How is France preparing for war in space?

In 2018, Florence Parly, then Min­is­ter of the Armed Forces, made pub­lic the clandes­tine man­oeuvre, which took place in 2017, of the Rus­si­an satel­lite Louch-Olymp¹ near the Franco-Itali­an mil­it­ary tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions satel­lite Athena-Fidus. The emer­gence of con­flict ‘towards, in and from space’ promp­ted France, soon fol­lowed by sev­er­al oth­er European coun­tries, to set up a Space Com­mand (CDE) with­in the Air and Space Force. To dis­cuss the threats facing the coun­try and Europe, and the mis­sions of the CDE, Lieu­ten­ant Gen­er­al Phil­ippe Adam, Com­mand­er of Space from July 2022 to August 2025 explains.

Phil­ippe Adam. The threats are very real. The arrival of private entit­ies, the explo­sion in usage and the expo­nen­tial increase in the num­ber of satel­lites in orbit have rap­idly trans­formed the space envir­on­ment. At the heart of this new land­scape, we are see­ing beha­viour that we con­sider prob­lem­at­ic. With space ser­vices hav­ing become cru­cial to both civil soci­ety and the mil­it­ary, we also know that an adversary wish­ing to harm us would have every interest in attack­ing our space cap­ab­il­it­ies, either on the ground or in orbit, as this would hinder our abil­ity to con­tin­ue oper­a­tions. This happened dur­ing the inva­sion of Ukraine. The first Rus­si­an attack tar­geted ground ter­min­als of the Amer­ic­an KA-SAT satel­lite, used by the armed forces for com­mu­nic­a­tions – impact­ing oth­er users in Europe who were neither Ukrain­i­an nor military.

Attacks against satel­lites can con­sist of blind­ing, jam­ming, cap­tur­ing or neut­ral­ising them with dir­ec­ted energy weapons, or even deor­bit­ing or des­troy­ing them through col­li­sions or mis­siles. Rus­sia and China have demon­strated their abil­ity to carry out these actions in a wide vari­ety of ways².

We were sur­prised to find that Ira­ni­an satel­lites were cap­able of per­form­ing man­euvers rel­at­ive to each oth­er, a tech­nique that few coun­tries have mastered to date

We are also pay­ing close atten­tion to the beha­viour of cer­tain nations, such as North Korea and Iran, whose inten­tions we do not know. Their level of tech­no­lo­gic­al expert­ise is not yet on a par with that of the major space powers, but they are advan­cing rap­idly, aided by Rus­sia and per­haps China. For example, we were sur­prised to find that Ira­ni­an satel­lites were cap­able of per­form­ing rel­at­ive man­oeuvres with each oth­er, a tech­nique that few coun­tries have mastered to date.

Every day, we observe attempts at jam­ming around real con­flict zones: the Middle East, the Black Sea and Ukraine, the Kalin­in­grad enclave and the Balt­ic Sea. The Louch-Olymp epis­ode is not an isol­ated case: we reg­u­larly observe sus­pi­cious, undeclared man­oeuvres in the vicin­ity of our satel­lites, which we find dif­fi­cult to con­sider purely peace­ful, and this in all orbits. It should be noted that the 1967 Out­er Space Treaty is cur­rently the only inter­na­tion­al legis­la­tion on space. How­ever, it does not pro­hib­it any­thing except the deploy­ment of weapons of mass destruc­tion – namely, nuc­le­ar weapons in orbit. This lack of rules is an obstacle to the clear char­ac­ter­isa­tion of situ­ations that have secur­ity and safety implications.

The prob­ab­il­ity of a major con­flict in Europe, which would inev­it­ably involve NATO, has nev­er been high­er, and we believe that cer­tain beha­viours we are see­ing in space could be pre­par­at­ory to a state of war. In fact, if Rus­si­a’s aggres­sion in Ukraine stops where we are today, I don’t see what will pre­vent Rus­sia from start­ing again in three or four years’ time, once it has rebuilt its forces. We are very con­cerned, but the role of the armed forces, like that of dip­lo­mats, is pre­cisely to do what is neces­sary to pre­vent this from happening.

Giv­en the urgency of the situ­ation, dis­cus­sions between mil­it­ary per­son­nel are rel­at­ively healthy. Want­ing to launch joint pro­grammes at all costs is not enough – defence remains the prerog­at­ive of nations, and we can­not blame those who have the means to devel­op their own cap­ab­il­it­ies. But we are shar­ing ideas and the dis­cus­sion must con­tin­ue so that we can keep each oth­er informed of what we are doing and ensure the inter­op­er­ab­il­ity of the cap­ab­il­it­ies we are devel­op­ing. I am con­vinced that this will also lead to indus­tri­al col­lab­or­a­tions that have so far been dif­fi­cult to establish.

French doc­trine aims for what is known as “space mas­tery”, which is a pro­por­tion­ate and, above all, defens­ive stance. The CDE’s mis­sion is there­fore, on the one hand, to main­tain and improve mil­it­ary space ser­vices (obser­va­tion, tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions, nav­ig­a­tion) and, on the oth­er hand, to pro­tect French cap­ab­il­it­ies in the event of aggres­sion, includ­ing by fight­ing in space if neces­sary. This strategy is based on strong col­lab­or­a­tion with our friends and part­ners. Togeth­er, we are much more effect­ive at identi­fy­ing what is hap­pen­ing in orbit and respond­ing to it, and more cred­ible in denoun­cing any aggres­sion. In our action plans, it is there­fore extremely import­ant to describe how our part­ners will be involved, because if we use force against an aggressor satel­lite, we will cre­ate con­sequences for everyone.

The actions taken will involve changes in archi­tec­ture and usage con­cepts: favour­ing large con­stel­la­tions over isol­ated satel­lites to avoid los­ing everything in the event of an attack and accept­ing that we can no longer rely solely on 100% mil­it­ary means. The war in Ukraine has shown that civil­ian resources can be invalu­able, both for the Ukrain­i­an army’s tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions and for help­ing its part­ners under­stand what is hap­pen­ing on the theatre of operations.

We have launched two exper­i­ment­al pro­grammes, each com­pris­ing two patrol-sur­veil­lance satel­lites: YODA, in the vicin­ity of geo­sta­tion­ary orbit, and TOUTATIS, in low orbit. These will be quickly fol­lowed by the deploy­ment of oper­a­tion­al cap­ab­il­it­ies, both for observing space from space and for tak­ing action. We will also strengthen our low-orbit sur­veil­lance cap­ab­il­it­ies, which cur­rently con­sist almost exclus­ively of the GRAVES radar, with the arrival of the more power­ful AURORE by 2030.

The destruc­tion of a satel­lite is a very aggress­ive course of action, and one that cre­ates a lot of debris. We are there­fore not really pur­su­ing this option

But to have an impact on the bat­tle­field, doc­trine and resources are not enough: trained per­son­nel are also needed. In Europe, it is very clear that it is the armed forces, not civil­ian agen­cies, that are respons­ible for using force: in space, this is the mis­sion of the CDE. The mil­it­ary must there­fore learn to oper­ate their own satel­lites, some­thing they have not done until now. The Nation­al Centre for Space Stud­ies (CNES) will of course remain the spe­cial­ist in space man­oeuvres, includ­ing in a mil­it­ary con­text, but the CDE must become the spe­cial­ist in mil­it­ary man­oeuvres in space. The chal­lenges are not the same, and we will need each other.

The destruc­tion of a satel­lite is a very aggress­ive course of action, and one that cre­ates a lot of debris. We are there­fore not really pur­su­ing this aven­ue. Instead, we will focus on devel­op­ing non-kin­et­ic means of action, such as lasers or jam­mers, which have the advant­age of being revers­ible to a cer­tain extent. The US Chief of Space Oper­a­tions, Gen­er­al Saltz­man, defines space deterrence as the set of meas­ures that make an attack or hos­tile action against space cap­ab­il­it­ies so costly, dif­fi­cult or point­less that adversar­ies give up. That is what we are aim­ing for.

The inaug­ur­a­tion on 12^th Novem­ber marked a real achieve­ment. When it was cre­ated, the CDE had some 200 people from two units with­in the Air and Space Force and spe­cial­ised units of the Armed Forces Staff. We had to recruit and train per­son­nel to enable them to carry out the CDE’s new mis­sions: the work­force now includes 400 people and will reach around 500 by 2030. The CDE has already taken on sev­er­al mis­sions: space sur­veil­lance is the area in which it is most advanced, but it is also start­ing to oper­ate satellites.

In 2024, then in 2025, the CDE car­ried out joint man­oeuvres in orbit with the United States. This was a first, and we are quite proud to be the first to do so. I am also very sat­is­fied with the cul­tur­al and oper­a­tion­al ties we have man­aged to forge with all the French armed forces. This was neces­sary for a small com­mand like ours, based at a single loc­a­tion, with an inter-army dimen­sion. As for regrets, we need to move faster. Sev­en years after the Louch-Olymp epis­ode, we still have no means of respond­ing to it.

I am con­vinced that with the budget we have, we could do bet­ter, both with­in the armed forces and among man­u­fac­tur­ers. We have always pri­or­it­ised per­form­ance over sched­ule and cost. We waste a lot of time won­der­ing wheth­er the solu­tion we have chosen is really the best one… Today, we need to focus on speed, even if it means tak­ing more risks. We need to keep pace with the tech­no­lo­gic­al world around us. France has everything it needs to do this, and it has vir­tu­ally all the tech­no­logy required to devel­op cap­ab­il­it­ies in space. Now we need to demon­strate this in orbit.

Interview by Anne Orliac