Hybrid Threats in Space
A workshop with insights from Germany, Austria and Finland
May 06, 2026 / Vienna / European Security and Defence
On May 6th, 2026, AIES hosted an expert workshop titled "Hybrid Threats in Space", bringing together specialists from Austria, Germany, and Finland to assess the growing security challenges posed by hybrid warfare in the space domain.
The discussion featured presentations by Ralph Thiele, Chairman of Political-Military-Society e.V.; Marc Becker, space security expert at the German Federal Ministry of Defence; Onerva Aalto, Sergeant at the Finnish Defense Forces; R. Toni Pfaffenbauer, expert for space and new technologies at the Austrian Ministry of Defence; and Lina Pohl, Research Fellow at DLR/European Space Policy Institute (ESPI). The event was moderated by AIES Senior Research Fellow Christoph Schwarz.
The speakers converged on the assessment that space has become a critical domain for hybrid warfare, with state and non-state actors exploiting dependencies on satellite-based services. GPS navigation, financial systems and emergency communications are especially vulnerable to cyberattacks, jamming, spoofing, disinformation, and sabotage below the threshold of armed conflict. Russia and China were identified as primary actors employing such tactics, though the panel noted that a growing number of states are developing comparable capabilities.
A central theme was the vulnerability of civilian infrastructure. The speakers emphasized that attacks on space systems rarely remain contained. They instead produce cascading effects across sectors as diverse as aviation, energy, finance, and emergency response. Particular emphasis was placed on the heavy reliance on space-based services, which is increasingly viewed as a strategic risk in Austria as well. The experts pointed out that hostile actors actively exploit these dependencies and that building resilience must be understood as a whole-of-nation task.
Finland and Germany were presented as two distinct cases. Finland's whole-of-society approach to resilience, combining mandatory conscription, civil defence structures, and broad public preparedness, was contrasted with the fragmented institutional landscape in much of the EU. The German perspective highlighted its planned investment in military space capabilities by 2030 with the aim of producing a dedicated space command structure and a National Space Security Strategy based on threat assessments drawn from ongoing incidents, also seeking to include lessons from the war in Ukraine.
The panel concluded that countering hybrid threats in space requires a multi-layered response: enhanced space situational awareness, stronger cybersecurity frameworks for commercial satellites used by the military, greater public and political awareness, and a coherent European institutional approach that links space security with broader hybrid threat policy. The need to move beyond a purely defensive posture by developing credible deterrence capabilities was raised as a priority.
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