RAF confirms UK jams adversary satellites amid rising space threats
Geopolitics & ConflictThe Royal Air Force has been jamming or blocking satellites from other countries for the past year, using a ground-based system as part of efforts to defend Britain from hostile threats, the BBC has been told. A defence source said the system had already been used "to deter our adversaries", and that it could be used to prevent a hostile nation's satellites from tracking the movement of the UK's nuclear armed submarines or other sensitive military operations, such as those involving special forces. The disclosure coincided with the RAF's creation of a new unit, the Space Effects Squadron, which the Ministry of Defence said would focus on "disrupting, degrading and denying hostile threats in space".
Air Chief Marshal Sir Harv Smyth, who has led the RAF since August 2025, said the UK faced "unprecedented threats" from adversaries in space, pointing to "more and more irresponsible and provocative actions" from the UK's adversaries. He cited a series of "dangerous manoeuvres" by five Russian satellites moving close to two Finnish commercial satellites in May, and said in June that a Russian satellite constellation had caused disruptions to GPS signals across Europe, Greenland, and Canada over at least 75 days since 2019. Speaking at the UK Space Power Conference, Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said the threat from Britain's adversaries was growing in "scale, speed and sophistication" and warned that a loss of GPS could cost the UK economy £1.4 billion a day.
The new squadron joins two existing units, No. 1 Space Operations Squadron and No. 2 Space Warning Squadron, which monitor and warn of threats in orbit; the third squadron is designed to "act against those threats, using advanced technology, including electronic warfare", according to the Ministry of Defence. Britain currently operates six dedicated military satellites for communications and surveillance, which were equipped with counter-jamming technology, though it relies heavily on the much larger US Space Force fleet. The last head of UK Space Command had already warned that Russia was attempting to jam British satellites with ground-based systems "every week".
The announcement lands just over a week after Washington confirmed, for the first time, that it has weapons deployed in orbit around Earth, a disclosure that prompted China to warn against turning outer space into a "battlefield" and Russia to caution it must be "free from any weapon". US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the orbital weapon was needed to protect American forces, a move Beijing accused Washington of using to provoke a space arms race. Washington has separately accused both Moscow and Beijing of developing jammers, blinding lasers and even orbital projectiles capable of disabling rival satellites, part of what Smyth described as a shift in which control of orbit could become as important as control of the seas or skies.