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I spent two days last week at the UK Space Power Conference at the IET in London. Senior military, government, industry, a lot of people who don't say much in public.
Fig. Me at the UK Space Power Conference 2026.
I went in expecting another conference and networking event. What I got was a fairly interesting message that most people outside the room haven't heard yet.
Space is the new warfighting domain
Not somewhere that supports a war but somewhere one happens! Scary…
That sounds dramatic written down, but it was said plainly and repeatedly, by the Air Chief Marshal, by Space Command, by NATO, by the US Space Force. And during the conference itself the UK stood up No. 3 Space Effects Squadron, its first unit dedicated to disrupting and denying hostile activity in orbit.
Fig. Air Chief Marshal Sir Harvey Smyth’s key note at the UK Space Power Conference 23 Sept 2026.
The reasoning is less about science fiction and more about plumbing. Modern militaries run on satellites for navigation, communication, targeting and early warning. Take those away and a very expensive force becomes a lot less capable very quickly. Ukraine was described more than once as the most space-enabled conflict we've seen.
So the thinking has shifted from "keep our satellites working" to "be able to contest the domain." That's a meaningful change in posture, and it happened without much public discussion.
Why this matters if you don't work in defence
A major disruption to GPS would cost the UK somewhere around £1.8 billion per day.
Every satellite carries an atomic clock, and the timing signal from that clock is what synchronises card payments, cash machines, the electricity grid, mobile phone networks and financial trading timestamps. Navigation is almost a side effect.
Pull that out and things fail in an order most people would never predict. Your contactless payment stops working before your sat nav does.
Fig. Artistic impression of the Global Positioning Systems (GPS).
This isn't hypothetical either. Speakers talk about a range of things. From Russian satellites behaving oddly in orbit, to GPS interference already affecting aviation over parts of Europe. A previous UK Space Command chief said that Russia has attempted to jam British satellites several times. Missile warning events are apparently running at thirty to forty a year globally now!
I don't say any of that to be alarming. I say it because a service the entire country depends on, which nobody votes about or thinks about, is now being openly discussed as contested. That seems worth knowing.
The money and the plan
Three weeks ago the government published a new UK Space Strategy, replacing the 2021 version, with £7.8 billion behind it to 2030. The conference was effectively its first public outing.
Four priorities are highlighted: satellite communications, knowing what's actually up there, servicing and repairing things in orbit, and being able to launch from the UK. There's £200m specifically for in-orbit servicing and manufacturing (ISAM), which is the emerging business of fixing, refuelling and moving satellites rather than replacing them.
The phrase used repeatedly was "One Space." The idea being that the line between civil space and defence space has stopped existing in any useful sense. The same companies, the same satellites, often the same data. A senior Cabinet Office figure put it about as directly as you can: the UK has a window to be a top global space power, and it needs to act now.
There's also money going into watching orbit properly. A new deep space radar, a programme to track objects further out than we currently can, and an acknowledgement that the UK cannot simply rely on allies to tell it what's happening above its own head.
Final thoughts
The most honest moments weren't the keynotes. They were the panels where people admitted what isn't working. This is the first time where I have seen senior government members being challenged in such a public way and they were ready to answer the hard questions.
The thing I left with is that the UK has decided what it wants to be in space, which is a change. Whether the buying and hiring can move fast enough to match is the open question, and nobody in the room pretended otherwise.
If you are new to the world of space, things in this domain will be changing quite quickly over the coming months and years in. Make sure to follow along or you might end up missing the development of one of the most facinating industries.
Upcoming Deadlines & Events
If you're working on getting into space, or building something in it, here are some upcoming deadlines that you should know of:
Deadlines
Europe - ESA Future Navigation Demonstrators, open call. Ideas in before 30 September for the next round.
US - NSF America's Seed Fund, proposals 4 November. You need an invited Project Pitch first, and that takes one to two months.
US - NASA SBIR/STTR, rolling topic batches to September 2027.
India - IN-SPACe Seed Fund and Technology Adoption Fund open in batches. Register and watch.
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Till next time!
Ricky
