Strategic Defence Review 2025

Baroness Mobarik Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Mobarik (Con)]

The excellent strategic defence review of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, rightly recognises that space is now a crucial and critical domain, one that underpins modern defence, national security and civilian infrastructure. What was once a metaphor for aspiration is now a domain of competition; and in that competition, space access is vital to our national defence, energy and national resilience.

We often talk about strategic threats, economic resilience and levelling up as if they are separate challenges, but space—specifically the UK’s ability to launch and manage its own satellite infrastructure—brings all three together. The Government’s integrated review, national space strategy and defence Command Paper all state that space is a vital national asset for security, sovereignty and growth. We now have UK Space Command and a clear ambition to become a meaningful player in the global space economy. There is recognition that without access to space, modern defence, global influence and protecting our satellites are all at risk. Ukraine’s reliance on Starlink is a case in point.

If we are serious about building sovereign launch capability and prosperity, what are we actually doing to deliver it? The recent SDR clearly acknowledges the strategic necessity of space access. It supports the development of enhanced military space systems, calls for greater civil-military collaboration and rightly positions space as central to modern defence operations. However, it does not explicitly commit to developing a UK sovereign orbital launch capability. That is a striking omission and a missed opportunity to align words with action.

Let us take Sutherland as an example. This is a proud and remote region in the north of Scotland, but one of the most economically fragile. According to Highlands and Islands Enterprise, it faces a 26% population decline by 2041. Youth outmigration is accelerating, and average weekly incomes are over 20% lower than the UK average. These are the long-term symptoms of underinvestment, and yet it is the site of one of the UK’s most forward-looking projects: a vertical-launch spaceport spearheaded by Orbex and backed by the UK Space Agency. This is not just a symbol; it is a serious potential sovereign capability.

The problem is that we still have no active vertical-launch capability in the UK. While the US, India and even New Zealand are launching from their own soil, the UK remains dependent on foreign providers. Over the last decade, the Ministry of Defence has spent £1.4 billion on space-related capabilities, yet the vast majority of this is still outsourced abroad.

If we want to support private investment, grants alone are not enough. We need to offer contracts and long-term, reliable military and civilian government procurement for launch and satellite services as a signal to markets that the UK backs its own capability. This should be an opportunity for regeneration and economic growth as well as national security.

Sovereign launch enables faster response times, secure ISR—intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance—and independence in crisis. Crucially, it allows us to root that capability in regions such as Sutherland, giving people new futures in sectors they once thought were out of reach. We have a chance to turn remote regions into critical infrastructure hubs and to turn industrial strategy into something people can see and feel in their communities. Launching from the highlands would be not only a technological statement but a national statement, one that says we believe in sovereign capability, in economic transformation and in the people and places that have for too long been overlooked. Why does the defence review place such important groundwork for UK sovereign launch but stop short of making it a core national objective?

To be truly sovereign we must be resilient, and that means developing multiple launch sites across the UK—real, tangible support for a plurality of options. In today’s world, leadership in space depends on the ability to launch from our own soil. Without access to space, modern defence and prosperity are at risk. If we are to secure our future in this domain, sovereign access to launch must become a national imperative.