Space Warrior 24: How the Wargame Helped UK to Shape the Future of Defense with Commercial Space Tech

The MoD has released a detailed report on Space Warrior 24, a wargame event that took place in July 2024. The event looked into integrating commercial Space-Based Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (SBISR) into any defence strategies in the future in an attempt to maximise intelligence available. The event was hosted by UK Space Command.

The event’s primary goal was to investigate how commercial Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) services could be effectively used in defense scenarios while maintaining efficiency and resilience. The event was hosted with participation from key stakeholders such as UK Space Command, NATO Headquarters, the US Space Force, and many representatives from the UK commercial space industry.

Space Warrior 24: Key Objectives and Questions

At the centre of Space Warrior 24 was a hypothesis: That leveraging commercial access capabilities, rather than owning them, might provide a resource-efficient way to enhance defense readiness. The workshop aimed to validate this hypothesis and answer a critical question: 

“What elements are necessary in a commercial framework to ensure a reliable service transition through different phases of conflict?”

The event focused on three main areas:

• Assurance: Ensuring that commercial space products could meet defense requirements during missions.
• Risk: Assessing and mitigating risks involved in relying on commercial suppliers in this scenario.
• Interoperability: Establishing collaboration between commercial service providers and defense forces and seeing how viable this could be.

The Wargame Format

So how did the event actually work? Space Warrior 24 involved a workshop-based wargame format, and was able to simulate escalating scenarios across four increasingly complex stories. These spanned stages of competition, crisis, and full-scale conflict, culminating in a NATO Article V scenario. 

By analysing these scenarios, the MoD were able to explore how commercial ISR capabilities might perform under various stress levels and explored practical integration strategies.

While commercial providers already operate in contested environments, extreme levels of warfare where facilities and personnel face direct threats remain untested. Contracting clauses, particularly around “force majeure” events and liability limits, were identified as areas needing clarity.

A potential solution discussed was the creation of a Supplier Maturity Matrix, inspired by the US National Reconnaissance Office model. This matrix would standardise the evaluation of supplier capabilities, helping both defense planners and commercial partners align expectations and increase confidence in service reliability during conflicts when every second matters. 

Takeaways and What the Future Holds

The MoD’s own findings were shared in the report, published in late November 2024:

• Commercial Space domain services provide a valuable opportunity to Defence both in the short and long-term due to high levels of innovation and competition among CSI suppliers.
• Accessing commercial capability is unlikely to meet the assurance levels of that of MOD-owned capability and therefore carries a level of risk.
• Developing a supplier assurance matrix would help to articulate risk to MOD decision-makers, while also allowing suppliers to manage their assurance levels and become more competitive.
• Many assurance, risk and interoperability factors can be accounted for by sufficient contract negotiation between commercial staff and suppliers, primarily with higher cost to the MOD.
• There is a lack of common language used between Defence and the commercial sector relating to space – clear, shared definitions should be formed.

The findings of Space Warrior 24 emphasised a need for balance between “Own” and “Access” models. While commercial capabilities bring innovation and flexibility, owning critical infrastructure provides resilience in high-conflict scenarios. By adopting a blended approach, defense forces can harness commercial strengths while mitigating risks that can come from including commercial partners.