According to the Cabinet of Ministers’ program of activities submitted to the Verkhovna Rada on September 23, the formation of the Space Forces must be completed by December 31.This step involves updating the structure of the defense forces, creating the legal and organizational framework for their operation, and achieving at least 60% operational readiness of an integrated air and missile defense system with cyber and space components.Earlier this spring, the Ministry of Defense launched the Space Policy Directorate, which coordinates infrastructure audits, the drafting of documentation, pilot projects and international partnerships. The main goal of this body is to unite internal and external resources for the development of Ukraine’s military space capabilities.What are the Space Forces?The Space Forces are a specialised branch of the armed forces responsible for military operations in space, including intelligence, surveillance, communications, navigation and the protection of space assets (satellites) from threats.Today they are not about weapons in orbit (although some countries already have or are testing such systems); they are about the resilience of critical infrastructure (for example, GPS), strengthening early-warning systems (timely functioning of air-defence and air-raid alerts), and cooperating with cyber and air forces in joint operations (for instance, strikes at depth) based on high-quality satellite intelligence.Why does Ukraine need Space Forces?Testing of the Flamingo cruise missile, photo: video screenshotAviation expert and senior researcher at the State Aviation Museum Valeriy Romanenko told Espreso that to understand the logic behind creating Ukraine’s Space Forces, one needs to recall the key requirements for intelligence — accuracy, reliability, completeness and timeliness.“Intelligence also varies: tactical, operational, strategic. We manage tactical and operational intelligence without Space Forces. But for strategic intelligence… We are preparing to strike at depth with new weapons. A missile will not fly by itself. You must populate its navigation system with information. That can only be done through space means. So we need accurate, reliable, complete and timely information about the strategic situation among the Russians. Where their air-defence systems are deployed, how their enterprises operate, which routes are relatively safe for our drones or missiles, which zones Russian fighters patrol. All that information must be collected, processed and analysed by a single body and then issued to the units or structures that need it. That is likely what the new Space Forces will do,” the expert said.Romanenko also explains that in the U.S., electro-optical and radio-technical intelligence is carried out by a single structure (90% of information comes from some 250 reconnaissance satellites), whereas Ukraine currently has multiple sources of data. During the Trump administration there were incidents when the Pentagon stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine, so other countries stepped in. In addition, the U.S. often “downgrades” the quality of shared imagery — they keep high-resolution data for themselves and provide lower-resolution versions to others.“Right now we receive such information from several countries, both from their armed forces and from commercial firms such as Maxar — and let us recall the ‘Prytula satellite’ as well. Therefore, we need a single structure to process and analyse these streams of information and pass the data to the units that carry out strikes,” Romanenko noted.He adds that our Armed Forces face a problem of lacking digital maps:“To make a route for a cruise missile you need a digital terrain map. It can orient via GPS, but the Russians now effectively jam GPS signals. Modern cruise missiles therefore navigate like the first pilots did: they look at the ground below and compare what was loaded into their route memory with what they currently see. If the images match, the missile is on course; if not, it must adjust left or right to return to the planned track. For this you need digital terrain maps, because the image embedded into the memory of a drone or cruise missile is essentially photographs of the terrain taken from high-altitude satellites.”History of the Space Forces: from Reagan’s “Star Wars” to present realitiesReagan presenting the Strategic Defense Initiative, photo: WikipediaThe idea of space forces traces back to the Cold War, when space became an arena of strategic competition between the U.S. and the USSR. Even then people were thinking about how to use outer space to gain advantage over an opponent.One of the first major steps was the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), announced by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 in a televised address to the nation. Criticizing the doctrine of mutual assured destruction (so-called MAD), Reagan proposed a missile-defense system based on space technologies — lasers, kinetic interceptors and satellite sensors — intended to render nuclear weapons “powerless and obsolete.”The media immediately dubbed the program “Star Wars,” and Reagan’s opponents called it “reckless” because of the costs. SDI envisaged investments of tens of billions of dollars but ran into technological barriers, congressional criticism and Soviet opposition, since it violated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.Although “Star Wars” was never fully realized, the project laid the foundation for the development of military space operations.In the 1980s, the U.S. Air Force created Air Force Space Command, which coordinated satellite operations during the 1991 Gulf War — often called the first “space war,” where GPS and orbital reconnaissance proved crucial.After the USSR’s collapse in 1991, the focus shifted from ambitious laser systems to practical tasks: protecting satellites from anti-satellite threats and ensuring communications resilience.Modern realities have transformed “Star Wars” into a doctrine of “space advantage.” In 2019, by decree of President Trump, the U.S. created the independent U.S. Space Force as a sixth separate branch of the armed forces, with a multi-billion dollar budget focused on orbital monitoring and countering hybrid threats from China and Russia. Globally, it remains the only such independent military space structure (China is starting to follow closely).Thus, the evolution from Reagan’s fictional shield to real operations reflects the shift from offensive defense projects to integrating space into everyday warfare, where more than 75% of military communications depend on satellites.However, as Romanenko emphasized, Russia is already actively developing weapons to put into space and preparing, if necessary, to destroy American reconnaissance satellites. So a sort of new “Star Wars” — alongside the already arrived drone wars — is a very possible future.“Even in Soviet times, systems were launched into space to act if command posts were destroyed. In a time of high threat, an unmanned rocket that acts as a flying command post is put into orbit. If command posts are destroyed, that rocket in automatic mode initiates launches — it issues commands to strategic rocket forces and the navy to fire. I think wars in space are our near future,” the expert concluded.