A Clear and Present Danger in Orbit: FCC Moves and Amazon’s Globalstar Deal Expose UK Space Vulnerability

In the space of a single week, two developments from across the Atlantic have laid bare a grave new threat to Britain’s national security and economic resilience. On 9 April 2026, the US Federal Communications Commission announced plans to scrap decades-old international satellite interference protections at its 30 April meeting. Days later, on 14 April, Amazon revealed its $11.57 billion acquisition of Globalstar, a move that dramatically accelerates consolidation in low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks.

Together, these events signal the accelerating risk that a handful of US corporate giants could soon dominate the orbital and spectrum resources on which Britain depends. The consequences for UK business, defence and critical infrastructure could prove catastrophic.

The FCC proposal would replace the long-standing Equivalent Power Flux Density (EPFD) framework with looser, performance-based rules and voluntary private agreements between operators. In practice, this would allow massive LEO constellations to transmit at far higher power levels, potentially rendering geostationary (GSO) satellites unreliable or, in extremis, inoperable. These GSO systems currently deliver the persistent, high-reliability coverage essential for command and control, intelligence, financial transactions and emergency services. Even momentary disruptions could halt high-value trades in the City, delay aviation routes or blind military operations in contested environments.

Amazon’s purchase of Globalstar compounds the problem. The deal bolsters Jeff Bezos’s Project Kuiper and positions it as a direct challenger to Elon Musk’s Starlink, which already operates more than 10,000 satellites. With two US mega-constellations now racing toward dominance, the economic barriers facing smaller players become insurmountable. Only a tiny handful of operators - backed by vast capital and launch capacity - will control access to space. For Britain, this risks vendor lock-in on a scale never before seen. UK firms in the £16.4 billion space sector, from manufacturers to downstream service providers, could find themselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers whose priorities may not align with British interests.

This is not a distant regulatory squabble. Nearly 20 per cent of the UK economy depends on space-based services. The National Risk Register already flags disruption to satellite systems as a major vulnerability. London’s financial heart relies on stable links for global trading and data centres. Energy networks, aviation and maritime operations depend on them for safety and efficiency. In defence, GSO assets support everything from drone warfare to nuclear communications. Weakened protections would shrink effective coverage by up to 50 per cent in critical regions, introduce annual outages measured in hours or days, and blur the line between accidental interference and hostile jamming.

As we warned in these pages last month, the proposed rule changes threaten to hand control of a critical layer of national infrastructure to a small number of external actors. The FCC announcement and Amazon’s move confirm that timeline is shortening. The UK has yet to adopt a formal position ahead of the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Doha this November and the World Radiocommunication Conference in Shanghai in 2027. Ofcom must now lead a robust defence of existing EPFD protections.

Ministers cannot afford further delay. The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill and the forthcoming Defence Readiness Bill provide immediate vehicles to embed these risks in domestic policy. Britain should champion a genuine multi-orbit strategy, invest in sovereign capabilities and insist that defence and space security rank as top national priorities. Failure to act would represent not administrative oversight but a political choice to expose the realm to avoidable strategic risk.

The time for complacency is over. The government must treat this as the national emergency it clearly is. Britain’s prosperity and security in the 21st century depend on retaining control of the skies above us.