Within hours of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Viasat's KA-SAT satellite communications network suffered a cyberattack that knocked out tens of thousands of modems across Ukraine and parts of Europe. The attack, later attributed to Russian military intelligence by US and European governments, was designed to disrupt Ukrainian military command and control at the moment of maximum vulnerability. It partially succeeded — and it confirmed what military planners had long theorized: in modern warfare, space systems are targets from day one.
The Viasat attack was the opening move in what has become the most extensively documented campaign of space system exploitation in history. Over the subsequent months, every major satellite capability — communications, positioning, reconnaissance, and electronic intelligence — has featured prominently in a war that has provided a live test environment for concepts that were previously theoretical.
Starlink and the improvised communications backbone
SpaceX's Starlink became the most visible satellite story of the war when Elon Musk activated service in Ukraine days after the invasion at the request of the Ukrainian government and, subsequently, provided thousands of terminals. The timing was significant: the Viasat outage had knocked out a primary military communications link, and Starlink filled the gap faster than any government program could have. Ukrainian forces used Starlink terminals for drone coordination, artillery spotting, command communications, and intelligence transmission throughout the conflict.
The relationship became complicated. SpaceX geofenced certain Starlink capabilities near Crimea, apparently to avoid escalation, in a decision that provoked public criticism from Ukrainian commanders and raised policy questions about the role of a private company in making operational military decisions during wartime. The episode illustrated a structural tension in the modern military space environment: commercial systems have become indispensable to military operations, but the companies that operate them retain control over how those systems function.
GPS jamming and the navigation problem
Russian forces deployed extensive GPS jamming from early in the conflict, affecting not just Ukrainian military systems but civilian aviation in the Baltic region and Finland, where aircraft reported GPS signal loss hundreds of kilometers from the jamming sources. The jamming forced Ukrainian forces to adapt — relying more heavily on inertial navigation systems, exploiting windows when jamming was inactive, and in some cases reverting to older navigation methods.
Russian forces also suffered from GPS jamming — their own. Early reports of Russian precision munitions missing targets were attributed partly to poor GPS signal quality caused by their own electronic warfare systems interfering with their own receivers. Jamming at scale is indiscriminate in a way that is easy to overlook in planning and difficult to manage in practice.
Reconnaissance from orbit
Commercial satellite imagery has transformed the information environment of the Ukraine war in ways that were not anticipated before 2022. Companies like Maxar, Planet, and Airbus Defence and Space have provided near-real-time imagery of Russian force movements, airfield configurations, and logistics lines that was published publicly — unprecedented in previous conflicts. Both governments and independent researchers used this imagery to document events including the concentration of forces before the invasion, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the locations of Russian logistics bottlenecks.
The Russian military, accustomed to operating in environments where it controlled the information space, found itself unable to conceal large-scale force movements from commercial imagery that any news outlet or researcher could purchase. This is a permanent change in the military information environment: the era in which a state could mass forces undetected, except by the intelligence agencies of major powers, is over.
What doctrine is learning
Military planners in the United States, Europe, and Asia have drawn several lessons from the Ukraine experience. Commercial satellite systems must be integrated into military planning, but the legal and operational frameworks for doing so do not yet exist. GPS jamming at scale is a realistic threat that degrades both offensive precision and defensive navigation. Satellite communications are a target from the first hours of conflict and must have redundant alternatives. And the information advantage provided by commercial imagery cannot be controlled by military classification — it is available to everyone, including the adversary.
The Space Force and its NATO equivalents are currently working to translate these lessons into updated doctrine, acquisition programs, and training. The pace of that work will determine how prepared Western militaries are the next time space systems are contested at scale.
