Europe accelerates sovereign satellite plans after Starlink limits in Ukraine

Kyiv joins €300 million Iceye-Nokia plan with 2028 launch target

Elon Musk’s abrupt limits on Ukraine’s Starlink use have accelerated efforts by European governments and companies to build sovereign satellite communications networks. The Wall Street Journal described Starlink as critical to Ukraine’s efforts against Russia’s invasion. It reported that projects across Ukraine, Finland, Germany, Sweden, France, Canada and the European Union are unlikely to produce a competitive alternative in the near term.

Europeans are expressing concern about a built-in kill switch in Starlink that gives Musk the power to deactivate a vital network without consultation. After Ukraine reported problems with the service, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote to Musk on X: “The more you play politics with your products, the more you damage your brand.” Warsaw helps pay for Ukraine’s use of Starlink. Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said Friday that the U.S. shouldn’t be “so dependent on one system, one person, one company.”

A competitive alternative is unlikely to be available in the near term. OneWeb, a subsidiary of French satellite group Eutelsat, is the only European company currently able to operate satellites in low-Earth orbit, where SpaceX dominates. OneWeb operates roughly 650 satellites and plans to grow its fleet to about 1,300 by 2030, following a €1 billion, or $1.1 billion, contract signed last month with Airbus. SpaceX already has more than 11,000 satellites in orbit.

OneWeb’s older technology is also less suited to Ukraine’s front line. Its terminals are bulky, heavy and power-hungry, and SpaceX uses proprietary technology, so moving from Starlink or its military version, Starshield, to OneWeb would require replacing thousands of terminals. In Europe, Starlink mostly provides broadband to homes, businesses and airline passengers, while military use remains limited but growing.

Ukraine and Finland announced Thursday that Kyiv would join a planned satellite-communications network run by Finnish satellite operator Iceye and networking company Nokia. The announcement came as part of a €300 million aid package, and the first satellites are slated for launch only in 2028.

Canadian satellite-communications company Telesat has pitched its Lightspeed network as offering greater sovereignty. Telesat aims to launch the first of 288 planned satellites in December and become operational by early 2028. Separately, the European Union has contracted with Eutelsat and two other companies to build IRIS², a sovereign network of 348 satellites, at a cost of about $17.5 billion. The first IRIS² satellites are slated to launch in 2029.

Ukraine’s military needs technology that is difficult to hack or jam and that provides vast amounts of bandwidth, said Tom Withington, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a British defense think tank. “There won’t be one technology that replaces Starlink,” Withington said. “They need an amalgamation of different technologies. It will need to be built up over time.” He predicted, “Ukraine’s ability to do that will surprise people.”

European and Canadian funding remains small compared with SpaceX’s roughly $2 trillion market valuation. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, has committed some $40 billion to space-related defense by 2030. French President Emmanuel Macron last year raised France’s space defense budget to roughly $11 billion by 2030, a 70% boost. Germany’s plan includes funding for orbital surveillance, a satellite operations center and a national constellation of more than 100 satellites in orbit.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has called satellite networks “an Achilles heel of modern societies.” Germany is also home to Isar, the only private company that has sent a rocket into orbit from continental Europe. Isar launched a Spectrum rocket carrying five small satellites last month. SpaceX’s Falcon rocket, on which OneWeb, Telesat and others rely for launches, is more than twice Spectrum’s size.

The shortage of European launch sites adds another constraint. Isar launched from Andøya Space in Norway, the only site in continental Europe outside Russia with a proven ability to send satellites into orbit. Sweden also hosts the Esrange orbital launch site, about 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle, but its first launch is planned for 2028. OneWeb has relied on sites in Russia, Kazakhstan, French Guiana, India and SpaceX facilities in Cape Canaveral and California.

“From a European perspective, we need to secure an independent launch capacity,” Ketil Olsen, chief executive officer and president of Andøya Space, said. “We have built an invisible infrastructure through critical services in space. The last few days have exposed how vulnerable we are,” Olsen said. “If you don’t have your own capacity, you can’t control the data.” Andøya Space is 90% government owned but cannot currently launch satellites of the size required for IRIS². Its single launchpad is reserved for Isar for up to 20 years, and the company plans about 30 launches over the next few years and more launchpads.

Sweden is among the European nations moving the fastest in space. In 2024, Stockholm contracted with American aerospace company Planet Labs and Finland’s Iceye to send a constellation of roughly 10 military intelligence satellites into orbit; the first launched from California in May, ahead of schedule. For now, Sweden relies on the U.S. for launches, leaving it dependent on a busy schedule dominated by commercial actors. Rear Adm. Anders Sundeman, the armed forces’ chief of space, said, “The demand is higher than the capability. So if you and I wanted to launch something into space, we would have to stand in last in the queue.” The Swedish program is self-funded independently of EU programs and relies on multiple partners to cushion against dependence on a single actor. “It’s an American actor that makes the satellite, but we own it and control it,” Sundeman said.

European efforts are also hobbled by bureaucracy, which rarely shows the urgency of commercial actors. “The main obstacle is leadership,” Serge Plattard, an associate fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research, a French think tank, said. The EU’s Galileo navigation system, created as an alternative to American GPS and the Russian Glonass systems, entered service in 2016 after a delay of nearly a decade. Plattard said member states have yet to fully agree on funding and subcontractors, leaving IRIS² already poised for delays. “It is really not safe at all to work the way we’re working today in Europe. We are way too slow, and we are unable to anticipate what’s happening now in space,” he said.

European Space Agency director for resilience, navigation and connectivity Laurent Jaffart said Europe’s efforts to achieve sovereignty in space are driven by a long-term vision rather than individual incidents such as the slowdown in Ukraine. “Recent events nevertheless underline, if not reconfirm, the importance of ensuring that Europe has resilient and sovereign capabilities for essential services,” he said. The announced programs could give Europe more control over communications and launches over time, but none supplies Ukraine with an immediate Starlink substitute.