// SPACE.COM — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
Drone warfare in space: Swarms of autonomous, laser-shooting cubesats could defend Western satellites in orbit
"We're talking about deploying 100 cubesats on a protect-and-defend mission for less than £100 million."
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In May 2026, four Russian military satellites came close to ICEYE-X36, a private synthetic aperture radar satellite widely believed to be providing battlefield intelligence for Ukraine, in an apparently aggressive and risky "grey zone" maneuver that spooked many in the space industry.
Close enough to jam or interfere with the satellite's signal, blind it with a laser, fire a metal dart at it or, simply, force it to maneuver and burn fuel, the satellites' seemingly intimidatory behavior has increased the West's desire to develop defensive technology for satellites. In October 2026, it was reported that one of those same four Russian satellites passed within 500 meters (1,650 feet) of the same ICEYE satellite.
Now, U.K. startup Shield Space is racing to apply the lessons of drone warfare in Ukraine to develop swarms of up to 100 very small, low-cost, attritable drone-like autonomous spacecraft called cubesats. Released by a car-sized carrier in Earth orbit, these microwave-sized spacecraft will act as interceptors to protect Western satellites, and their deployment will mark a next step in the evolution of orbital warfare. Shield Space says that these space drones will use "effectors" like lasers or microwaves, or "kinetic standoff" techniques, to defend Western satellites even if controllers lose contact with them.
"We're talking about deploying 100 cubesats on a protect-and-defend mission for less than £100 million [$134 million US], which is how [much] you would pay for one satellite previously," said Graeme Ritchie, co-founder and CEO of Shield Space.
Launched in 2023, NASA's civilian project Starling demonstrated that a swarm of four small satellites can cooperate and operate autonomously in space on a civilian science mission without relying heavily on real-time commands from ground control. But that seems like a far cry from the adversarial or defensive missions Shield Space and its competitors imagine. It is telling that the leading space powers appear not to have demonstrated swarm combat in space — although they tend to be reluctant to reveal their space warfare capabilities.
In the fourth quarter of 2027, Shield Space plans to take this next step in space warfare's evolution by demonstrating rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) with two very small spacecraft. This effort, named Project Broadsword, will launch on SpaceX's Transporter-21 rideshare mission. It will send up an 8U cubesat and a smaller 3U target craft, which Shield Space plans to maneuver from 100 kilometers (62 miles) apart to within 100 meters (330 feet) of each other and, through four stages of autonomy, from human-in-the-loop to "approximately" fully autonomous. (A cubesat unit, or U, is a cube that measures 10 cm, or about 4 inches, on a side.)
The gaps between a true satellite-defense capability and this demonstration appear to be great, in terms of the technological and practical challenges of squeezing propulsion and power systems, AI compute power, sensors, the lasers the swarm needs to communicate and weapon systems onto small, lightweight maneuvering satellites. But it is a gap that Shield Space believes it can bridge through the purchase of relatively cheap off-the-shelf technology rather than more expensive bespoke designs.
"Yes, it's a problem because of size, weight and power," Ritchie told Space.com. "We've had to totally innovate from scratch some elements of the mission… but we have only got roughly 100 cm by 100 cm [40 by 40 inches], so saving space or having systems that are already completely integrated is the main aim."