UK military has been jamming foreign satellites to defend itself, BBC told

The British military has been jamming or blocking satellites from other countries in order to defend itself from hostile threats, according to information provided to the BBC. The activity is understood to have been carried out by the RAF using a ground-based system for the past year. A defence source said the system had already been used to deter adversaries.

Sponsored

The system is believed to be capable of preventing a hostile nation's satellites from tracking the movement of the UK's nuclear-armed submarines or other sensitive military operations, including those involving special forces. The disclosure comes as the UK unveils a new unit dedicated to defending British satellites in space, called the Space Effects Squadron. The Ministry of Defence said the unit will focus on disrupting, degrading and denying hostile threats in space.

The announcement was made alongside warnings from the head of the RAF that the UK faces unprecedented threats from adversaries in space. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said daily life depends on satellites that support mobile phones, banking apps, weather forecasts, energy supplies, financial transactions, sat-nav systems, mobile phone connections and deliveries. He said the loss of GPS alone would cost the UK economy £1.4bn a day, underlining the scale of the country's dependence on space-based systems.

The comments place the UK's space posture in a wider context of growing military competition beyond Earth. Streeting said the threat from Britain's adversaries was increasing in scale, speed and sophistication, and that the challenges in space increasingly mirror geopolitics on Earth. The defence source described the UK's terrestrial electronic warfare capability as world leading, while also noting that a number of countries are believed to have similar ground-based systems against satellites.

Sponsored

The issue has become more visible after the previous head of UK Space Command said Russia was trying to jam UK satellites with ground-based systems every week. That claim suggests the UK sees interference in orbit and from the ground as a persistent operational problem rather than an isolated event. The new squadron appears intended to strengthen the country's ability to respond to that pressure and protect military and civilian reliance on space infrastructure.

What remains unclear is how often the UK has used the jamming system, which countries' satellites were affected, and how the capability is being integrated with wider defence planning. It is also not clear what specific technologies the Space Effects Squadron will deploy or how quickly it will become fully operational. The next developments to watch are whether more details emerge about the scope of the UK's counter-space capabilities and whether other states respond publicly to the disclosure.

#UKmilitary #satellites #RAF #SpaceEffectsSquadron #electronicwarfare