From Nice-to-Have to Need-to-Have : The Military Utility of Soft-Kill Counterspace for Medium-Sized States.

Sammanfattning

This thesis is a qualitative case study of Sweden that examines the military utility of soft-kill counterspace capabilities for medium-sized states, as space has become an increasingly important domain for military, political, and economic activity. More states are developing capabilities for space operations. For medium-sized states, acquiring counterspace capabilities presents significant challenges due to limited resources, technological constraints, and competing defence priorities. Soft-kill capabilities, such as electronic warfare and cyber warfare, temporarily disrupt or degrade adversary space assets without physically destroying them, offering a reversible and scalable alternative to kinetic hard-kill systems such as direct-ascent anti-satellite missiles. Applying the Military Utility framework across three dimensions: military effectiveness, military suitability, and affordability, the study evaluates a hypothetical Swedish ground-based electronic warfare anti-satellite system, referred to as SKADI. The thesis also proposes a new operational concept, Suppression of Adversary Space Assets (SASA), as a framework for how medium-sized states can achieve temporary localised space control without requiring the extensive space architectures of major powers. The findings indicate that soft-kill electronic warfare systems provide significant military utility for medium-sized states, offering lower political and escalatory risk and reduced financial and technological barriers. The thesis concludes that the primary constraint on such capabilities is not the system itself but the broader supporting infrastructure, particularly space domain awareness, required to make it operationally effective.