Ukraine is becoming a space power

Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate has a space launch capability, a Ukrainian lawmaker revealed to RBC-Ukraine. At least twice since Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022, the intelligence directorate has launched rockets as high as 200 km. Space begins at 100 km.

One launch took place in mid-air. A transport plane carried the rocket to an altitude of 8 km before releasing it.

That's a new capability for Ukraine but it's not a new concept. For a period of time beginning in the late 1980s, the Dnipro-based Yuzhnoye State Design Office developed multi-stage space launch vehicles that could be launched by military aircraft.

Launching a rocket from an airplane in mid-air reduces the thrust a rocket must produce to reach the edge of the atmosphere, 100 km up.

Revived for use in the current war, the mid-air rocket launches could—along with the ground launches—help transform Ukraine into a regional space power. Ukrainian forces could loft early-warning satellites that could detect incoming Russian attacks. With further development, the launch vehicles could even evolve into interceptors capable of knocking down Russian missiles and satellites.

Member of parliament Fedir Venislavskyi, who heads the Subcommittee on State Security of the Verkhovna Rada Defense Committee, told RBC-Ukraine the main intelligence directorate has launched at least two rockets in the 50 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine. One rocket reached an altitude of 100 km; another climbed to 204 km.

"This is a unique situation for a country engaged in a full-scale war," Venislavskyi said.

Venislavskyi mentioned a launch that occurred in mid-air from the hold of a transport plane. It's unclear whether that launch was one of the two launches conducted by the main intelligence directorate.

In any event, Venislavskyi said the series of launches "means Ukraine already has the technical capability to counter similar enemy attack systems and destroy them in space."

In fact, there's probably a lot of work left to do—especially for routine mid-air launches of operational space capabilities. Yuzhnoye has been developing air-launched rockets since the late 1980s without a lot of obvious progress. "More than a dozen of air-space rocket complex versions have been considered with different launch vehicles," the company explained in a pamphlet.

The rockets themselves aren't even the hard part.

Payload is everything

It's one thing to stack solid- and liquid-fueled rocket stages on top of each other and either hang them under the belly of a Sukhoi Su-27 fighter or load them into the cargo hold of an Antonov An-124 airlifter. The Su-27 could launch the rocket while in a steep climb. The An-124 would drop the rocket from its hold while in a gentle climb. Once free of the hold, the rocket would ignite.

But a launch vehicle is only as useful as its payload. Venislavskyi claimed the recent launches weren't tests—they part of wartime operations.

It's not clear what that means, however. Did the intelligence directorate launch sensor-equipped satellites, perhaps as part of a wider effort to equip Ukraine with the same kind of space-based early warning systems that many of its most powerful allies already posses?

Or did the intel agency place tiny communications satellites into orbit in order to decrease Ukraine's reliance on private space firms such as Elon Musk's Starlink.

We don't know.

It's far less likely Ukraine is developing an anti-satellite rocket, or an interceptor rocket that can hit enemy ballistic missiles in the cold of space. Few countries possess robust anti-satellite capability. Even fewer possess missile-defenses that can function in a vacuum.

Kyiv obviously has lofty space ambitions, however. In launching rockets from the ground and from the air, Ukraine is restarting long-stalled efforts that made it—and, by extension, the now-defunct Soviet Union—a leading space power during the Cold War.