France Expands Active Space Defense Efforts As Threats Grow

France has unveiled plans to take its active space defense to low Earth orbit, illustrating how Western governments’ concern is increasing about the role spacecraft may play in future conflicts.

The French Defense Innovation Agency-Directorate General of the Armament (DGA) initiative, called Toutatis, is one of many efforts Western militaries are putting in place to detect, and in some cases counter, a potential adversary using its space assets with hostile intent. The U.S. also is pursuing on-orbit space defenses, and Switzerland is starting to track who is using radar satellites to spy on the country.

• France bets active defenses have deterrence value
• LookUp Space CEO sees military customers driving near-term revenue

The move comes as military officials are becoming more worried about threats to space assets, including from Chinese maneuvering satellites and Russian efforts to disrupt Western systems (AW&ST Sept. 2-15, p. 25). Russia, China and others also are pursuing anti-satellite technologies that require Western militaries to turn more attention to tracking what is happening in space, military officials note. The demand is spurring a cadre of startups that are trying to help military users better understand and respond to space activities.

France has been pursuing an active space defense demonstration in geostationary orbit under a program called Yoda, but with the threat picture evolving, the country is taking a wider look. “It’s probably about time we consider what is happening in low Earth orbit,” says Maj. Gen. Philippe Adam, head of French Space Command.

The low-Earth-orbit (LEO) demonstration Toutatis, named after a Celtic god popular in French culture via the Asterix comic books, could be launched within two years. It would comprise the Lisa-1 space situational awareness satellite and the Splinter LEO action satellite. The Splinter is designed for a high degree of maneuverability and to deal with suspicious activities, French defense and industry officials said at the Space Defense & Security Summit in Paris.

French nanosatellite-maker U-Space will lead the work on Lisa-1, and European missile-maker MBDA is collaborating with U-Space on the Splinter. The goal is “to bring space warfare operations to the next level,” said Nicolas Lefort, head of new markets at MBDA.

The Splinter is expected to feature an illuminator, rather than an actual weapon, to show how a potentially hostile spacecraft can be tracked for engagement. Any operational system would be designed to be able to engage a target without creating space debris, Adam said. The Splinter satellite also could position itself between a threat and the asset being surveilled or attacked, Adam said, although he acknowledged that could cause a collision risk, creating space debris should the systems collide.

France would like to have an active space defense system deployed around 2030.

Pursuing this kind of active defense technology could have deterrent effects by indicating to an adversary that France has a way to respond to threats, says Maj. Gen. Michel Sayegh, DGA program executive officer for space assets.

The U.S. Space Force also is pursuing on-orbit space maneuvering, including through the Victus Haze Tactically Responsive Space initiative funded this year by the service’s Space Systems Command.

During the Victus Haze demonstration, space companies True Anomaly and Rocket Lab each plan to build spacecraft capable of performing rendezvous and proximity operations no later than the fall of 2025. Each vendor was given unique launch and mission profiles, but the Space Force would like to have the spacecraft perform an on-orbit inspection of a simulated adversary spacecraft.

True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers said the company will evolve its Jackal autonomous orbital vehicle for the mission. The first two vehicles were launched in March, but the mission effectively ended in failure because the vehicles encountered problems when they deployed from the SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare. Rogers said upgrades are planned for another test that could take place around year-end.

Germany is interested in active space defenses as well. The country is considering launching a program called the German Inspector Satellite for Multiple Operations that would resemble France’s Yoda spacecraft, Maj. Gen. Michael Traut, head of Germany’s Space Command, said on the sidelines of the Defence Space Conference 2024 in London. The concept calls for a rapidly deployable spacecraft that could approach another one and inspect it. The system would be equipped with robotic arms, he said, so it could be used to extend the life of a friendly satellite, remove debris or potentially engage a hostile spacecraft.

Key to supporting orbital operations is enhanced awareness of what threats or hazards exist. German startup Vyoma plans to deploy a constellation of space situational awareness microsatellites with optical payloads. The goal is to create a near-real-time picture of what is happening in space, CEO Stefan Frey says.

Space situational awareness also relies heavily on ground sensors. Exoanalytic, which has tracked Chinese space maneuvers, uses ground-based telescopes to gather information. The French military employs assets such as its Graves radar for LEO satellite tracking, exchanges real-time information with allies and buys data from LeoLabs, a U.S. startup that specializes in tracking objects in LEO. Adam said in May he is looking forward to seeing LeoLabs’ French counterpart, LookUp Space, offering a competing, sovereign service. French Maj. Gen. (ret.) Michel Friedling, formerly commander of French Space Command, co-founded LookUp Space and is now its CEO.

“I have been designing what I had dreamed about when I was space commander,” Friedling said at the World Space Business Week in Paris Sept. 12-16. The company is betting on radar technology to detect and track small objects. The first of an unspecified number of radars is being built in southern France, Friedling said. The first data is expected early in 2025 and full operational capability in the middle of the year. LookUp Space then plans to add one radar per year on French overseas territories—the first of those is planned to be built in Polynesia in 2026.

Friedling said governments are expected to be the main source of revenue in the near term, but he anticipates that commercial users eventually will drive sales.

Switzerland is focused on trying to ascertain how countries are using space assets to gain intelligence on it and is developing a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) emission detector to detect C-band and X-band synthetic aperture signals, says Col. Ludovic Monnerat, Space Domain head for the Swiss Armed Forces. Some of the detected signals made sense, and others were more surprising, he said at the Space Defense & Security Summit.

The effort, which took several weeks to put together, determined that Chinese satellites are imaging Switzerland regularly, he said. One of the strongest signals received came from powerful U.S. intelligence satellites, he noted.

Another signal detected was from the COSMO-SkyMed radar system, which is run from neighboring Italy. Signals also were detected from European Space Agency Sentinel satellites, but Monnerat said the nature of the signal showed the satellites were doing mapping work rather than imaging a specific location. Switzerland plans to increase the number of receivers to determine the precise location being imaged and to assess an actor’s likely intent.

Luis Munoz, director at Orbitare, which developed the Swiss system, says the company is looking to make it available where export controls permit. The startup pursued the program in part to diversify beyond its Spaceloop LEO satellite communication efforts.