A new generation of defence technology startups is positioning space as the next major conflict domain, with companies including Anduril Industries, Northwood Space, Impulse Space and Astranis Space Technologies building systems to defend US orbital assets against potential threats from China and Russia, reports Bloomberg.
Executives from the four companies outlined the growing likelihood of space-based conflict during a panel at LA Tech Week, arguing that America’s newest military branch has become essential to national security as rivals develop weapons to jam, disable or destroy US satellites.
The Space Force, established in 2019 during the first Donald Trump administration, consolidated more than 60 separate military and intelligence programmes into a single service focused on satellites, communications and orbital defence. The branch represents the first new armed service since 1947. Space Force was parodied in a 2022 two-season series broadcast by Netflix and starring The Office lead Steve Carell and Hollywood heavyweight John Malkovich.
Adam Thurn, chief engineer of space missions at Anduril, said the service emerged from recognition of a new battlefield. “Space Force was stood up in 2019 with the obvious nature that space is now a war-fighting domain,” he said. “We’ve seen weapons provided by adversaries and can now talk at an unclassified level about robotic Chinese satellites.”
US space infrastructure is vulnerable
The urgency comes as vulnerabilities in existing US space infrastructure become apparent. SpaceX’s classified Starshield constellation, built under a $1.8 billion contract with the National Reconnaissance Office, was recently discovered broadcasting mysterious signals on frequencies usually reserved for sending commands from Earth to satellites rather than receiving data from orbit. Amateur satellite tracker Scott Tilley detected transmissions from 170 of the network’s satellites operating between 2,025 and 2,110 MHz, potentially violating International Telecommunication Union standards and raising concerns about interference with other orbital systems.
The National Reconnaissance Office has conducted 11 launches of Starshield satellites since May 2024, deploying more than 200 satellites as part of its proliferated architecture system for military Earth observations. The signal’s purpose remains unknown, though Tilley believes the decision to downlink in frequencies typically reserved for uplink commands could be designed to hide Starshield’s operations.
Satellite security vulnerabilities extend beyond frequency violations. University of California San Diego and University of Maryland researchers demonstrated that roughly half of geostationary satellite signals carrying sensitive government and corporate communications remain unencrypted. Using equipment costing less than $800, the three-year study intercepted data from 39 satellites, including US and Mexican military communications, revealing personnel locations, T-Mobile cellular traffic from more than 2,700 users, and critical infrastructure systems, including electric utilities and offshore oil platforms.
Aaron Schulman, UCSD professor who co-led the research, said the findings shocked the team. “It just completely shocked us,” he said. “There are some really critical pieces of our infrastructure relying on this satellite ecosystem, and our suspicion was that it would all be encrypted. And just time and time again, every time we found something new, it wasn’t.”
Preventing strategic vulnerabilities
John Gedmark, founder of Astranis, argued that US orbital deterrence depends on numerical superiority to prevent strategic vulnerabilities during the Bloomberg panel. “That is what it will be like when we start losing some of these satellites,” he said. “China will say ‘Oh, you lost a second billion-dollar security satellite, what a shame,’ and the next day they will make a move on Taiwan.”
Each company represented builds technology for potential orbital conflict: Northwood’s phased-array antennas connect satellites to Earth; Anduril’s autonomous systems detect and defend against orbital threats; Impulse Space builds manoeuvrable spacecraft that can reposition or repair assets in orbit; and Astranis manufactures small satellites that maintain communications if ground links fail.
Eric Romo of Impulse Space identified bureaucracy rather than capability as the primary obstacle to advancement, describing a surveillance-satellite programme delayed by five years despite available technology. “We have companies that can fly next year,” he said. “The reason we’re waiting isn’t engineering — it’s politics. We move way too slowly.”
Bridgit Mendler of Northwood Space, building ground infrastructure for spacecraft communications, emphasised urgency. “Speed is paramount to be being able to match that proliferation,” she said. “If you don’t have connectivity back to Earth, you can’t operate your spacecraft, you can’t get any of the data back.”
The Space Force transition from Air Force control created a new culture of engineers and strategists focused on orbital rather than aircraft assets, according to Gedmark. “Whenever push came to shove over limited budgets, the money always went to planes, not space,” he said. Thurn added that Space Force is now Anduril’s “customer number one.”
Thurn warned that 2027 represents a concerning timeframe for potential conflict escalation. “The first shots are going to be fired in space,” he said. “If we have not deterred that conflict, then we have failed.”
