As part of the Ukraine conflict we have been watching an increased use of civil space capability. At the Inaugural Space Summit in Sydney on the 24th of March this year it was highlighted that organisations such as SpaceX, Maxar, and others provided a significant portion of satellite communications and space based remote sensing data, more colloquially known as space based Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR), in support of Ukraine. What is interesting is that these capabilities were not indigenous to the Ukrainian government but rather offered in support by commercial organisations already operating in the space domain. Ukraine bought these space services to fight a war, on demand, as required and so we saw War as a Service (WaaS) happen in the space domain.
WaaS is in fact not a new concept; in 2021 WaaS was referenced in terms of warfare in the cyber domain. The article on Medium.com compares the 2017 US Tomahawk strike on Syria to a 2021 Hacker attack on Oldsmar’s water supply in the US, which almost poisoned 13,000 people. The gist of the article is examining the level of impact of 57 Tomahawk missiles, where the article assumes at least USD$4B overall cost, compared to a cyber-attack in Oldsmar. The author references a Deloitte study that identifies the cost of a cyber-criminal enterprise between $34 to $25,000 per month, which places the ability to purchase offensive cyber capabilities at an exceedingly lower cost that 57 Tomahawk missiles. Now any nation can wage a cyber war. With just a “few lines of code to cause chaos and destruction. Available now on an affordable budget-friendly subscription. Welcome to the next digital frontier: War as a Service”.
In 2021 Borchert, Schutz, and Verbovszky highlighted the concepts of WaaS in the realm of Uncrewed Arial Systems (UAS) across multiple recent conflicts including Ukraine and Syria. However, their précis focuses on the outsourcing of military capability between strategic partners. Leveraging the capabilities and strengths between partners to embed and potentially amalgamate the capabilities of those partners. Their analysis focused on the government to government interactions that allowed the recipient to receive a complete turn-key solution including the appropriate tactics, procedures, and operational advice along with the technology being bought as a service.
Their analysis concludes that WaaS is not a new concept and provides a strong strategic advantage. The focus on the government to government concepts to make WaaS work is the key differentiating point between Borchert et al and the current space capability in Ukraine mentioned above. Those other concepts of WaaS are strictly commercial transactions that can exist in a space without bilateral agreements between governments and are also capabilities that can be purchased by non-state actors.
What is making WaaS in the space domain possible is the fact that the barriers to entry into space for commercial operations are drastically reduced. The access to cheap and reliable launch has delivered an increased number of satellites to orbit. This has in turn created a growing market of back end services and service providers. what we have observed in Ukraine is the rise of accessible and cheap access to space and the resulting space-based services.
It can be argued that war like services have been outsourced as long as anyone can remember. The concept of a Defence Prime contractor and Private Military Contractors highlights this. However, what is different in this Ukraine scenario is the extent of commercial products and support.
Companies such as Maxar, Planet, and BlackSky have been able to provide commercial imagery to support Ukraine. Organisations such as EOS Data Analytics have offered to take commercial imagery and provide it to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence to help fight the Russians Even Capellaspace have managed to provide Synthetic Aperture RADAR (SAR) images that have the distinct advantage of looking through cloud and clearly identifying large metal objects such as armoured vehicles and convoys. At the recent UK Air and Space Power Conference the former Chairman of the State Space Agency of Ukraine, Mr Vlodymyr Osov, confirmed at least 50% of the Ukrainian satellite imagery came from commercial providers.
Maxar provides the Ukraine, in fact everyone, with images from the Russian invasion. Heading to their website anyone can download images of Russian convoys. While one can argue that no commercial service can provide the same quality of the images in spatial or spectral resolution as various classified satellites; the counter argument is the ability to acquire good enough images in a timely manner as to be actionable would more than make up for it.
The future of satellite Earth Observation extends to Full Motion Video (FMV) with organisations such as Satellogic offering affordable, 60 seconds, monochromatic FMV. As constellations such as Starlink grow to their designed capacity the ability to provide on-demand connectivity to any location on Earth also becomes real. This can connect remote troops and remote systems providing a commercial infrastructure that can leverage the global coverage that is both difficult to displace but also responsive to surge demands. The ability to commercially source this capability for both State and non-State actors in any kind of conflict is something that is no longer science fiction.
What is the impact of WaaS from the space domain?
Dr Malcolm Davis in 2021 provided some insight. During an ASPI presentation Dr Davis identified space as being a domain where a war can be won or lost. Further highlighting that space was essential to modern warfare and without space we are “deaf, dumb, and blind”. The presentation also goes on to highlight that the “Democratisation of space technology” means that it is no longer dominated by major powers but the role of commercial organisations is changing the domain.
When the presentation was made it was hard to think about it in any other terms except in conflict of Nation States; that is in terms of the US, China, and Russia. Recent Ukraine events show that any state or non-state actor can shift the balance of power through the access to space-based capability; and commercial organisations can provide a resilient infrastructure through their disaggregated design and ability of an actor to reconstitute capability quickly through access to commercial services.
The change means a critical advantage in the future of conflict is the ability to access space capability quickly. For example, to acquire capability such as space-based images or satellite communication from commercial providers. These all have meaning in real time conflict with actions in the present being the focus.
One additional service that has not been as readily discussed is the ability to track conflict over time. EO data is not discarded but stored for later analysis and for examining changes over time. Similar to the bully in the playground in the day of the mobile phone, commercial satellite imagery is providing a record from which we cannot hide. As EOS Data Analytics, who are providing data to the Ukrainian government, highlighted this record of information can be used “as evidence of war crimes in future international criminal court proceedings”. This opens up the conversation of the ability to purchase commercial data from multiple sources across the globe as well as the availability of that data. Beyond that it also gives access to this data to non-state actors, including Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who can access the information over time in order to bring charges of war crimes against state actors.
The ability to empower NGOs may provide them more clout on the international stage if by no other means than the global political pressure that could accompany any cry of a crime. It also makes it possible that state actors can utilise NGOs to posture in the global arena while on the surface at least maintaining an air of impartiality. On more nefarious tones it can be imagined that non-state actors, including large corporations, using this information to exploit opportunities that may arise during or post a conflict.
Of course the dual use nature of space raises significant questions around appropriate and proportional responses to these commercial space providers. As a key provider of data to the Ukrainian government EOS Data Analytics they also provide their capability to other countries through “global enterprise partners” of which there is at least one Australian organisation. It is also important to know that this data is not military in its primary use. It is designed to support multiple industries, governments, and commercial organisations. If retaliation is taken against this organisation by the Russians it will have a much wider impact not only to the Australian global enterprise partners but to multiple industries and government bodies purely due to the nature and need of EO data.
Ukraine has shown us not only the importance of space-based capability but also the accessibility of this capability from commercial providers. Perhaps this is a reflection on the fast-paced change of technology and the ability to lean on commercial vendors to support, supplement, and enhance military capability. But it also highlights that the democratisation of space allows the commercial world and non-state actors to have more influence in the space domain.
Will we see a comparative advantage between states recede as space based capabilities become a single purchase order away? And is the inverse true with smaller nations jump starting their own capability through commercial vendors. While not discussed here a key consideration is the integration of commercial providers into a defence capability and the inherent complexity and issues associated with external vendors and integration. Regardless of that complexity the extent of commercial capabilities in space is having an obvious effecting in shaping the future of warfare.
About the Author: Edwin Betar is an active reservist with over 10 years in the RAAFAR with 1st Division HQ as part of the Air Liaison Organisation. In civilian life they work as a Principal Systems Engineer on multiple space programs including development work on Lunar projects as part of the NASA’s Artemis program. Edwin is also involved in collaborating with global start ups across multiple areas including Industry 4.0, Autonomy, and AI.