For many years Europe organized space around clear distinctions. Civil programs were separated from defense. Commercial companies served institutional customers. Governments developed sovereign capabilities while industry provided technology and services. The concept of dual-use existed, but it remained politically uncomfortable. The separation itself was often seen as a strength.
Today, that separation is becoming increasingly artificial. Not because governments deliberately decided to abandon it, but because reality has moved faster than policy.
The war in Ukraine did not fundamentally change the space sector. It exposed a transformation that had already begun. Commercial satellite communications, Earth Observation, cloud computing and artificial intelligence became integral to military operations almost overnight. Capabilities originally developed for commercial markets suddenly delivered strategic military effects.
At the same time, another lesson emerged. The challenge was never commercial space itself. The challenge was dependence. Relying on a single provider for a critical operational service creates a strategic vulnerability irrespective of whether that provider is public or private. Resilience therefore does not come from replacing commercial capability with sovereign capability. It comes from designing architectures that avoid single points of failure.
This is perhaps the most profound lesson Europe should take from recent conflicts. We are no longer discussing whether commercial and defense space should converge. That convergence has already taken place. The real question is how Europe chooses to organize itself around this new reality.
Beyond the Satellite
For decades, protecting space assets largely meant protecting satellites. That is no longer sufficient. Modern military and civilian operations depend upon an entire operational chain. Satellites are only one element within a much broader system that includes launch services, sensors, ground stations, communications networks, cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence, software, user terminals and the people operating them.
This space service chain has become the real operational asset. A disruption at any point along that chain can produce the same operational effect as disabling a spacecraft. Cyberattacks on ground infrastructure, interference with communications, manipulation of positioning signals or disruption of cloud services can all degrade military capability without ever touching a satellite.
The implications extend well beyond Ukraine. Hybrid attacks against satellite navigation, communications and digital infrastructure are becoming increasingly common across Europe. Meanwhile, space itself is becoming more contested. Countries are developing capabilities to conceal spacecraft behavior, conduct close-proximity operations, interfere with navigation signals and complicate attribution.
Protecting space assets therefore increasingly means protecting the integrity of an entire operational ecosystem.
This changing environment also challenges how Europe thinks about sovereignty. The discussion is too often framed as a choice between buying commercial services and owning sovereign capabilities.
Modern space architectures are assembled rather than owned. A government may operate sovereign satellites while relying on commercial launch services. It may own sensors but use commercial cloud infrastructure. It may develop sovereign command-and-control capabilities while purchasing commercial imagery or communications.
Sovereignty has become modular. The objective should therefore not be complete self-sufficiency. Few countries can realistically own every critical capability, nor would such duplication necessarily represent the best use of public resources. Instead, governments must decide which capabilities are sufficiently strategic to own, which can safely be procured, and where hybrid approaches offer the greatest operational resilience.
The measure of sovereignty is no longer ownership, rather it is assured continuity.
A nation is sovereign when it can guarantee the continuity of critical services under all operational conditions, regardless of whether those services originate from sovereign assets, trusted commercial partners or allied capabilities.
Europe’s Next Challenge
The convergence of commercial and defense space creates enormous opportunities for Europe. It also creates a series of strategic tensions that cannot simply be solved. They have to be managed.
Technology now evolves faster than governments can procure it. Artificial intelligence, autonomous operations and software-defined capabilities develop on timescales measured in months, while institutional acquisition often still operates over years.
Strategic autonomy has become a political objective. Yet operational effectiveness increasingly depends on interoperability and cooperation between allies. Strategic autonomy cannot become synonymous with strategic isolation.
Defense spending across Europe is creating unprecedented opportunities for commercial companies. Yet an ecosystem driven exclusively by defense demand risks becoming vulnerable to future political and budgetary cycles. Long-term resilience requires both strong institutional investment and vibrant commercial markets.
Finally, Europe faces a difficult regulatory challenge. As space becomes increasingly congested and contested, governance becomes indispensable. But regulation should enable operational capability rather than unintentionally slowing innovation or introducing unnecessary complexity. These are not independent questions. They are connected and the answer to one inevitably shapes the others.
This also changes the role of governments. Historically, the public sector regulated markets and procured capabilities. Today, it must do considerably more.
Governments increasingly act simultaneously as regulators, investors, capability planners, anchor customers and standard setters. More importantly, they have become ecosystem architects. Their task is no longer simply to buy satellites or fund programmed. It is to create an environment in which sovereign capability, commercial innovation, allied cooperation and industrial competitiveness reinforce one another rather than compete against one another.
The war in Ukraine has already demonstrated what this ecosystem can achieve. In August 2022, a Ukrainian charity crowdfunded approximately US$20 million to lease a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite operated by the Finnish company Iceye. By mid-2024, that single satellite, combined with access to Iceye’s wider constellation, had reportedly supported more than 4,600 reconnaissance missions.
That may prove to be one of Europe’s greatest strategic challenges over the coming years. Europe has entered a different era. The question is no longer whether space is commercial or sovereign, civil or military. Those debates have already been overtaken by reality.
The real challenge is to design resilient operational architectures capable of guaranteeing continuity across the entire space service chain while preserving innovation, strengthening strategic autonomy and reinforcing cooperation between allies. The future of European space security will also be determined by how intelligently Europe connects the capabilities it already possesses.
From Concept to Capability
If Europe is to move from passive monitoring towards resilient and autonomous space operations, it will require a new generation of operational capabilities. Modern space domain awareness is no longer simply about detecting objects in orbit. It must combine multi-source sensing, behavioral analysis, artificial intelligence and operational decision support to enable timely, coordinated responses across commercial, governmental and defense users.
This is precisely the thinking behind our own dual-use operational platform designed to support autonomous, secure and resilient space operations. By integrating data from multiple sovereign and commercial sources, applying explainable artificial intelligence and enabling real-time operational decision-making, it reflects the broader evolution described throughout this article: from isolated space assets to resilient operational ecosystems.
Ultimately, such platforms and complementing solutions from various sources should not be seen as products addressing individual threats, but as examples of the operational infrastructure that Europe will increasingly require if it is to strengthen strategic autonomy while preserving the innovation and agility of its commercial space sector.
Prof. Chiara Manfletti is the chief executive officer of Neuraspace and the Professor of Space Propulsion and Mobility at the Technical University of Munich. Prior to joining Neuraspace, Chiara headed the Policy and Programmes Coordination department at the European Space Agency (ESA). At the early stage of her career, she worked for the German Aerospace Center, DLR as a research engineer and served as Programme Advisor to ESA Director General at the agency’s headquarters in Paris. She became the first president of the then just founded Portuguese national space agency, Portugal Space.
