The Ukrainian strike on Samara's Progress Rocket and Space Centre on 15 August was not just another industrial target. Two Flamingo missiles hit the clean room where Soyuz-2 motherboards were assembled — the same rockets delivering Russia's Rassvet satellite constellation, Moscow's answer to being cut off from Starlink. Ukraine is now conducting kinetic operations against the space supply chain itself. The battlefield logic is straightforward. Modern warfare runs on satellite-based intelligence, targeting, and communications. Drones need data links. Precision strikes need GPS. Command-and-control needs Starlink or something like it. When SpaceX throttled Ukrainian data speeds — whether at Musk's instigation or under US government pressure — it didn't just degrade service. It jeopardised military command-and-control systems, according to Fedir Venislavskyi, head of Ukraine's state security subcommittee. That single point of failure changed strategic calculations overnight. Ukraine's response has been to pursue sovereign space capability at wartime speed. Last month, Ukraine and Denmark's GomSpace launched the Obria Nano, the first test satellite for a planned 245-satellite independent communications network. Kyiv has also conducted at least three tests of exo-atmospheric kill systems designed to intercept threats like Russia's Oreshnik ballistic missile, which transits near space before deploying multiple independently targetable warheads originally designed for nuclear payloads. Russia's orbital aggression is already operational. Moscow has jammed GPS signals, disrupting Baltic aviation. It has laser-dazzled satellites, deployed "inspector" spy satellites near foreign assets, and in a recent incident manoeuvred Kosmos 2612 aggressively toward an Iceye commercial radar satellite providing 3D terrain imaging to Ukrainian forces. The intent may have been to force a fuel-burning course correction, shortening the satellite's operational lifespan — a form of attrition warfare conducted entirely in orbit. The US has begun to acknowledge its own offensive posture. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink confirmed in September that Washington had deployed "on-orbit space control weapons." The admission came after years of reports that Russia and China were conducting daily non-kinetic attacks on US satellites, a claim first made publicly by the then-deputy commander of US Space Force in 2021. The commercial space layer complicates everything. SpaceX dominates launch services and LEO communications, but Musk's ideological unpredictability has turned Starlink from a strategic asset into a strategic liability. The result, as Secure World Foundation's Victoria Samson notes, is that "everyone now wants their own versions of Starlink, including the Europeans." Russia is building Rassvet. Ukraine is building Obria. The era of trusting a single commercial provider with military-grade infrastructure is ending. The treaty architecture governing space was built for a different era — bilateral superpower competition with clear state actors. It cannot handle commercial operators with personal agendas, satellite-bullying as grey-zone warfare, or nation-states conducting kinetic strikes against launch facilities. As Elena Grossfeld of the Swedish Defence University puts it: "We've been talking about space warfare as the future. We're already in that future." The question is whether governance catches up before the debris — literal and strategic — becomes unmanageable.
