During a recent panel discussion at the 2025 Defense in Space Conference, experts from GovSat, ST Engineering iDirect, and Kratos discussed the threats interference poses to military operations and how satellite operators are working with global militaries to address them.

Shahida Barick, moderator of the DiSC panel, opened the discussion by asking the panelists how industry can help governments and militaries mitigate interference. Josef Nemec, Technology Director at GovSat, noted that interference mitigation involves detection, monitoring, and the proactive hardening of spacecraft against intentional or unintentional interference.

“What we do is detect, monitor, geolocate, analyze, characterize, and report almost every interference event in all frequency bands that we have on our spacecraft,” said Nemec. “This provides not only situational awareness to our customers, but we can provide initial actionable intelligence that helps our customers develop countermeasures and a deterrence posture towards such events. We also go the extra mile to deliver a system that is resistant and resilient towards interference in itself. We have anti-jamming, adaptive beam forming, and geolocation features that we can use.”

According to Nemec, the volume of satellite interference events has been increasing at an alarming rate, from both accidental and adversarial sources. This spike in satellite interference is forcing satellite operators and global militaries to rethink how they collaborate on interference mitigation.

“In earlier years, interference was relatively easy to mitigate, and it was occurring at a relatively low pace,” Nemec said. “But [the pace] has changed. We do not have the time to manually investigate every event. We need to automate [interference mitigation]. In an accidental interference scenario, there usually is a point of contact on the other side that you could go to and resolve the matter . But since [the start of the Ukraine war in] February 2022, this has changed.”

Dave Davis, Senior Technical Director at ST Engineering iDirect, agreed with Nemec that the volume of interference has grown tremendously since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine.

“What we’ve been seeing in the last three to four years has been an increase in interference from many sources,” explained Davis. “Some include adversaries deliberately trying to take down systems and cause interference. But we’ve also seen a massive increase in interference from unintentional sources, like LEOs interfering with GEO technology, or radar interference, or interference from 5G technologies.”

Nemec added that the volume of interference present in today’s warfighting environments requires new approaches from satellite operators to strengthen the resilience and transmission security (transec) of a military satellite’s transmissions. This approach includes satellite operators working in tandem with military customers.

“Let’s try to imagine [an approach where] customers delegate their mission planning and comms processes to a trusted operator that will become a copilot during their ISR mission,” Nemec explained. “The copilot would ensure that the customer stays connected, switching from satellite to satellite, capacity to capacity, etc., at all times. The question is no longer if we will face interference during a mission but when and what to do about it. Customers will face interference for sure.

For Mark Lambert, President of Kratos Communications, his company is one of those copilots working alongside global militaries to analyze the type of interference occurring and geolocate its sources. “We’re in the RF domain, looking at the transmissions that are both being received and transmitted by satellites,” said Lambert. “We use that to understand what’s happening in the spectrum, if there is somebody transmitting from the ground, and geolocate where on the ground they are, as well as understand the type of interference that is happening.”

In a follow-up question from an audience member, Lambert was asked what the response is after a source of interference is identified.

“We have the technology to geolocate and understand where interference is coming from, whether deliberate or accidental,” Lambert answered. “Once you’ve identified the source and the ownership of that transmitter, there’s a choice as to what you do about it. If you think it’s just a commercial VSAT terminal that’s mispointed, then potentially you can ring up the network operator to send an engineer to fix it before the interference really begins to have a dramatic effect on your systems. If it’s a more malicious actor, then I guess we need to get our friends on the ground involved to take some more serious action.”

One theme that popped up throughout the panel discussion was the role of automation in interference mitigation. Barick asked Davis whether interference mitigation should be fully automated or require a human-in-the-loop. “I think automation is important,” replied Davis. “You want to make it as easy as possible for the end users. The more automated it is, the better it’s going to be, and the quicker it’s going to react. But you absolutely need to have the human in the loop there as well.”

Davis explained that there may be instances where military customers want to be seen and affected by interference to gather information about an adversary. In those cases, a human would be needed in the loop. Echoing Davis, when asked what the future of interference mitigation looks like, Nemec replied with three words, “Automation, automation, automation.”

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During this DiSC session, experts from NATO, RUSI, Telespazio Germany, and Technische Universität Chemnitz examined how rapidly changing geopolitics and adversarial threats are redefining space, and the impact they will have on the space industry, space governance, and global economies.

NATO Works Toward Deterring Space Threats
Helle opened the discussion by asking Daniel Hilgert, NATO’s Senior Space Coordinator, how space capabilities are currently helping to stabilize and deter threats in NATO territories. Hilgert explained that he has observed a trend among global militaries toward increased reliance on commercial satellite services, which he views positively in terms of deterrence but notes that it also poses challenges.

“It creates a lot of vulnerabilities, especially when it comes to SATCOM and space-based ISR,” explained Hilgert. “We’ve seen that a lot of nations are heavily relying on single providers, though the commercial market is so diverse and vibrant. This is something that we really need to think about when it comes to threats in the space environment.”

According to Hilgert, NATO is launching numerous initiatives to address these vulnerabilities and to deter geopolitical threats.

“We’re developing a marketplace for space services, which is very important to diversifying our [SATCOM] sources and becoming more resilient,” said Hilgert. “We’re also working on threat sharing and exploring how we can unclassify, or downclassify, information that we can share with commercial partners, but also incentivize commercial partners to share information with us.”

Hilgert said NATO is also developing a new program, THOR, to address how to execute offensive counterspace operations and capabilities.

“THOR is really about trying to develop playbooks to see what actions we would take for X, Y, and Z scenarios, and what kind of capabilities we would need to procure to execute those playbooks,” said Hilgert. “[THOR] is going to be really important. It will not be a one-time effort; we will do this continuously because we see how Russia and China are learning how we operate, are adapting themselves, and updating their technology accordingly. We need to update ourselves as well.”

Top Geopolitical Threats in Space
Helle delved deeper into the space threat topic and asked the panelists which, from their perspectives, are the most concerning counterspace events or geopolitical behaviors that have recently occurred or may occur in the future. Dr. habil. Antje Nötzold, Research Associate and Lecturer at Technische Universität Chemnitz, has certain capability advancements coming out of China at the top of her list.

“When we look at space and counterspace activities, I’m not just worried about all the dog fighting we see between Chinese and U.S. satellites, which are now becoming real maneuvers and operations,” said Dr. Nötzold. “What [concerns me the most] was what happened in July, when the Chinese managed to have a successful docking of satellites in geostationary orbit and refueled a satellite. Why [does this concern me the most]? Because it shows that China is ahead of the United States. It brings more ambiguity to the whole dynamic, as we don’t know much about China’s intentions. I would say it also changes a lot of the dynamics for future in-orbit service operations.”

For Professor Trevor Taylor, Director of the Defence, Industries and Society Programme at RUSI, avoiding kinetic combat in the space domain to maintain everyday life on Earth is one of his top concerns.

“Much of our social and commercial life depends on assets that are in space,” said Professor Taylor. “After learning about the Kessler effect, if combat occurs in space, it’s going to be very difficult to control. If two parties are at war, such control becomes very difficult. I would like to see more effort to keep the combat piece out [of space].”

Dr. Ivan Janes, Chief Systems and Products Officer at Telespazio Germany, cited SATCOM security as his primary concern. For Dr. Janes, security across all segments of the SATCOM triad must be strengthened to maintain the critical infrastructure services people depend on.

“Satellite services are embedded in the critical infrastructure services on Earth,” Dr. Janes said. “The energy, military, healthcare, and financial sectors depend on the availability of space services. We have a space, ground, and link segment for all space services. All those layers are only as strong as their weakest link. We must make sure that all the links are hardened to the level that we need.”

Hilgert believes that world governments must heavily invest in bolstering resilience measures in the space domain and be proactive by preparing for any type of crisis that may affect space services on Earth.

“I think the biggest threat is not actually in space, but on this planet,” said Hilgert. ”[Space domain threats] threaten our economies, our societies, and our militaries. We really need to be more proactive. I think we are all pioneers in this respect, because, for NATO, space is a new operational domain. We can really try to get things right, be proactive, and prepare for a conflict before it happens. [We must] invest in [SATCOM] resilience for our civilian infrastructure.”

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Learn about the benefits and barriers of optical ground terminals for the military, HERE.

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The desire to make optical ground terminals widely available is understandable, given the benefits the technology will deliver for global militaries. And since optical lasers are already successfully deployed for satellite-to-satellite communications in orbit, Morizur noted that widespread adoption of optical ground is within reach. “Let’s keep in mind that lasers in space are a reality,” said Morizur. “It’s not science fiction anymore. It’s already there.”

So, what exactly are the key advantages optical technologies will have in the satellite-to-ground game? And if optical ground is the next natural step for the technology’s development, what are the remaining challenges that stand in the way of fully realizing its benefits?

Providing Greater Security, Increased Data Rates Through Optical Lasers
For Morizur, the need for higher throughputs is one of the top reasons why global militaries will want to shift away from traditional RF and towards optical for space-to-ground communications. Morizur explained that government and miltary users leverage satellites to carry increasing amounts of data and require space-to-ground capabilities to accommodate the high volume of data they generate. “[Customers] need higher data rates,” said Morizur. “Optical provides much higher data rates than Ka-Band and Ku-Band.”

In addition to higher data rates, optical space-to-ground comms also provide one of the most critical elements that DoD SATCOM architectures require: greater security. “The most important thing about [optical space-to-ground comms] is it’s difficult to detect, difficult to intercept, and it’s jamming resistant,” said Morizur. Unlike RF, which can be intercepted by adversaries on the ground if they are within a 40-kilometer radius, an optical laser beam’s radius is exceptionally smaller. “The [optical laser’s] spot on the ground is tens of meters,” said Morizur. “That means that if you want to intercept it, you need to be within tens of meters of the ground station.”

Keane agreed with Morizur about the role of optical in providing greater data security on the ground, especially given the evolving nature of warfare over the last several years. “There has been a distinct shift, especially since 2022, from the sort of asymmetric conflicts that we’ve been involved in previously, where you didn’t have to worry about adversary capabilities in terms of jamming,” said Keane. “What we’ve seen come out of Ukraine, and what might be anticipated in other theaters for the future, [makes optical comms] more important. The low probability of intercept/detection (LPI/LPD) characteristics of [optical comms] are significant for those end users.”

In addition to the higher data rates and the LPI/LPD benefits that optical space-to-ground comms provides to DoDs, Robinson pointed out that optical also plays a crucial role in the data path diversity required to support a proliferated space architecture.

“When we think about what’s happening in the last five years, in particular with non-geostationary satellite orbits…and mesh networks that are taking place between those constellations, it’s not just about having multiple orbits, but multi-modalities that are leveraging that data highway,” explained Robinson. “Creating that network in space requires a greater degree of sophistication on the ground in order to receive, process, and make that data most usable to those who are on the front line. When we think about defense end-users, optical is about getting that data down faster and leveraging that…space-to-space, optical highway and being able to bring that data down faster.”

Atmosphere, Contracting, and Transportability Breakthroughs
Though optical comms is already being used for communications between satellites in space, there are still limiting factors that prevent fully realizing the capability’s potential on the ground. The first and primary challenge concerns the fundamental physics of how lasers interact with Earth’s atmosphere.

“People will tell you [the challenge] is about clouds, but it’s not cloud coverage,” said Morizur. “The problem is the atmosphere. We need to deal with the interplay between the laser beam and the atmosphere. This is the main problem.” Morizur explained that through advancements in adaptive optics, those challenges are currently being solved. “It took a long, long time to solve with adaptive optics and different technologies, but we’ve got validation now,” said Morizur. “But it took time for the industry to get there.”

To Keane, one of the main limiting factors in the DoD’s use of optical ground technologies lies in the ability to acquire them. “From our perspective, we need the right contracting mechanisms and other things in place to be able to get this to certain end-users,” he said. “I think we’ve got quite a broad scope on certain things that we already have, but it’s making sure that optical fits and can actually be easily bought by those end-users.”

Keane also pointed to the need for optical terminals that can be leveraged at the tactical edge for different military use cases, noting that Robinson’s company, Data Path, has been making strides in this area. “We’ve got to get [tactical optical terminals] out at the tip of the spear, so people can be sending ISR information back and enabling battlefield decision making,” said Keane. “We also see people wanting smaller and smaller terminals…[DataPath] has already been [working] on [optical terminals] that are much more tactical.”

Robinson explained that the push for tactical, ruggedized optical ground terminals stems from the DoD’s need for operational flexibility and the desire to move away from fixed terminals, citing Iran’s attack on a fixed U.S. terminal in Kuwait last summer. “It’s a powerful example of why it’s important to have operational flexibility and relocation ability, so that you’re not a sitting bullseye,” said Robinson. “This is the defense domain. We have to be clever, flexible, and agile, and move where and when the threat might exist. So, transportability is a huge part of that for us. We’re very excited that we will have the first transportable optical ground station ready by September of next year.”

Optical Ground + RF = Increased Assurance
The panelists agreed that when optical ground terminals operate en masse, they will not completely replace RF technologies. Instead, they will serve as an additional layer and tool that will increase the assurance of data transport and comms for the warfighter. “[Optical] is just going to be another mode of transport, essentially,” explained Keane. “For [SES Space & Defense], we are introducing it into the networks for customers to increase the assurance and availability of what they have. It’s not that we’re going to rely just on optical, but we’re not going to rely just on RF, either. We will continue to integrate [optical] for the end-users as it makes the most sense.”

Robinson agreed with Keane that both RF and optical will be crucial in providing resiliency to the warfighter. “There are few operators better positioned than SES, because they have multiple orbits that they’re working with,” said Robinson. “The core themes of resiliency and redundancy include not relying just on RF or optical, but having a balance of both. Similarly, [we shouldn’t] rely solely on fixed infrastructure on the ground or rely solely on transportable infrastructure. It’s about both. There’s room for both. That’s a really healthy ecosystem for us to be looking toward.”

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