By Emma Gatti
The European space sector woke up March 11 with a more concrete understanding of the concept of dual-use technology. A teleport facility operated by Luxembourg-based satellite provider SES in Israel was hit by a Hezbollah missile strike, reportedly on the grounds that the facility belonged to the “Cyber Defense and Communications Division of the Israeli enemy army.”
Israel stated that the ground station had been privatized since 2008, and SES said the damage to its antennas was minor. But what matters here is that in conflict scenarios, subtle questions about whether a ground station primarily broadcasts sitcoms or supports military communications quickly become irrelevant.
The legal framework for understanding the ambiguities of dual-use technology in space goes back a century. The Hague Rules of Air Warfare (1923) define a military objective as “any object that, by its nature, location, purpose or use, makes an effective contribution to military action” and whose destruction offers a definite military advantage.
The critical word is “use.” Under this principle, a civilian object does not permanently retain its protected status. The moment it contributes effectively to military action, it can become a target. The Tallinn Manual 2.0, which together with the Woomera Manual forms one of the key reference points for understanding cyber warfare, the cyber–space overlap and dual-use law in space, goes further. Rule 101 of the manual states that “all dual-use objects and facilities are military objectives, without qualification.”
In theory, an attacker should verify the degree to which a civilian object contributes to military operations and assess whether the expected military advantage justifies the attack. In practice, the SES case illustrates how difficult that principle is to apply.
Ground stations, antennas and orbital platforms process streams of data. An attacker cannot realistically verify what proportion of that traffic is military, and that uncertainty tends to be resolved in favor of what can be perceived as an immediate military advantage.
The question therefore is: what happens when civilian-built space infrastructure becomes a military target because defense data passes through it, or, as in the SES case, because it is suspected of doing so?
The answer is increasing operational and legal chaos.
A couple of examples from the ongoing war in Ukraine illustrate the point. On Feb. 24, 2022, Russia carried out a cyberattack on the civilian satellite broadband network operated by Viasat. Tens of thousands of civilian users across Ukraine lost connectivity, a German energy company lost remote monitoring access to 5,800 wind turbines and 9,000 satellite internet customers in France experienced service outages.
Yet the attack remained legally ambiguous enough that NATO did not invoke collective defense.
Another well-known case involves SpaceX. In February 2023, the company attempted to restrict the use of Starlink terminals for offensive drone operations by Ukraine, a situation in which a private company was essentially trying to re-establish the civilian–military distinction unilaterally, in real time and under operational pressure.
These cases, still confined to ground infrastructure, do not touch the more extreme scenario: anti-satellite (ASAT) strikes. Destroying a satellite in orbit does not simply remove a single asset. It creates debris that can make entire orbital regions unusable for decades, affecting military and civilian operators alike.
Which brings the discussion back to the legal framework surrounding dual-use infrastructure.
For the past few years, the dual-use debate has largely focused on efficiency: satellites and ground systems capable of serving both civilian and military needs at a fraction of the cost of separate systems. But the SES incident highlights the other side of the equation. A ground node can become a military target regardless of whether its operators consider it civilian infrastructure, and attackers appear far less interested in verifying the subtleties of that distinction.
Dual-use infrastructure blurs the line between civilian and military targets. It lowers the threshold for escalation and operates in a legal environment where the boundary between civilian and military space activity remains poorly defined.
In a domain where the physical consequences of conflict can last for generations, that ambiguity may turn out to be the real cost of dual-use space systems.
ESA, the European Commission’s DEFIS and several commercial ground station operators declined to comment on the recent strike.
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