In this era of geopolitical tensions between Europe, Russia and the United States, the European Union is aiming to strengthen its defense. What not everyone knows is that the main asset in which we are investing is space, with projects like this Space Defense Shieldanalogous to the Israeli Iron Dome. In fact, it is no coincidence that the Union has a single Commissioner for both defense and space. The position is currently held by the Lithuanian Andrius Kubiliuswho we had the opportunity to interview on the occasion of Ministerial Council 2025 of the European Space Agency held November 26 and 27 in Bremen, Germany.
The nineteenth century was the century of trains, the twentieth century of cars and airplanes: will this be the century of space?
Absolutely. It is clear to me that the twenty-first century will be, from this point of view, the century of space. Perhaps we are starting to see what we call the “space revolution”, in which the number of artificial satellites is increasing exponentially and new opportunities are presenting themselves. No one can predict what will happen in the next 10 or 20 years but we will certainly have new developments in lunar exploration, the space industry and other fields.
The geopolitical game is increasingly being played in orbit: satellite communication, positioning and navigation, observation of the Earth from above. Can you explain to us what role space technology plays in international defence?
The role of space technology is absolutely crucial in modern warfare. If we look for example at the war in Ukraine we clearly see how much Ukrainian defensive capabilities depend on Starlink, therefore on satellite communication. Satellite data is also crucial for intelligence, because it allows you to observe what rivals are doing or to direct the targets of your weapons. That is why when we talk about the development of defense capabilities, space is given the highest priority. We have also included the Space Defense Shield initiative as a flagship project in the Roadmap of Defensive Readiness, a very important document recently approved by the European Commission, which is an umbrella term to indicate all the projects that we are developing in this sense and which will be crucial for developing European defensive capabilities. We are developing these projects right in space: secure satellite communications systems that aspire to be better than Starlink; government Earth observation systems, crucial for obtaining extremely precise intelligence data. These are directions in which we absolutely must improve, we cannot afford not to have these capabilities because they are very important so that we are ready to defend ourselves and to act as a deterrent to any form of aggression.
Europe finds itself in a delicate moment, with the war in Ukraine, tensions with Russia and the decline of relations with the USA. What are the European Union’s strategies and what role is ESA playing?
On the one hand our intelligence services tell us that there is a possibility of attacks in the east by Russia, on the other the US is asking us to take more responsibility for European defense, so that they can allocate more resources in the Indo-Pacific. For the reasons above, the collaboration between the European Commission and the European Space Agency is very important and is progressing very well. We must not forget that in space we can achieve excellent results: some of our space infrastructures are the best in the world. There are areas where we have lost ground to competitors, for example Elon Musk and his launch capabilities. Our institutional collaboration with ESA works in this sense: we as the European Union establish a political direction that we want to undertake, and the space agency develops advanced technological projects that put into practice the decisions taken by the Commission and the European Parliament. This system is very well calibrated and allows us to develop our projects successfully.
