War warning sparks UK space push

Photo: Mark Williamson

George Freeman MP says the UK must build a wartime space economy to stop Russia, stand up to Trump and keep billion-pound space firms from being seized by foreign powers.

by Clive Simpson

LONDON, 12 December – A week after former UK space minister George Freeman warned that Europe is “already at war”, his stark message has gained added resonance amid fresh NATO concern that Russia may widen its confrontation with the West.

Speaking at Space-Comm Expo in Glasgow on 4 December, Freeman told industry leaders that the UK must move faster, think bigger and “speak with one voice” if it is to secure a leading role in the next era of global space technology and national defence.

His comments now sit against a broader geopolitical warning from NATO’s incoming secretary-general, Mark Rutte, who said this week that Europe must prepare for the possibility of conflict with Russia within five years – a scenario that underscores Freeman’s call for a “wartime space economy”.

‘We are already at war in Europe’

Freeman, a former Minister of State for Science and Space and now chair of the Space 4 Earth Fund, praised Scotland’s rise as “Europe’s premier space cluster”, but used his keynote to deliver an unusually direct assessment of the threats facing the continent.

“We are at war in Europe,” he said. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take for journalists in London to recognise this. Putin is in Turkey, we’re fighting in Ukraine today, and if Ukraine lose, we will see Russia start to move all the way to the eastern border.”

He compared the current geopolitical climate to Britain's slow mobilisation in the late 1930s.

“It took us from 1938 to 1941 to properly scale up and build a wartime economy. We’re miles away from doing it. We’ve got to move much more quickly, and we’ve got to stop shooting down $200 drones with £10 million missiles.”

Space as frontline capability

Freeman argued that space technologies – from Earth observation to quantum encryption and smart telecommunications – are already central to modern defence and supply-chain resilience.

“We have got to embrace the full technology suite and space has a huge part to play in that. The dual-use piece is enormous,” he said, recalling early COBRA meetings on Ukraine where officials relied on commercial satellite imagery from SpaceX.

He welcomed the EU’s recent €1.5 billion defence initiative and noted UK spending of around £400 million on defence innovation, but said the government still lacks a clear picture of how its R&D investment translates into private-sector growth.

“The best metric is how much public R&D turns into private sector R&D. Government doesn’t have the number yet,” he warned. “Unless we’re able to say how much is going into space, how do we track it?”

Freeman criticised the pace and structure of UK government support, arguing that small, slow grants “aren’t going to build a global space sector”, and called instead for regulatory leadership, especially around sustainable space standards tied to finance and insurance.

UK strengths risk being overlooked

Despite the severity of his warnings, Freeman said the UK remains far more competitive than many realise.

“Do you know which country is second behind the US in the amount of money raised to fund space companies? It’s the UK. Who knew?”

While the UK holds roughly five percent of the global commercial space market –  including broadcasting – it attracted 17 percent of global space venture capital last year.

“It’s testimony to the quality of the companies here… we are the second biggest space investment economy in the world.”

He highlighted clusters in Cornwall, South Wales, Surrey and across Scotland, and name-checked several UK space companies he believes could become billion-pound scale-ups if backed properly.

Trump, tariffs and shifting trade winds

Freeman also pointed to a global economic reordering accelerated by political instability and a more protectionist United States.

“It’s not often American presidents decide they can run on an isolationist, anti-free-trade ticket and tariffs. That is a huge opportunity for us,” he said.

He argued that Southeast Asian nations now view the UK as a reliable free-trading partner in a “rules-based system”, while Gulf states are investing “very heavily” in space technologies ranging from agri-tech to transport and future digital economies.

Critical moment for UK space

Freeman closed with a warning that without decisive action, the UK could lose its emerging space champions to foreign acquisition or overseas listings.

“We’re not going to beat China or America big,” he said, “but we could meet them here in Scotland… If we get this right, we can be a player helping to lead the standards for the emerging global commercial space economy.”

“This sector looks to me like the biotech sector in the 1990s. If we speak with one voice and tell government we are essential, we can grow this into the lifeline sector in the next 20 years.”

His speech, part celebration and part alarm call, drew strong applause from delegates.

“I’m going to continue to be controversial and insurgent,” Freeman concluded, “because this sector is one of the most exciting in the UK – and we need to move much more quickly.”

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This report by Clive Simpson from Space-Comm Expo, Glasgow, 3-4 December 2025.

Why the global space sector needs urgent regulation - by George Freeman, ROOM Space Journal #37, Autumn 2025

Selling England by the Pound

Pictures paint a thousand words - coincidence or a divine warning?

WHILE the appalling Covid-19 figures in the UK, the latest nationwide lock down and vaccine rollout dominate mainstream news, the tragedy of post-Brexit Britain unfolds like some secondary subplot in a long drawn out dystopian soap opera.

Ironically, the intense media focus on the handling of Covid-19 in the UK is proving useful ‘cover’ for the damage being inflicted day-by-day to the economic fabric of the country now it is fully out of the EU. But that may only last for so long now.

Post-Brexit Britain's early days of going solo have already been characterised by lost business, extra costs, delays, unexpected tariffs and additional paperwork for many. So, far at least, no one seems to be trumpeting any tangible new freedoms or benefits.

Add the latest events in Washington, however, into the mix and we suddenly throw a more intense and critical spotlight on the UK's doomsday scenario of Covid-19 and Brexit under the leadership of an increasingly corrupt government.

President-elect Joe Biden has described Boris Johnson as "a physical & emotional clone of Donald Trump" whilst Trump himself described Johnson as “Britain’s Trump”. In return Johnson, a fine judge of character, suggested that Trump was a suitable candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize.

It has to be said, however, that Johnson and co are by no means as open or obvious about their self-serving motives as Trump has been. Instead they work insidiously in the background, stealing the UK’s democracy bit by bit.

For example, lying and glossing over truths by government ministers is now pretty much a normal thing. Johnson prorogued Parliament illegally and is in the process of changing electoral boundaries to give themselves more seats.

And the list goes on. They are reducing the power of judicial review to prevent challenge to their power. They selected candidates to Parliament who swore ‘loyalty’. They are packing the Lords. And they have taken enormous executive powers to themselves in recent bills that bypass Parliament entirely.

Make no mistake, the Johnson government is authoritarian to the core and its members want ever more of that authority. Whatever it may say in public, underneath this ruling class does not appear to believe in or respect parliamentary democracy.

Yet, we are constantly informed via trite PR statements about Johnson 'levelling up', trying his hardest or caring for the poorest, or whatever the latest propaganda phrase might be - all parroted by favourable media which normalise the corruption by failing to call out the lies.

It's all much more insidious than Trump ever was because at least everyone knew more or less what Trump was about. In contrast Johnson is still largely portrayed as a sort of posh but innocent buffoon who is really quite harmless. This is definitely not the case.

And the difference now between the US and UK? The US withstood attempts to close it's parliament down and will now curtail Trump's powers. But in September 2019, when Boris Johnson closed the British parliament down illegally, the right-wing mainstream press supported him to the extent that he eventually got re-elected.
                                       
So, what happened in the United States is a reminder of the risks we all face when the norms of liberal democracy are eroded.

It is interesting, for example, to note that in 2016 Vote Leave in the UK and Trump in the US had in common some of the same financial backers and media supporters.

And, only quite recently, Tory councillors and politicians were instructed to use “Trumpian methods” to promote their politics, further undermining an already subverted democracy and defining an allegiance to the Trump way of doing things.

In the UK, we have also ignored at our peril the irrefutable proof that Vote Leave broke the law during the referendum. Our political system and mainstream media were just too broken to hold them to account. Instead, we gave them more power.

It all kind of makes that much hailed Brexit slogan of “taking back control” a bit trite and disingenuous, doesn’t it? Unless, of course, you are the one in control.