effect.
17:16
17:16
Liam Byrne
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Liam Byrne
Well, I think the first thing is is actually doing slightly better at the modelling. So since then we've actually updated some models that do perhaps predict these higher events. A second thing is radiation hardening. I mean we really for the nuclear weapons potential threat, I think we really should be leaning at eventually having radiation hardening of commercial systems, which, you know, Ukraine is fully dependent on very commercial systems. It's not just that they're dependent on space, it's mainly that they're dependent on commercial space. As I said, we're 80% of the imagery being provided for them.
And something similar with Starlink on the on the comms side, those systems aren't radiation hardened like the GPS systems against a potential nuclear blast. It's actually not that hard. It's an R&D project, but it's hard to expect the companies to just do that on their own for a hypothetical event. That's a geopolitical thing, right? I think the country should come in and say, we'll help you with your R&D, share some know how on how to do that, so you can integrate that into your systems so that they're less vulnerable at a system level to those radiation events.
And that would help both the natural events and, and, and, and things like a nuke explosion in space. I better go, thank you so much. And I'll leave a few cards here if anyone needs to contact me.
And something similar with Starlink on the on the comms side, those systems aren't radiation hardened like the GPS systems against a potential nuclear blast. It's actually not that hard. It's an R&D project, but it's hard to expect the companies to just do that on their own for a hypothetical event. That's a geopolitical thing, right? I think the country should come in and say, we'll help you with your R&D, share some know how on how to do that, so you can integrate that into your systems so that they're less vulnerable at a system level to those radiation events.
And that would help both the natural events and, and, and, and things like a nuke explosion in space. I better go, thank you so much. And I'll leave a few cards here if anyone needs to contact me.
17:18
17:18
17:18
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
Just to mention on the point there regarding whether it is a space weather event or whether it's a cyber event, from the cyber perspective, it's much less humiliating to say that we don't know the source of this problem. And as has been alluded to, the the implications of of a cyber event can look very similar to space weather. So I think from a cyber perspective, you'll often see in the news that companies have encountered some kind of issue, but you won't as often say, we know that it was a cyber attack. This vulnerability was exploited.
And actually access to that information about cyber attacks that happen in itself is, is, is a major issue. Yes. I just wanted to mention that.
And actually access to that information about cyber attacks that happen in itself is, is, is a major issue. Yes. I just wanted to mention that.
17:18
17:18
17:18
17:18
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom
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Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom
Yes. Thank you very much. Sorry about that. Having difficulty unmuting. Can I come back to the 5 to 25% chance of the of a of a solar solar flare. The Carrington event, which you mentioned, doctor Barham was originally classified as a 1 in 100 year event , until someone in government realized that it had happened more than 100 years ago. And so they reclassified it as a 1 in 200 year event, does the same sort of magical thinking apply to the 5 to 25% chance of there being serious damage from adverse space weather in the risk register.
And what is that figure based on? It's a wide range in itself, but is it accurate?
And what is that figure based on? It's a wide range in itself, but is it accurate?
17:19
17:19
Speaker 2
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Speaker 2
I just can briefly caution against adding probability to catastrophe. I think there's something that we need to be quite hesitant about when we start putting percentages behind things like the Carrington event, but also like Kessler syndrome, quantifying Kessler or quantifying the red line in which we're no longer able to operate in space. I think once you've put a number on that, we can sort of walk ourselves close to it. Or once you've sort of quantified or put put a statistic next to the Carrington event, then we can sort of relax ourselves and relax our defences against it.
So I would just I would caution against it. And I would also cite it's very similar actually to deterrence. We don't recognize that there's been a failure until or you don't recognize sort of the structure of deterrence until there's a failure. And it's very similar in the sense that we sort of have to experience failures, readjust ourselves, and make sure that we have a sort of degree of risk baked into our sort of portfolios to to be able to adapt, to adapt to them.
So I would just I would caution against it. And I would also cite it's very similar actually to deterrence. We don't recognize that there's been a failure until or you don't recognize sort of the structure of deterrence until there's a failure. And it's very similar in the sense that we sort of have to experience failures, readjust ourselves, and make sure that we have a sort of degree of risk baked into our sort of portfolios to to be able to adapt, to adapt to them.
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Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
Thank you. I would build upon that. And I would say that actually that I would agree, you know, trying to put a figure on it, trying to say, you know, when will it happen? Any kind of meteorologist will tell you that you can't predict when a major space weather event will happen. You know, it's hard to predict. And I think that actually, whether it is a space weather event or whether it is a cyber attack, whether it's come through the supply chain, whether it was an error, the impact will be the same because of our dependence on space.
And I think resilience comes to having plans in place, expecting these major catastrophes to happen. What are we going to do when that constellation is knocked out? What are we going to do when we lose GPS or lose an equivalent or lose Skynet? What are we going to do? I think having those resilience plans is really important. You have to kind of expect these attacks to happen when it comes to cyber attacks, you know, what are we going to do? Are we going to wait for a major cyber attack to happen against Skynet? You know, is that what we're going.
I think it would be better to prepare for it and to have plans in place, which also include mapping out of those dependent sectors and which sectors are going to struggle and how, you know, which kind of what kind of manufacturing sectors or wider will struggle if we see a disruption to space. If I go back to the Jaguar Land Rover attack, you know, there was manufacturing that was stopped. People didn't have work because they couldn't keep on manufacturing. They couldn't keep the processes going because of the cyber attack. These knock on effects on the economy are really significant.
And I think one of the ways in which you can be resilient is by having a, A is by recognizing that there are lots of capabilities in the UK in academia especially, which doesn't get mentioned enough in the context of cyber. In the UK space strategy, there's a lot of capabilities in the UK, in cyber and in space, which could be leveraged and could be applied to the defence domain, could be pivoted into space and apply to helping to secure space and also, you know, help with the radiation hardening and other aspects that we've just heard about.
But I think that there needs to be more support for individual companies to gain things like security clearance, understand what what space even is from directly from the government. And this could help to grow the space, cyber and space security ecosystem in the UK. And I think that's that's well needed.
And I think resilience comes to having plans in place, expecting these major catastrophes to happen. What are we going to do when that constellation is knocked out? What are we going to do when we lose GPS or lose an equivalent or lose Skynet? What are we going to do? I think having those resilience plans is really important. You have to kind of expect these attacks to happen when it comes to cyber attacks, you know, what are we going to do? Are we going to wait for a major cyber attack to happen against Skynet? You know, is that what we're going.
I think it would be better to prepare for it and to have plans in place, which also include mapping out of those dependent sectors and which sectors are going to struggle and how, you know, which kind of what kind of manufacturing sectors or wider will struggle if we see a disruption to space. If I go back to the Jaguar Land Rover attack, you know, there was manufacturing that was stopped. People didn't have work because they couldn't keep on manufacturing. They couldn't keep the processes going because of the cyber attack. These knock on effects on the economy are really significant.
And I think one of the ways in which you can be resilient is by having a, A is by recognizing that there are lots of capabilities in the UK in academia especially, which doesn't get mentioned enough in the context of cyber. In the UK space strategy, there's a lot of capabilities in the UK, in cyber and in space, which could be leveraged and could be applied to the defence domain, could be pivoted into space and apply to helping to secure space and also, you know, help with the radiation hardening and other aspects that we've just heard about.
But I think that there needs to be more support for individual companies to gain things like security clearance, understand what what space even is from directly from the government. And this could help to grow the space, cyber and space security ecosystem in the UK. And I think that's that's well needed.
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Speaker 5
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Speaker 5
Yeah. Thank you. Sorry. You need to unmute us rather than us tapping away at the screen. That's the , I think, been the problem for myself and Lord Arbuthnot. Okay, just a really quick point because you've answered most of what we were going to cover in this section. We've heard from you about distributed approaches to satellites, all of the changes we ought to make potentially in the future, cyber space, weather and all the rest of it. Just briefly, the existing estate, if you like, of satellites, how vulnerable are they, and can they be retrofitted to have any of these resilience capabilities you've been describing?
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Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
I'm glad that you've mentioned that, because I think it's one of the elephants in the room is the fact that we're talking about, well, when you talk about securing space, especially from the cyber perspective, you, you know, and you talk about AI, you talk about the mechanisms that are being added to space, to satellites today. You talk about hardening them more for weather events. This completely disregards all of the thousands of satellites that are already up there in orbit , that are travelling, sometimes at thousands of miles an hour, that you'd have to be very clever to gain physical access to and to retrofit kind of any kind of measures onto.
One of the big vulnerabilities of space satellites in particular, is that you can't walk around a satellite in the same way as you would a water treatment centre. You can't check for blinking lights, and you definitely can't. You definitely can't add lots of things onto them, even the ones the satellites which are being developed now and being deployed, You definitely can't add a lots of things onto them, even the ones the satellites which are being developed now and being deployed. There are limits. They can't be extremely heavy . And that's why there are discussions about, for example, orbital data centers and how they would actually be deployed, because there's still currently a limit on the compute that can exist on satellites in space.
So there's there are many vulnerable satellites already. And the threats and the risks that we're discussing in this room today will no doubt change. And in another. 10 or 15 years, it could be that AI evolves in this major way, which I agree with will on. Or it could be another threat that emerges because threats always emerge. You know. satellites that are being deployed or developed. Now, there are more abilities to upload software and to do more with them, but the satellites are already up there in orbit. You just have to try and detect. And I think it really goes back to that point of resilience.
What are you going to do when they are disrupted, rather than trying to do, trying to rely on the measures that you've. adopted to ensure that you've done everything you can to stop them from being intercepted? At the end of the day, we can't stop a space weather event from affecting them. And so having the resilience in place and knowing how society would. continue without critical space systems is, is, is a really important aspect of this conversation. If I might just quickly add, and this sort of goes back to the first question slightly about looking at the space strategy, one of the four key technology areas that was identified there was in-orbit assembly and manufacturing.
I think we are some years away from manufacturing as a component, but one large component of ism is rendezvous and proximity operations, RPO. And this allows us to be able to not necessarily walk around satellites, but be able to sort of adjust and update them. There's this sort of development of gas stations in orbit, but I think the manufacturing moving into orbit is sort of a natural development. And it was it was a good step in the .
One of the big vulnerabilities of space satellites in particular, is that you can't walk around a satellite in the same way as you would a water treatment centre. You can't check for blinking lights, and you definitely can't. You definitely can't add lots of things onto them, even the ones the satellites which are being developed now and being deployed, You definitely can't add a lots of things onto them, even the ones the satellites which are being developed now and being deployed. There are limits. They can't be extremely heavy . And that's why there are discussions about, for example, orbital data centers and how they would actually be deployed, because there's still currently a limit on the compute that can exist on satellites in space.
So there's there are many vulnerable satellites already. And the threats and the risks that we're discussing in this room today will no doubt change. And in another. 10 or 15 years, it could be that AI evolves in this major way, which I agree with will on. Or it could be another threat that emerges because threats always emerge. You know. satellites that are being deployed or developed. Now, there are more abilities to upload software and to do more with them, but the satellites are already up there in orbit. You just have to try and detect. And I think it really goes back to that point of resilience.
What are you going to do when they are disrupted, rather than trying to do, trying to rely on the measures that you've. adopted to ensure that you've done everything you can to stop them from being intercepted? At the end of the day, we can't stop a space weather event from affecting them. And so having the resilience in place and knowing how society would. continue without critical space systems is, is, is a really important aspect of this conversation. If I might just quickly add, and this sort of goes back to the first question slightly about looking at the space strategy, one of the four key technology areas that was identified there was in-orbit assembly and manufacturing.
I think we are some years away from manufacturing as a component, but one large component of ism is rendezvous and proximity operations, RPO. And this allows us to be able to not necessarily walk around satellites, but be able to sort of adjust and update them. There's this sort of development of gas stations in orbit, but I think the manufacturing moving into orbit is sort of a natural development. And it was it was a good step in the .
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Speaker 2
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Speaker 2
That have the ability to have software, etc. updated and are therefore designed to be more resilient. Recognizing the limits on that. How big a task, though, would it be to essentially either. retrofit or update or. replace the functions that we already rely upon for satellites, which have been being put up there for decades? I mean, it seems to me that that we can put up new Gucci, new ones that work very well on a more resilient.
But what about the old ones? What how big a task would it be to replace them or,
But what about the old ones? What how big a task would it be to replace them or,
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Speaker 3
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Speaker 3
You think about how where, as mentioned, this technology is we're not there yet. And then you think about how many satellites they are, and then you have to position them and you have to get to each one. It's not like going up to a car parked in a car park. It's like going up to a, you know, to the UK and trying to find where,
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Speaker 2
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Speaker 2
And I'm very and presumably therefore extremely costly. So this is what I'm just trying to this is what I'm just really trying to get to is we can talk about what we should do in the future, but we have a. We have an existing estate that we have to. consider on which we are completely dependent. And your early points about wargaming resilience, what happens when they're knocked out are really well made, because if we can't do anything about those,
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Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
Continue for the foreseeable future. Is that correct? Absolutely. And in terms of cost, if I may. Thank you. Just to just to mention about the space strategy, it was announced to have. £7.8 billion attached to that strategy, but much of that was already pre-committed funds sort of packaged within it. It's a relatively modest budget, actually. If we compare ourselves to where Germany is, they announced. €35 billion to be spent by that 2030 deadline as well. The lion's share of investment in the UK will be spent between 2030 and 2035. And so there's to some, some degree, an assumption that we're going to have this large industrialist booming industry that's going to be able to deliver between the year 2030 and.
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Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
It's difficult. I think there's been a move with the one government approach. But I mean, I myself struggle to identify the right person to go to either within government or even main building. The seats don't remain hot for long. So I guess sort of put it kindly, but it's it's something that has been changing around quite a bit. I think there's been a lot of positive direction when we look at the National Armament Director group and how Rupert Pearce has a space. background coming from Inmarsat, I think that there have been movements that have been going in the right.
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Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
But I would like to sort of cite that the UK Space Agency sort of moved back into the Department for Science Innovation Technology in April, and then got sort of moved into. dbus shortly after. And now there's a co-director model. And this all has happened within a really relatively small time frame where there's been reshuffles of, of key people and key positions within that. organization itself. And that's just the UK Space Agency. So I think there's, there's positive steps in the right direction when we talk about Cohesivity. But it's an incredibly difficult task to actually deliver on.
And much of the space sector in the UK is sort of backed by either mavericks or it's quite. personality base, where somebody really cares about a specific .
And much of the space sector in the UK is sort of backed by either mavericks or it's quite. personality base, where somebody really cares about a specific .
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Speaker 3
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Speaker 3
I really helpful, sorry, sorry, please. No, of course I would echo that. And I think it's one of the exercises that SpaceX did last year was we went round and did a capability mapping exercise and looked at different. capabilities all around the UK from down in Cheltenham, down up to, sorry, all the way up to Scotland and Northern Ireland as well. And in each of these regions we looked at what are the, you know, what are the capabilities, what do we have to deliver space and space security and space cyber in this specific region. And one of the problems that kept on coming up again and again was the.
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Speaker 3
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Speaker 3
The information flow is not. extensive and therefore. mechanisms are needed which allow industry to support this because there are. capabilities and I think there are certain barriers that get in the way, for example, of smaller companies engaging and supporting such strategies. And one of those is security.
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Speaker 3
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Speaker 3
You know, adhering to the different security. standards with defence. And I think if you lower those. barriers and you make it easier for companies to work with government to help. deliver on this strategy, on these suggestions that we're making, then you'll realise that we have. significantly more. capacity than you might might think rather than relying solely on, on, you know, the, by the way. brilliant UK space agency team alone, it needs to be a collaborative effort. But then that comes with more funding, probably in order to incentivize people to kind of work together, but also more infrastructure.
And I'm sure we'll hear more of that in a second about relating to the trade bodies. I think we have.
And I'm sure we'll hear more of that in a second about relating to the trade bodies. I think we have.
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Matt Western
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Matt Western
That's great. Thank you very much. Thanks, chair. Very good. So just to revisit that last previous point about the, the, the systems that are out there that, as Laura was saying, may have been out there for decades. So we have these legacy systems. We thought about it as a sort of computing software that is running half of government departments. These are satellites or networks of satellites, which are are more vulnerable to to attack. Has there been an audit done, do you know, by government to establish what that legacy estate looks like and what needs to be done to update it or upgrade it .
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Matt Western
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Matt Western
Much as I can to understand whether an audit has taken place. Well, thank you. Thank you in advance for that. If I can. Thank you both. Thank Will, in his absence officially for his participation as well. Really appreciate. It's been an excellent session. Very informative. So thanks for now. And we will suspend .
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
Panelists just to introduce themselves from my left? Your right. Good afternoon. Good evening. I'm Elizabeth Seward, I'm the CEO of Super Sharp. We're a spin out company from the University of Cambridge. We're now 38 people and we build thermal infrared space telescopes. My background, though, is working for BA systems and Airbus Defence and Space.
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Matt Western
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Matt Western
Previously space instructor in UK Space Command. Terrific. Well look thank you for being patient. Hanging on. We are running obviously slightly over. But if you can help give us. distilled and as concise answers as possible, that would be very helpful as always. So let me just kick off really in terms of looking at the threat which we covered earlier, we talked about the UK space. strategy that was published on the, I think it was the 8th of September. How how did you read it in terms of the, the. ambition from from within it and, and what it is committed to?
You've heard some of the responses we've just heard.
You've heard some of the responses we've just heard.
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
What are your observations, perhaps, Elizabeth, you could start. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, it was very welcome. It was very well rounded piece of work. It included civil and defence together. Not quite the first time, but certainly the most coherent that we've seen it from a personal perspective. It did put earth observation back as a priority which had been dropped in the one before, but is something that we have a significant reliance on. And so that was very good to see it. It is a strategy, and as such, it sets out what we want to do, but it doesn't have the.
implementation alongside it of how do we get there and how do we do it. So there is definitely more work to be done. I see it as a good grounding and a good step one, but we have to keep going on. How do we deliver that now?
implementation alongside it of how do we get there and how do we do it. So there is definitely more work to be done. I see it as a good grounding and a good step one, but we have to keep going on. How do we deliver that now?
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
And we're not to France as it compared to France. That's a good question. I don't have that figure to hand. Steph might when we get there. But France, I believe, are spending more than us still. And we're not spending much of that money until 2030 onwards. And so we're still doing the small programs and the step by step approach at the minute, when we just need to be going faster.
And we have a lot of capability in the country that we could .
And we have a lot of capability in the country that we could .
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
Delivering for the national good. So frustrating for you. Yes, yes. I mean, we, as a start up asked on, on that sort of path to commercialization. So we have our first two satellites launching next year, and we have got there through excellent support from the UK Space Agency and the grant funding. And we're hitting that. commercialization gap of now. We're looking to sell them and to. target government contracts here and abroad.
But the the sort of pot of money that we're looking at are not going to emerge .
But the the sort of pot of money that we're looking at are not going to emerge .
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
Are ready in the next six months. We'll come back to that. Stephanie. Yes. We also welcome the strategy because it is the first time that they've tried to cohere across some government departments, and it's a fund. They've recognised that it's not just a scientific endeavour. It is actually a. fundamental enabler of national security, economic growth and the functioning in a modern society. And the government is right to seek a more strategically focused.
approach and to recognise the importance of sovereign capabilities.
approach and to recognise the importance of sovereign capabilities.
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
And I do think we need to remember that this was this was a strategy for spending. £7.8 billion that had already been identified, allocated, secured. It wasn't a strategy that was going out into into beyond 2030. It was a lot of the money was going to be spent 20, 30, 20, 35. But other nations are making their plans into into 2040. And actually we are. But through the Isa lens. And that is that is a different thing. And to talk about the French, I mean, they have their own national space budget, which I think is.
around just a little bit in excess of ours, but they spend the same amount again through ESA, whereas we don't we spend a .
around just a little bit in excess of ours, but they spend the same amount again through ESA, whereas we don't we spend a .
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
Doesn't sufficiently cover that. Do you think the priorities are clear from the strategy? I think the priorities for now are clear, and it's to put us on a footing towards another place. And as far as that goes, it's successful. I would I think the, you know, to Will's point made earlier on the clear and present dangers now are slightly different and they will evolve as well. So I would like to see the strategy evolve to meet that.
I would also like to see other government departments brought into the strategy, because currently Defra.
I would also like to see other government departments brought into the strategy, because currently Defra.
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Speaker 4
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Speaker 4
But I do. I would come back to the space strategy is is welcoming that it brings the national defence and severe severe space weather strategy together into one which I think from a. coherence command and control at the start of any operation is critical from my previous life in the military. But then I also think sort of linking to that national resilience and what that looks like is so multi multifaceted. And I would say just from a previous life, our potential.
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Speaker 4
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Speaker 4
The state sort of Russia, they, they train their military to operate without space. They accept that from the word go. And so I think that having served in. Afghanistan and places like that, we we were heavily reliant on an encrypted GPS that was encrypted GPS for for other things. But I do believe that when we come to these.
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
Yeah. Thank you. And I'll pick up on a question of the previous panel, which was could we. retrofit all of our assets? The UK doesn't have very many sovereign. satellites that it owns and controls. We have for military communication satellites in the Skynet system. We have, I think it's now three earth observation satellites. And potentially there are some more. classified ones, except I'm not even sure that there are. But there may now be 1 or 2. But but we have a handful, potentially two handfuls of satellites. So we really don't have very much. infrastructure to secure or to retrofit.
And that also means that we don't have very much to rely on if we lose access to everything else. And I think Mr. Marshall made a good point about numbers count. That's very true. And we in the UK do not have them. But it's not just numbers. It's also. mixing data.
And that also means that we don't have very much to rely on if we lose access to everything else. And I think Mr. Marshall made a good point about numbers count. That's very true. And we in the UK do not have them. But it's not just numbers. It's also. mixing data.
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
What you would take on your iPhone camera. There's radar. available which we can build in the UK. And they have done so from the Airbus site in Portsmouth. But we don't today. And my company is building thermal infrared. And those are just the three layers that you need for earth observation. Then we've got. communications and GPS, the timing and navigation system. And so we have access to many of these through our allies.
And we have the ability to buy them.
And we have the ability to buy them.
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
But we don't as the UK have a resilience plan and. strategy of which ones we need to employ, at which time and where can we get that priority. Access to and to resilience is all about what do we. need to be able to rely on as, as Rob said, and then who owns that? Who owns that capability? Who owns that delivery? What level of service do we need operationally? And if there is, if some sort of problem, what's the what's the minimum we can operate successfully at? And I think those are the questions that we haven't asked ourselves yet as a nation.
And they're the ones that you you have the challenge of answering in your report. And, you know, we are here to help you do that. But do I think as a country, we can do it?
And they're the ones that you you have the challenge of answering in your report. And, you know, we are here to help you do that. But do I think as a country, we can do it?
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
We have some world leading. capability in this country. We have. amazing large scale satellite. manufacturing in the Airbus plants. We have a small companies growing clear space with its new contracts and others around the country. And we're really, really good at university spinouts and building new. technologies and doing our R&D. We're not very good at getting those to. commercialisation and supporting them through scale, and we don't have very many government .
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Speaker 10
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Speaker 10
Including second and third order dependencies. We have all sorts of. international allies and partners in that mix that we need to be aware of. They are probably good, but we need to establish that we need to do. scenario based. wargaming where we look at the loss of PA or Satcom, or earth observation , or ground infrastructure or. spectrum and the data integrity, but we need to look at them under different. durations and different threat conditions, because something that goes out for a couple of hours is very different, something that goes out for weeks and might need to have a spacecraft put up to replace it.
The third thing we need is industrial. mobilisation planning. We need to establish what industry can deliver in.
The third thing we need is industrial. mobilisation planning. We need to establish what industry can deliver in.
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Speaker 10
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Speaker 10
It would be unnecessary. But instead, what we should be doing is identifying where the UK needs genuine. autonomy and where it can develop distinctive. capabilities that make us. indispensable to those allies, because, you know, that is a very strategic thing for us. We don't want to be. replicating capabilities that lie elsewhere. And I would just say on the numbers of things we're looking at here.
So in spark, our National Space Operations Centre tracks eight around. 811 UK assets in space, you know, all the time. Now of those. 640 something I think are OneWeb.
So in spark, our National Space Operations Centre tracks eight around. 811 UK assets in space, you know, all the time. Now of those. 640 something I think are OneWeb.
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Speaker 4
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Speaker 4
But how best? What's the best way the government can help? So I think one really positive thing is that Tech and Growth Alliance that's just been stood up, which seeks to take IP that has been essentially put on the shelf from the Ministry of Defence. So this is previous pounds that have been spent, and then it's got to a technology readiness level. And now we're seeking to commercialise that those pathways. And that help is really important, particularly for the SMEs that that that that spin out of it. The anchor contract. I can I am very privileged to be able to say that I have an anchor contract from UK Space Agency to go and do active debris removal, but we are also keenly aware that that is is more than the contract is, is about establishing an industrial base from which we can grow from and then work, for example, with Elizabeth and others to put those sorts of sensors on there.
The one thing that I think I would just sort of add, maybe to answer a previous question a little bit in terms of how we do this, we as the United Kingdom, should probably be quite selective in what we say our strengths and weaknesses are. There is always space, and this is my military hat for deception. And we as a nation, as Elizabeth said, will never have the or nor should we be replicating. But we. We can divert other people's. attention to areas we want them to look at, which gives us freedom. And that could be the industrial base, but that could also be from a strategic perspective.
And the UK's overseas. territories are a great asset that .
The one thing that I think I would just sort of add, maybe to answer a previous question a little bit in terms of how we do this, we as the United Kingdom, should probably be quite selective in what we say our strengths and weaknesses are. There is always space, and this is my military hat for deception. And we as a nation, as Elizabeth said, will never have the or nor should we be replicating. But we. We can divert other people's. attention to areas we want them to look at, which gives us freedom. And that could be the industrial base, but that could also be from a strategic perspective.
And the UK's overseas. territories are a great asset that .
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Speaker 10
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Speaker 10
Small space companies. We want some more targeted scale up. finance and, you know, the protection of international market access, the EU Space Act and the made in Europe efforts at the moment are really damaging us, and we need the government to lean into that. And then we need some strategic supplier. assessments so that there are some. companies the government has put it in the strategy as around 10 million or able to make 10 million.
We think they that might be a little bit of a blunt.
We think they that might be a little bit of a blunt.
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
Which is often given as a isn't this fantastic? But actually it means that there are far more companies who could be doing great things if we had more funding to do so. And one of the consequences for this is the matched funding. contributions keeps going up. And so as a small company, you only get some sort of 60, 70, 80% of the grant, everything is dropped down to 70. And so you have to find that extra 30%, which means you have to find investors. And many of those investors are not British. And so then we lose control of their companies at much earlier stages.
And then when you get to a certain level and you're ready for.
And then when you get to a certain level and you're ready for.
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
Those procurement contracts either don't materialise or take a very long time. And as a sort of a small company with salaries to pay and a runway that you can see the end of, it's a very different situation than if you're a large systems integrator, and it's just another project and it gets delayed by a year. And so this sort of slow down of defence spending with all of the reviews .
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
These partnerships and how should they be looking for them? I mean, again, when it comes to resilience, having that. proliferated set of. partnerships is also useful. From my side in earth observation, we're seeing a very strong push towards the high north and the Canada, Norway, UK alliance. Certainly as a company, I've been having conversations with other companies that it links into the government strategy and then.
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
New Zealand, the sort of the Five Eyes nations. The US is still a strong partner because they have such sort of such a wealth of knowledge and. capability that we shouldn't discount them at this stage, but they shouldn't be the only one. And so it's kind of about. spreading who we're working with and how. And I just want to add one thing in case you don't come back to it on the cyber note, I know we talked a lot about cyber attacks and space and cyber attacks with satellites and on ground.
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Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
But also companies. And I've sort of talked to colleagues running small companies, and we have had a significant number of cyber attacks on my company and also on others. because space is seen as so critical. And so it's something that we work with cyber Essentials Plus, and there is some government support, but that would also be a useful area for greater support for critical. industries because the the how the attacks are happening are becoming so sophisticated.
And we have to have a. constant sort of. constant monitoring of who we're talking to and what we're talking to,
And we have to have a. constant sort of. constant monitoring of who we're talking to and what we're talking to,
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Matt Western
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Matt Western
It's quite draining and it takes a lot of effort away from what we should really be doing. Thank you. I'm afraid we're nearing time and we're going to cease to be core. Can I just ask you finally, and apologies to colleagues who won't be able to come in now in the final minute when it comes to SMEs. And I think, Elizabeth, that's your business background. You started from a start up spin out from maybe the university or research research program, just in two points. Just what would what could the government be doing? What can we do and encourage government to do to ensure that this great innovation culture that we have actually becomes commercialised in .
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Speaker 4
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Speaker 4
Starting for. reviews and, you know, et cetera. ET cetera. And then I think using government to champion overseas. So DBT and things like giving us the exploitation route out of the United Kingdom and championing what is best. And then finally, I think the overheads are often what kills SMEs. And security is a big part of that. So having a, an. infrastructure area where the likes of ourselves can go and work from and you essentially pay for access clearances are .
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Matt Western
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Matt Western
Sort of a cyber secure and a physically secure space. Exactly that. Okay. Very interesting. There were other points that we wanted to raise with you. Perhaps we can put them in writing and you could respond if that would be okay. Sorry, we've had to cut cut the time. We were planning to finish at six, but we were unable to run over because we're going to cease to be caught. And we have to be for the for the committee. So can I thank you for your time and for the information you share with us. That concludes our second panel and .
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