World at risk of returning to 19th century as nations weaponise space

An expert has warned that a war in space could break out by 2031, and if that happens, the world will be pushed back into the 19th century. Dr Julia Balm, co-director of the Freeman Air and Space Institute at King’s College London, has set alarm bells ringing by claiming that satellites and other orbital infrastructure could be at major risk as countries develop sophisticated technology.

"If we’re looking at the number of satellites proliferating in orbit and the capabilities that are growing in both scale, but also in their technical capacity […], we are looking at conflict emerging not only in the domain, but in the next five years," Balm said.

Balm said that dis­rupting satel­lites and crippling "not only our mil­it­ary oper­a­tions but also crit­ical national infra­struc­ture" can emerge as a major attractor to adversaries, leading space to become "an attract­ive means of coer­cion." She added, “It’s a ques­tion really about resi­li­ence at an oper­a­tional level, about organ­ising ourselves in space as a war-fight­ing domain.”

Russia, China, US could already be caught in a space tussle

If a nuclear weapon explodes in space, the radiation will permanently damage satellites and leave the orbit unusable. The UK For­eign Policy Research Insti­tute has warned that Rus­sia could be con­sid­er­ing a "mass kill" of satel­lites in orbit. Some experts think the country has already sent a nuke in space on the Cos­mos space­craft in 2025, as it released "Object F".

Its Luch/Olymp intel­li­gence satel­lites have been found stalking European space­craft. In 2022, Rus­sia launched the satel­lite Cos­mos 2553, which US intel­li­gence agen­cies believe was carrying nuclear device components.

China has a space plane named Shenlong, which reportedly released a mystery object in orbit earlier this year. "At 02:30 UTC on 22 June 2026, LeoLabs detected an unknown object in the vicinity of the Chinese Shenlong reusable space plane," LeoLabs, a private space surveillance firm, posted to X. Last month, the US Space Force announced it had deployed a weapon in space for the first time.

Brit­ish-based Astro­scale said last week that it was now involved in clas­si­fied mil­it­ary pro­grammes and is working on technology to mon­itor or deter threat­en­ing enemy space­craft. Balm warned at the meeting that allied nations were being "tar­geted" in space by adversar­ies "on a daily basis".

What would happen if a war breaks out in space?

The world today relies on satellites for GPS and communications, with pretty much everything from weather to financial sectors dependent on them. If a space war were to break out, the destruction of satellites would have a severe impact on almost everything. There would be total loss of internet, global telecommunications, and television broadcasts. Air traffic control, maritime shipping guidance, and GPS/GNSS systems would be impacted. Digital banking, stock exchanges, and automated trade will fail, triggering widespread financial collapses.

This would effectively force the world to return to primitive methods of communication, financial dealings, weather predictions and other things.