Information security in the space age: Britain’s Skynet satellite communications program and the evolution of modern command and control networks

ABSTRACT

Britain initiated its Skynet satellite communications program in 1966 to provide assured connectivity with its forces across the world. Using recently declassified documents, this article reframes the history of British space activities by elucidating how the requirements for flexible and secure defense communications shaped U.K. space policy during the Cold War. Although Skynet inaugurated a communications revolution, it was the product of the longstanding British priority of possessing global information networks under sovereign control. In the Space Age, however, Britain had to reconcile its desire for an autonomous satellite communications network with the reality that American assistance was vital.

KEYWORDS:

• Information networks
• information security
• space
• alliance management

An American Delta-M rocket roared off of its pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida in November 1969, carrying into space Britain’s Skynet-1A defense communications satellite. This launch inaugurated the era of military communications satellites in geostationary orbit, a region of prime space real estate 22,236 miles from the Earth. From there, communications satellites can ‘stare’ continuously at approximately one-third of the globe, thereby providing steady and reliable communications links to any users within a satellite’s field of view. The first Skynet satellite revolutionized U.K. telecommunications capacity, permitting London to securely communicate with British forces as far away as Singapore.¹ However, from a technological standpoint, Skynet-1A was more American than British since the United States both built and launched it.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the British Empire had constructed a vast undersea network of submarine cables and wireless radio stations on U.K.-controlled or allied territories that connected London with its dominions and colonies.² But cables landed at fixed points, limiting their utility for mobile military forces, and in the 1960s Britain was losing strategically located radio stations due to colonies in Africa and the Middle East gaining independence. In these circumstances, space communications offered the United Kingdom a more flexible command and control infrastructure that did not depend upon access to foreign lands. But unlike during the heyday of the submarine cable era, Britain was no longer the global leader in telecommunications. Now, British officials had to reluctantly accept dependence on U.S. technical expertise to maintain global communications networks in the Space Age.³ Consequently, partnering with the United States in this arena was vital, but such cooperation was not without serious difficulties because Washington sought to monopolize space communications technologies.⁴

Scholarship on British space policy has focused predominantly on the U.K. decision to cancel its space-launch program in the early 1970s, while largely overlooking the development of U.K. communications satellites.⁵ This article reframes the history of British space activities by focusing on telecommunications and details how defense communications requirements shaped U.K. space strategy during the Cold War.⁶ Unlike other areas of space activities (e.g., reconnaissance) in which the United Kingdom completely relied on the United States, British officials treated telecommunications as a special area of space policy, insisting on having their own satellites for securely transmitting national security information. Fundamentally, the quest for information security was a defining aspect of the U.K. national space program.⁷

The British approach to satellite communications was shaped by the longstanding U.K. priority, going back to the nineteenth century, of having sovereign control over its strategic information networks.⁸ Moreover, U.K. leaders viewed communications systems, like nuclear weapons, as an existential matter; having secure, reliable communications was absolutely vital to the functioning of the state in peace and in crisis, perhaps especially during a nuclear war. But in contrast to earlier periods, Britain’s postwar resource constraints compelled U.K. leaders to depend on the United States for access to satellite communications in parts of the world not covered by Skynet, thereby making satellite communications a vital element of the Anglo-American alliance. But the level of dependence on U.S. systems that British policymakers were willing to accept was renegotiated as the United Kingdom’s overseas commitments changed in the 1970s and 1980s.

Britain’s Sputnik moment

For Britain, the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik I in October 1957, followed by Sputnik II a month later, created a political opening to strengthen defense cooperation with the United States. Sputnik came almost exactly one year after the Suez debacle that produced a crisis in Anglo-American relations and became a symbol of British decline on the world stage. The exaggerated reaction in key corners of American society to the Soviet space achievement presented an opportunity for London. Within days of Sputnik’s launch, the British ambassador in Washington, Sir Harold Caccia, observed that ‘with luck and judgement, we should be able to run this in some way to our special advantage’.⁹ Caccia’s prediction came true when in July 1958 the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Mutual Defense Agreement, resuming Anglo-American nuclear cooperation that had ceased due to U.S. legislation in 1946.¹⁰ Close space cooperation would also emerge out of this new climate in Anglo-American relations.

Senior British politicians quickly capitalized on the advent of the Space Age to heal damages in their relationship with the United States caused by the Suez crisis. However, these same officials were less certain concerning the United Kingdom’s future as a space power. Shortly after Sputnik II in November 1957, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan emphatically stated that ‘the advantages from launching an earth satellite … [did not justify] the large expenditure which would be involved’.¹¹ Nevertheless, the British government considered proposals to use its Blue Streak missile and Black Knight rocket to launch British-made satellites into space.¹²

The Foreign Office maintained that Britain had the capacity to take the lead in the development of a Western European satellite which might produce ‘political, psychological, and prestige advantage[s]’.¹³ Although in 1971 Britain did indeed demonstrate the ability to deploy a satellite in low earth orbit using its Black Arrow rocket, this program was cancelled after its maiden launch.¹⁴ In terms of space spending, France and West Germany moved ahead of Britain. However, during the Cold War the United Kingdom carved out a small, but capable, satellite communications industry.

The 1950s not only inaugurated the Space Age, but also witnessed a time of significant transformation in telecommunications technologies. In 1955 and 1956, the U.K. General Post Office, AT&T, and the Canadian Overseas Telecommunications Corporation worked together to establish the first transatlantic telephone system, TAT-1.¹⁵ Within a decade’s time, telephone cables would stretch out into the Pacific as well. Soon after TAT-1, on 18 December 1958, the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) launched the world’s first communications satellite called Project SCORE, short for Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay Equipment.¹⁶ The satellite successfully achieved orbit and then broadcast a prerecorded Christmas message from President Dwight Eisenhower to listeners below. A little more than a year later, the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) orbited its Echo1 satellite and used it to facilitate two-way communication between the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Goldstone facility in Fort Irwin, California and Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey. The satellite communications revolution had only just begun.

Not long after his inauguration, President John F. Kennedy concluded that satellite communications would play a prominent role in U.S. foreign policy in a global Cold War.¹⁷ Vice President Lyndon Johnson connected satellite communications to U.S. foreign policy objectives, stressing that a global satellite communications system under American leadership would link developing countries to the United States. Moreover, by replacing European international cable systems, ‘the global satellite communication system would potentially shift global economic patterns from Europe to the United States’.¹⁸ To this end, in 1962 Kennedy established the Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat), a government regulated corporation jointly owned by major communications companies, to manage the development of a global satellite communications system called Intelsat. Shortly thereafter, the United States invited countries from around the world to participate.

At this same time, the British government was also considering the potential of satellite communications. The British Post Office and the Ministry of Aviation (MoA) argued in favor of a Commonwealth satellite communications network instead of participating in the American-led Intelsat. The Post Office stressed that the United Kingdom needed its own satellite communications system, otherwise it would no longer be an advanced telecommunications power.¹⁹ The MoA supported the Post Office, in large part, because a satellite communications program would strengthen the case for continuing to fund an independent British space launch vehicle.²⁰ In the end, however, the U.K. Foreign Office convinced senior ministers that participating in the American-led system was the optimal path towards cultivating satellite communications expertise in British industry and promoting U.K. telecommunications interests.²¹

Britain’s need for global connectivity

In the conduct of war and diplomacy, telecommunications technologies are largely invisible, but they have been influential in shaping geopolitical outcomes. Napoleon once said that the ‘secret of war lies in communications’.²² At the onset of the First World War, Britain cut German submarine cables, forcing Berlin to use British cables and radio to transmit sensitive messages. London took advantage of this situation by capturing and decrypting German communications sent across its cable network.²³ Simultaneously, British intelligence intercepted German wireless communications and deciphered encoded messages, thus achieving a decisive information advantage. This situation would be repeated during the Second World War, with the United States serving as a close partner in breaking German military and diplomatic codes.²⁴ The British therefore prioritized the possession of sovereign, secure communications networks for purposes of intelligence, diplomacy, and command and control of military forces.

Well into the 1960s, sending diplomatic and defense messages remained a laborious and oftentimes slow task. The U.K. Foreign Office maintained a staff of over 200 people at posts abroad responsible for diplomatic communications. Messages travelled via cable, medium- and long-wave radio, and diplomatic pouch; cable and radio transmissions included speech and telegraph. Cables, oftentimes called ‘hard-wire connections’, were considered to be highly reliable with clear signal quality (especially after the introduction of repeaters in the 1950s that could amplify signals as they traversed the long cables), but they were very expensive, immobile, and subject to interruption due to natural disaster or attack. High-frequency radio could be used in a mobile or strategic role and provided worldwide coverage, but it depended on fixed links with large stations in parts of the world that were not necessarily under direct British control. Moreover, due to changing ionospheric conditions caused by solar activity, radio communications links were not reliable and had limited data capacity and were therefore unsuitable for high-quality secure speech, i.e., encrypted voice transmissions.²⁵ Due to variations in the ionosphere, wireless communications over longer distances, more than 2,000 miles, might be available for only about 10 hours a day.²⁶ In this context, satellites held the potential to revolutionize diplomatic and defense communications by creating a reliable, global infrastructure with far fewer vulnerabilities.²⁷

The advent of the Space Age coincided with American and British efforts to create more centrally managed defense communications networks to meet their respective security needs.²⁸ A 1961 MoD study led to the creation of Britain’s Defense Communication Network (DCN) in 1965 that combined the military services’ existing communications infrastructure under the direction of the Defense Signal Board.²⁹ It should be stressed that the DCN served all U.K. national security communications requirements, not just those of the MoD. The new management structure aside, Whitehall needed to determine how to modernize the DCN to better ensure secure connectivity between London and U.K. personnel scattered across the world.

Defense officials had to choose between continuing to rely solely on legacy radio and cable networks or adopting yet-unproven satellite communications. A government study candidly observed that ‘reliance on cables, which are vulnerable [to attack] and have only limited access, and on HF [high frequency] radio which is unreliable and has small communication capacity, would produce a system of such limited capacity and low reliability as to merit no further consideration as a “1970 system” at this stage’. In other words, there was significant concern that without satellite communications, the DCN could not meet national security needs moving beyond the 1960s.³⁰ And reliable command and control networks were the foundation of transatlantic security in an increasingly global Cold War.

Originally, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wanted to use Intelsat for both commercial and defense needs, but ultimately decided that using a civilian system for military purposes could be problematic. Such a situation would not have been unprecedented; earlier in the twentieth century, submarine cables were operated by commercial firms and yet carried diplomatic, military, and commercial traffic.³¹ For security reasons, the Pentagon wanted dedicated military repeaters on commercial satellites for transmitting defense communications, but this stipulation would have posed political problems for Intelsat since it was a civilian system.³² The British agreed that ‘although technically a common space segment could be used for vital military and civil communications, in practice it would be very difficult to organize. Operationally, its integrity would not be acceptable’.³³

Security considerations were therefore a significant factor in McNamara’s July 1964 decision to approve the development of a dedicated military satellite communications system, designated the Initial Defense Communications Satellite Program (IDCSP).³⁴ The Pentagon planned to launch the first seven IDCSP satellites in 1966 into a sub-synchronous orbit, requiring 12 satellites to achieve global coverage. IDCSP was intended to be an experimental program while discussions were underway for a more advanced and permanent system. The satellites were relatively small at approximately 100 pounds and 3 feet in diameter and in height. Although they were designed to operate for only three years, the average time to failure proved to be six years.³⁵

Shortly after McNamara established IDCSP in July 1964, he invited the United Kingdom to become involved, though its role would be limited to developing and operating ground terminals for sending and receiving messages.³⁶ Around the same time, the British Chief of the Defense Staff initiated a review of U.K. space policy. Sir Solly Zuckerman, the head of the Defense Research Committee, appointed Professor Hermann Bondi, a mathematician and cosmologist at King’s College London, to chair the study. Zuckerman’s rationale for selecting Bondi was that he did not have any vested interest in defense space policy.³⁷ The Bondi study considered the vital issue of whether Britain should develop an independent satellite reconnaissance capability, but ultimately concluded that ‘given our [close] association with the Americans, we need not embark on the development of a satellite system for global reconnaissance’.³⁸ However, this line of thinking did not extend into the space communications realm.³⁹

Discussion about the feasibility and desirability of satellite communications was not a purely technical exercise. Deciding whether to endorse military satellite communications depended in large part on the nature of British overseas defense commitments and the objectives of U.K. foreign policy. The Bondi committee ultimately recommended that ‘if our commitments East of Suez continue and if a high level of flexibility and availability of military communications is regarded as of the utmost importance, most of the existing high-frequency links should be replaced by military satellite communications’.⁴⁰ The service chiefs agreed, viewing satellite communications as critical for improving Britain’s infrastructure for global command and control of military forces.

The tenuous situation surrounding overseas British high frequency relay stations was at the forefront of service chiefs’ minds. Relay stations were located in Malta, Cyprus, Aden (modern day Yemen), Kenya, Gan (an island in the Maldives), and Mauritius (among others). At this time, British forces were withdrawing from Kenya – a relay station was located in Nairobi – and in 1967 the United Kingdom would remove the remainder of its personnel in Aden after it achieved independence.⁴¹ The defense chiefs acknowledged that the government could more fully utilize commercial cables, but this would be an insufficient solution since cables were vulnerable to attack and landed at fixed points, once again highlighting the inflexibility of existing defense communications. Consequently, Britain’s most senior military officers stressed that satellite communications were not only desirable, but also vital for obtaining a ‘flexible, reliable, and high-capacity communication system capable of meeting all our envisaged future communications needs’.⁴²

Despite the opportunities offered by satellites, there was doubt in some corners of the U.K. government that the existing defense communications network was really insufficient for British national security requirements. One report argued that there was already ‘ample capacity for the really urgent traffic’.⁴³ But capacity and availability are not the same thing; only satellites could provide continuous and flexible connectivity between London and key points overseas. And unlike cables, satellite terminals could be easily moved. A compelling argument in favor of satellites, from the standpoint of resource-concerned civil servants in Whitehall, was that they would allow the MoD, Foreign Office, and GCHQ (Britain’s signals intelligence agency) to downsize their overseas communications infrastructure, resulting in significant cost savings. Nevertheless, MoD officials wanted satellites in addition to existing communications infrastructure.⁴⁴ Such a position was prudent in terms of system redundancy even if not ideal financially. In earlier years, when the wireless became more economical than submarine cables, U.K. officials had stressed that the cables had to be maintained since they were more secure from espionage, but nonetheless viewed an added chain of wireless stations as a vital complement to the cable network.⁴⁵

In stark contrast to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Britain was a leader in cable and wireless, the United Kingdom had very limited expertise in satellite communications. Consequently, Bondi emphasized the importance of cooperating with the United States to secure the requisite hardware and expertise necessary for Space Age communications. In addition to satellite hardware, Britain would have to depend on the United States for space launch capabilities since its Black Arrow rocket was insufficient for deploying payloads into geostationary orbit. The defense chiefs concurred that cooperation with the Americans was essential and added that it would strengthen the Anglo-American defense relationship.⁴⁶

Birth of Skynet

Right as the Bondi committee was being formed, in November 1964 the MoD formally accepted McNamara’s invitation for British participation in IDCSP, which would entail U.K. construction of satellite terminals in the United Kingdom, Cyprus, and Headquarters Far East in Singapore that would be compatible with the American IDCSP satellites.⁴⁷ McNamara also offered his British colleagues the opportunity to discuss involvement in a follow-on to the experimental IDCSP that would constitute the permanent, operational U.S. defense satellite communications network, though the program was only in an early conceptual stage.⁴⁸ The MoA invited proposals for ground stations from Marconi, a U.K. company, and Hughes, a U.S. firm. The MoD ultimately accepted Marconi’s proposal because it was cheaper, faster, and, most importantly, would allow U.K. industry to develop expertise in satellite communications equipment.⁴⁹

Discussions with the United States concerning cooperation in defense satellite communications took place around the same time that the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries were considering the future of their shared telecommunications infrastructure. At an April 1965 meeting of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference, representatives discussed extending the existing undersea cable telephone system to link India and Ceylon (present day Sri Lanka), and possibly Pakistan, with a terminal in Malaysia.⁵⁰ Such an undertaking was expensive and the future of cables appeared uncertain with the formation of Intelsat. However, the U.K. Post Office noted that cables were not in a struggle for survival with the advent of a global satellite communications. Rather, ‘cables and satellites have different features, and can confidently be expected to complement one another for a good many years’.⁵¹ Despite the Post Office’s assurances, U.K. officials were concerned about Intelsat threatening British influence over Commonwealth communications.⁵²

While the British became involved in the American IDCSP, key officials within the MoD and the MoA did not want to confine the United Kingdom to developing ground equipment alone for communications satellites because this situation would make the British totally dependent on American satellites. Consequently, in the fall of 1965 the MoD and MoA issued a contract involving the U.K. firms British Aircraft Corporation (BAC), Marconi, and Emihus to study the possibility of a British-built geostationary satellite deployed over the Indian Ocean, which would meet U.K. defense communications needs in Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, and South Asia. The American company Hughes Aircraft, which had built the world’s first geostationary communications satellite in 1963, was cooperating with the study members. Shortly after learning about the U.K. study, the United States imposed an embargo on the transmission of satellite communications information to foreign parties, signaling that Washington had adopted a protectionist attitude towards space communications technologies. ⁵³

U.K. defense secretary Denis Healey informed McNamara in January 1966 that Britain wanted to open talks with the United States about participation in the U.S. Advanced Defense Communications Satellite Project (ADCSP), the follow-on to IDCSP.⁵⁴ McNamara responded positively, suggesting that the United States would be able to provide Britain ‘a sufficient proportion of the [satellite communications] system’s capacity … to meet unique and vital U.K. defense requirements’. He further stressed that Intelsat should be used as much as possible and that defense communications satellites should be employed to transmit only information that ‘is unique and vital to national security’.⁵⁵ This latter point underscored that the U.S. government wanted to maximize Intelsat’s capacity, especially for foreign users, to ensure the success of the project.

McNamara’s letter seemed encouraging to Healey, but the U.S. secretary of defense said nothing about Britain acquiring its own satellites. Not even two months after Healey and McNamara exchanged the letters, U.K. defense officials noted that the American tone had seemingly changed and that Washington was not supportive of the United Kingdom possessing its own defense communications satellites.⁵⁶ While U.S. officials were open to launching a British-owned, but American-built, satellite as part of IDCSP, they were opposed to allowing the United Kingdom to have its own satellites as part of the permanent ADCSP. U.S. defense leaders explained that they planned for ADCSP to consist of at least 10 geostationary satellites, which would provide

ample capacity for the U.K. stated requirement, on a channel rental basis. In this case no separate U.K. (or other nation) system could be justified after about 1971 – and hence no replacement of the U.K. 1968 system would be needed.⁵⁷

The consequences of this situation would be considerable: the United States would directly control a substantial part of U.K. strategic communications, thereby undermining nearly a century-old policy of Britain maintaining sovereign control over its telecommunications infrastructure.

The United States clearly intended to extend its existing monopoly over commercial satellite communications into the defense realm. Naturally, British officials did not agree to the American proposal that the United Kingdom only rent American satellite communications channels. U.K. officials were similarly adamant that the British government have direct control over the operation of satellites ‘from a wholly owned ground station on U.K. territory’. Though having the Americans control the satellite network would be more efficient, British officials underscored that ‘in the last resort we must have sovereign control [emphasis added]’.⁵⁸ British negotiators observed that ‘this position is not acceptable to the U.S. and remains so. They want the “last word” themselves’.⁵⁹

An internal British report candidly observed that the U.K. requirement for sovereign command and control of the satellite was ‘entirely political’ and that ‘from a technical point of view, control of the satellite is not worth the cost’.⁶⁰ But cost and efficiency were not the primary criteria for the British government in this case. Like nuclear weapons, telecommunications policy was an existential matter. And even though the United Kingdom depended on the United States for nuclear and satellite communications hardware, in both cases sovereign U.K. control over the use of these capabilities was non-negotiable.

The Anglo-American satellite communications discussions were inseparable from larger political shifts taking place in the transatlantic alliance. The United States had begun to take a hard line against sovereign U.K. control over satellite communications around the same time that Charles de Gaulle announced that France would withdraw from the NATO command structure.⁶¹ Concurrently, British leaders were indicating that they planned to leave the European Launcher Development Organization (ELDO), which along with the European Space Research Organization (ESRO) were the two pillars of European cooperation in civil space endeavors.⁶² Together, the French pull-back from NATO and the potential British exit from ELDO exposed fault lines in the unity of the transatlantic alliance.⁶³ U.S. officials were alarmed by a potential British exit from ELDO due to their belief that European cooperation on civil space projects held the potential to restrain the proliferation of nuclear delivery systems, i.e., organizations like ELDO and ESRO would hopefully orient European research, especially in France, into civil space applications and away from military aims.⁶⁴

The situation in Europe appeared even more dire when Arnold Frutkin, the head of international affairs at NASA, warned NASA Administrator James Webb that there was growing European interest in civil satellite communications, separate from the American-led Intelsat. West German leaders had openly expressed a preference for a communications satellite developed within the ‘European framework’.⁶⁵ Webb pushed back, arguing that any regional satellite communications system would be obsolete before it could be put into operation because of the work being done in the United States and elsewhere in connection with Intelsat. Although the United States officially sought to foster greater European capacity in space technologies, John Krige points out that U.S. officials were adamant that European independence in space technologies must not undermine the Intelsat arrangements.⁶⁶ It was increasingly clear that European allies perceived the United States as pursuing a monopolistic agenda concerning satellite communications, which would place the Europeans at a technological disadvantage.⁶⁷

Anglo-American discussion concerning defense satellite communications were inextricably linked with the U.S. policy priorities of fostering European space cooperation and building momentum in favor of Intelsat. In this context, it is unsurprising that American officials were hostile to the prospect of assisting the United Kingdom with development of a sovereign defense communication satellite capability, maintaining that ‘it would set a bad precedent if the U.K. were given command control’ and that ‘proliferation [of non-U.S. communication satellites] was unacceptable’.⁶⁸ U.S. officials explicitly stated that U.K. control over any IDSCP satellites could ‘not be regarded as precedent for command control in the ADCSP’ but British officials pushed back, saying that U.K. control was ‘a firm requirement in the ADCSP’.⁶⁹

A half century earlier, the British and American positions concerning telecommunications were reversed. Coming out of the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson had become well attuned to the vital role that strategic communications would play in American statecraft moving forward and therefore sought to reduce U.S. dependence on British communications networks.⁷⁰ In the midst of Anglo-American discussions on satellite communications in 1966, British interlocutors reminded their American colleagues of U.S. thinking concerning communications after the First World War. A set of British talking points detailed how the United States was ‘in the same situation after World War I … they [Americans] could not accept a position where a vital communications network was controlled by a foreign, even though friendly, power’.⁷¹

U.S. government representatives found the British arguments in favor of U.K. sovereign command and control over its own defense communications satellites to be compelling and ultimately, however reluctantly, accepted the British demand to be in command of the satellites they procured from the United States. Since IDCSP was an experimental system, U.S. officials were adamant that any sovereign control provisions in this initial agreement would not be a precedent for British control of follow-on defense communications satellites that would be part of the permanent U.S. ADCSP. But the internal U.K. position was that its ‘negotiating position in relation to ADCSP would be much stronger if we already had control in the IDCSP’.⁷² In September 1966, the United States agreed to sell the United Kingdom two IDCSP satellites that would be launched by the United States into geostationary orbit. Although these satellites would be British owned and operated, they would in actuality serve as the U.K. component of the American IDCSP network. On 18 November 1966, British ministers approved the satellite program as the U.K. segment of IDCSP and designated it ‘Skynet’.⁷³

Three years after the Skynet deal went into effect, the United States launched Skynet-1A into geostationary orbit and ‘parked’ it off the east coast of Africa. The launch of Skynet-1B soon followed, but a technical glitch prevented the satellite from reaching orbit. Nevertheless, Skynet-1A was revolutionary in that it provided constant connectivity between London and British personnel as far away as Singapore.⁷⁴ Although Skynet inaugurated a new U.K. telecommunications era, Britain’s rationale for the program was in line with the longstanding U.K. policy to have direct control over a reliable, global communications network that could keep London in contact with its diplomatic, intelligence, and military personnel overseas, especially in times of crisis. Moreover, as Britain lost radio stations in newly independent territories in Africa and the Middle East, satellite communications provided an alternative command and control infrastructure for enabling the deployment of forces in out of area operations.

Sovereign communications East of Suez

In the second half of the 1960s, U.K. policymakers made a series of decisions that would result in a drawdown of U.K. forces East of Suez. The two main overseas bases in question were Aden and Singapore, although the U.K. footprint in the region extended beyond these two installations. In February 1966, the British government announced that it would withdraw from Aden, a key U.K. foothold in the Persian Gulf.⁷⁵ The following July, Defense Secretary Denis Healey outlined a phased British withdrawal from Southeast Asia to be completed by the mid-1970s.⁷⁶ But by the fall of 1967, the United Kingdom found itself in the midst of financial crisis that resulted in a devaluation of sterling. Consequently, British policymakers accelerated the timetable for withdrawal East of Suez.⁷⁷ By this time, many overseas British facilities had become a liability; for example, Aden had been embroiled in an insurgency prior to the exit of U.K. forces. Healey observed that trying

to maintain military facilities in an independent country against its will can mean tying down so many troops in protecting one’s base that one has none left to use from it. The base then … loses all its military value.⁷⁸

As the MoD prepared to substantially reduce its overseas military footprint, it completed a study in October 1969, one month before the inaugural Skynet launch, concerning the future of overseas defense communications. British defense planners knew that the first generation of Skynet would likely fail after only three years, meaning that they needed to decide before the first Skynet deployment whether there would be a follow-on. The MoD considered upgrading high-frequency radio stations as an alternative to satellite communications, but the geographic constraints associated with the crumbling empire made this option infeasible. If the U.K. government forewent a new Skynet system, it would, at the very least, need to maintain its high-frequency relay station in Mauritius to meet communications requirements in East Africa and the Indian Ocean.

Problematically for Britain, Mauritius had become independent in 1968 and the Mauritius Defense Agreement, which permitted Britain to continue using a radio relay station located there, was set to expire in 1974.⁷⁹ Moreover, the deteriorating internal security situation in Mauritius made extending the agreement an unattractive solution. The defense chiefs maintained that despite a drawdown East of Suez, Britain retained the need for ‘quick and reliable communications’ that would support ‘operational situations worldwide’.⁸⁰ In other words, ‘planned withdrawal from areas providing relay station facilities, and the insecurity of tenure in others currently in use, further strengthens the argument [in favor of Skynet]’.⁸¹ As William James points out Britain maintained a presence East of Suez, even though it significantly changed its basing strategy.⁸² Certainly, Skynet was a key part of the infrastructure East of Suez for conducting out-of-area operations.

Although closing overseas communications sites would result in cost savings, Skynet satellites were far more expensive than maintaining the existing high-frequency radio network. But the benefit of Skynet being ‘independent of overseas agreements’ outweighed its additional costs (the MoD estimated that between 1970 and 1980 Skynet would cost upwards of £40 million more than a high frequency radio network). Geopolitical realities aside, radio could not accommodate high-quality and assured secure voice communications, which were increasingly vital for the MoD, Foreign Office, and intelligence services.⁸³

Telecommunications constituted a dominant feature in Britain’s space policy deliberations by the late 1960s. A 1969 review of space policy described how the United Kingdom had ‘confined its interests in … space technology to the use of space vehicles for the gathering and transmission of information’. For Britain, space was not special; rather, satellites were only a ‘means to an end’.⁸⁴ U.K. officials contrasted their attitude towards space with that of the continental Europeans whom they described as viewing space technologies as a source of prestige.⁸⁵ But for Europeans officials on the Continent there were more pragmatic motivations at play than technological grandeur. The French so vigorously pursued an autonomous launch capability in order to relieve Europe of its dependence on American rockets for access to space. In contrast, the British had concluded that it was more expedient to rely on the United States.⁸⁶ For this reason, the United Kingdom greatly reduced its support for combined European rocket development efforts.⁸⁷ The British decision to rely solely on American launchers was shortsighted and surprising since in an earlier period the United Kingdom had emerged as a leader in submarine cables due in large part to its monopoly over cable-laying ships. Closer cooperation with European allies to develop autonomous launch infrastructure would have better ensured that Britain had multiple pathways for deploying satellites that were increasingly vital for modern information networks.

For both technological and political reasons, the British government decided to move forward with procurement of two second-generation Skynet satellites in 1970.⁸⁸ Unlike the first Skynet satellites that were American-built, Marconi assembled and tested Skynet-2 systems in the United Kingdom.⁸⁹ In continuity with the past, Skynet-2 would be interoperable with American defense communications satellites, now called the Defense Satellite Communication System (DSCS). The United States launched Skynet-2A on 19 January 1974, but it failed shortly after launch. Ten months later, Skynet-2B successfully reached geostationary orbit and was ‘parked’ off the east coast of Africa.⁹⁰ At this same time, the MoD was already considering a third generation Skynet system.

By this point, Britain possessed a satellite communications industrial base that was growing in sophistication and was certainly a leader in Europe, in terms of both ground infrastructure and satellite hardware. For the prospective Skynet-3, the United States tried to persuade the United Kingdom to purchase American-built satellites that would be, in effect, a copy of the American DSCS satellites.⁹¹ Arnold Weinstock, the managing director the British General Electric Company, warned the MoD that ‘the United States is determined to stifle the establishment of any capability for … global satellite communications outside of its control’.⁹² And he predicted that satellite communications would become only more widespread and profitable. Weinstock stressed that it was imperative for the United Kingdom to continue building its own defense communications satellites to cultivate the industrial base necessary to compete with American, Western European, and Japanese satellite communications firms.⁹³

Driven by security and industrial considerations, the U.K. government decided in late 1972 to move ahead with Skynet-3, rather than procure an American-made system.⁹⁴ However, the situation dramatically shifted in the wake of the 1974 Defense Review that called for refocusing U.K. defense expenditure on the European theater and further reducing investment in capabilities tied to interests East of Suez. Consequently, Skynet-3 was cancelled, leaving Skynet-2B as the only operational U.K. communications satellite, thereby making Britain even more dependent on American defense communications satellites. This situation was further complicated by a Skynet-2B malfunction 18 months after launch that caused it to drift without being responsive to commands. After the onset of this technical problem, U.K. forces could communicate using Skynet-2B only when it was within sight of U.K. ground terminals.⁹⁵

Through the existing Anglo-American satellite communications agreement, the U.S. defense satellite communications network provided the United Kingdom global coverage. Even with this situation, legacy high-frequency radio and cable infrastructure remained important. Certainly, satellites were not without vulnerabilities; they were susceptible to jamming, were unrepairable once in space, and could be damaged from radiation during a nuclear attack, though they would later be ‘hardened’ against the latter.⁹⁶ Comparing cables and satellites, British defense experts deemed the latter to be less vulnerable.⁹⁷ Ultimately, however, the MoD continued to rely on a combination of submarine cables, high-frequency radio links, and satellite communications to provide defense forces with a ‘flexible system of communication’.⁹⁸ Nevertheless, a geopolitical crisis in the South Atlantic would call into question the sufficiency of the U.K. defense information network and lead to a reexamination of the wisdom behind depending on U.S. satellite communications systems.

Britain’s space renaissance

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s political grit was put to the test when on 2 April 1982 Argentine forces mounted an amphibious attack on the Falkland Islands and the South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, both British territories. Thatcher immediately ordered the MoD to put together a naval task force to retake the islands in what the British designated Operation Corporate.⁹⁹ The naval task force consisted of 44 Royal Navy vessels that steamed 8,000 miles to liberate the British territories in the South Atlantic that had been seized by Argentina. Command and control of such a large group of U.K. military forces was no easy task and required support from the United States. Problematically, however, Argentina was an important partner for President Ronald Reagan’s anti-communist agenda in Latin America.¹⁰⁰ Despite U.S. foreign policy priorities south of its border, the United States provided Britain with a wide range of support, including satellite communications.¹⁰¹

For Britain, the Falklands War underscored the importance of space systems (e.g., navigation, communications, and intelligence) for modern conflict. An internal MoD report observed that ‘the use of space for military purposes will shortly become an even more pervasive influence in many military operations than it is at present’.¹⁰² Furthermore, the Falklands War made it abundantly clear to U.K. officials just how extensively Britain depended on the United States for space capabilities.¹⁰³An MoD space policy memorandum remarked that ‘U.K. national activity in space is at present confined to satellite communications, relying as a matter of policy on the U.S. for its other [space] defense requirements … It is timely to review this policy particularly in light of … Operation Corporate’.¹⁰⁴ Soon after the war came to an end, the MoD initiated a highly classified study, codenamed ‘Luxuriant’, concerning the future of British defense space activities.¹⁰⁵ In particular, senior British officials wanted to examine the prospect of expanding their defense satellite communications infrastructure as well as investing in reconnaissance satellites. In this context, the British government initiated a program called Zircon to develop a signals intelligence satellite that would ultimately be cancelled in the late 1980s due to its high cost. There are scant official details about Zircon, but it was clearly a high priority for Thatcher and underscores the British desire to achieve greater autonomy in national security space technologies.¹⁰⁶

In 1981, shortly before the Falklands War, the British government had already approved a Skynet-4 satellite program consisting of two satellites.¹⁰⁷ A third spacecraft would later be added for greater redundancy.¹⁰⁸ Concerns about British dependence on the United States for satellite communications due to the Falklands experience added greater urgency to the discussions concerning the future of U.K. military space activities. Space systems were clearly vital for meeting the growing demand from U.K. armed forces for command and control information networks that could rapidly pass intelligence and targeting data in high volumes. The question that remained to be answered was how much autonomy the United Kingdom could indeed afford.

Sovereign control over defense communications was once again a central concern for the MoD. E. J. Risness from Naval Operational Studies observed in a 1982 memorandum that the ‘[key] problem is adequate guarantees of access and control [of satellite communications] during war’.¹⁰⁹ To ensure access to communications systems, Risness advocated using commercial satellite communications in place of a ‘separate military system’.¹¹⁰ But senior MoD officials were firmly opposed to this line of thinking, arguing instead that ‘it is again possible to visualize situations in tension or war where [satellite communications] might be unavailable or denied’ making it vital that they be ‘under national control [emphasis added]’.¹¹¹

Operation Corporate prompted U.K. defense planners to question whether the political risks of continued reliance on U.S. communications networks outweighed the financial savings. An MoD policy brief candidly observed that ‘it is now clear that timely access to U.S. systems cannot be guaranteed and that in the future [the] U.K. must hold control over enough of the systems chosen to meet its needs’.¹¹² And British forces depended on satellite communications for ‘survivable communications worldwide for strategic and tactical command and control systems’.¹¹³ The MoD’s task was to ensure that Britain possessed adequate control over those space resources that would be needed to support of out-of-area operations in faraway regions where vital British interest were at stake. U.K. officials could not rule out the possibility of a future situation in which the United States either could not or would not provide Britain adequate satellite communications, which underlined the need for more Skynet satellites.

In conformity with each prior U.S.-launched Skynet system, Britain planned to put the new satellites on the American space shuttle. But by the early 1980s, the United States no longer had a monopoly within the Western alliance over launching geostationary satellites. In 1979, the European Space Agency had carried out its first successful launch of the French-led Ariane, which could deploy satellites into geostationary orbit. In 1983, French President Francois Mitterrand’s advisors tried to persuade Thatcher to choose the European Ariane launcher over the American space shuttle to deploy the new Skynet satellites. French officials communicated to their British counterparts that they viewed ‘a decision by [the U.K. government] to use shuttle as a substantial threat to Ariane’s status as a commercial alternative to America launchers’.¹¹⁴ However, Skynet-4 was designed to be compatible with the space shuttle and transitioning to Ariane would have required modifying the satellites at a cost of approximately £20 million.¹¹⁵ Moreover, the British viewed the shuttle decision as ‘a political one’ and they did not want to take any action that could undermine their close space relationship with the United States.¹¹⁶ For reasons of cost and alliance management, Thatcher decided to stay with the shuttle.

Despite the fact that the British government had never been an enthusiastic supporter of the French-led Ariane program, it turned out to be vital for the inaugural launch of the Skynet fourth generation. The entire Skynet program was thrown into upheaval when on 28 January 1986, the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds into its flight. Immediately thereafter, U.S. shuttle operations were paused, delaying all scheduled launches. Fortunately for the MoD, the Ariane offer was still on the table. This situation was a stark reminder that even though Britain possessed a sufficient industrial base for building sophisticated satellites that provided sovereign defense communications, it depended on foreign launch infrastructure to place the satellites in orbit.

After considerable and expensive compatibility modifications for Ariane, the first Skynet-4 series satellite was successfully deployed and entered into service in 1989, followed by two more Skynet satellites in 1990. Three more Skynet-4 satellites would be deployed in the 1990s and early 2000s. Soon thereafter, Britain inaugurated the fifth generation of Skynet.¹¹⁷ At the present writing, Skynet continues to serve as the backbone for Britain’s sovereign command and control network that allows the United Kingdom to meet its security commitments worldwide.

Conclusions

Due to Britain’s loss of key colonies in the 1960s, communication satellites became vital for possessing a command and control infrastructure independent of overseas territories not under the Union Flag. Concurrently, the growing need for mobile information networks with adequate security could be met only through the acquisition of communication satellites. Despite the fact that satellites provided an unprecedented degree of flexibility and enhanced security for British national security communications, they did not obviate the need for submarine cables and wireless radio. Rather, these three technologies complemented each other and ensured multiple pathways for transmitting vital information.

Even though Skynet is a British program, its establishment was the product of the Anglo-American alliance. Without U.S. support, Britain would not have been able to develop its own defense satellite communications network in the 1960s. The fact that the United Kingdom is the only country that the United States assisted with developing a sovereign defense satellite communications system is yet another sign of the unique ties between the two countries. But cooperation in this arena was not without tension at times, particularly in the 1960s concerning questions of British control over U.S.-built satellites. The United Kingdom clearly lacked the technical expertise and financial resources to be completely autonomous in space technologies, but nevertheless insisted on having operational control over the satellite communications resources it needed for secure connectivity on a global scale. British officials were not willing to be completely dependent on the United States for satellite communications because doing so could have constrained the United Kingdom’s freedom of action, especially with regard to military operations far from its shores.

Most significantly, examining the origins and evolution of Skynet reveals that information security requirements were critical factors in shaping the character of the British national space program. Indeed, the longstanding British conviction about the need for sovereign control of overseas information networks provided the rationale for Skynet and led to the prioritization of telecommunications within U.K. space policy. Consequently, for Britain, satellite technologies were only the latest iteration of information technologies that served as the nerve center of the modern national security state. Skynet has, moreover, long been a vital part of Britain’s aim to maintain its global reach with fewer resources and a reduced physical presence abroad. Although this program grew out of the Space Age communications revolution, it is a product of the much older British imperial strategy of using information networks to project power across the globe.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aaron Bateman

Aaron Bateman is an assistant professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of the forthcoming book Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative (MIT Press, 2024).

Notes

¹ ‘Annex A’ in ‘Outline Defence Communications Network Plan 1968–72, February 1, 1967, FCO 19/9, TNA.

² For an overview of submarine cables and the British Empire, see Paul Kennedy, ‘Imperial Cable Communications and Strategy, 1870–1914’, The English Historical Review, vol. 86, no. 341 (1971); Daniel Headrick, The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics, 1851–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Bruce Hunt, Imperial Science: Cable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in the Victorian British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

³ As will be detailed below, Skynet functioned, in effect, as the British segment of the American defense satellite communications network. Skynet satellites were interoperable with American hardware.

⁴ These difficulties were not unique to satellite communications. John Krige has detailed the complexities of Anglo-American cooperation in centrifuge technologies, see John Krige, ‘Hybrid Knowledge: The Transnational Co-Production of the Gas Centrifuge for Uranium Enrichment in the 1960s’, British Journal for the History of Science vol. 45, no. 3 (2012) and John Krige, Sharing Knowledge, Shaping Europe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016), 119–149.

⁵ Charles Hill, A Vertical Empire: The History of the UK Rocket and Space Programme 1950–1971 (London: Imperial College Press, 2001). For works on the early history of U.K. space policy see, Neil Whyte and Philip Gummett, ‘The Military and Early United Kingdom Space Policy’, Contemporary Record, vol. 8 no. 2 (1994); Neil Whyte and Philip Gummett, ‘Far Beyond the Bounds of Science: The Making of the United Kingdom’s First Space Policy’, Minerva, vol. 35, nol. 2 (1997).

⁶ For an overview of the role of national security space technologies in Anglo-American relations, see Aaron Bateman, ‘Keeping the Technological Edge: The Space Arms Race and Anglo-American Relations in the 1980s’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, vol. 33, no. 2 (2022).

⁷ Information security here encompasses the physical infrastructure for securely transmitting sensitive data as well as encryption.

⁸ For background see Kennedy, ‘Imperial Cable Communications and Strategy, 1870–1914’, and Headrick, The Invisible Weapon, 75–78.

⁹ Quoted in Whyte and Gummett, UK Space Policy, 142.

¹⁰ Matthew Jones, The Official History of the U.K. Nuclear Deterrent (Volume I): From the V-Bomber Era to the Arrival of Polaris, 1945–1964 (New York: Routledge, 2017), 444.

¹¹ Whyte and Gummet, UK Space Policy, 142

¹² Ibid., 148

¹³ Ibid., 152

¹⁴ Hill, A Vertical Empire, 93–107.

¹⁵ ‘TAT-1 Opening Ceremony, September 25, 1956’, History of the Atlantic & Undersea Communications, https://atlantic-cable.com/Cables/1956TAT–1/.

¹⁶ David J. Whalen, The Origins of Satellite Communications: 1945–1965 (Washington D.C. – Smithsonian Press, 2002), 46–48.

¹⁷ Hugh Slotten, Beyond Sputnik and the Space Race: The Origins of Global Satellite Communications (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022), 63.

¹⁸ Ibid., 77

¹⁹ Ibid., 151

²⁰ Ibid., 152

²¹ Ibid

²² Quoted in a lecture entitled, ‘Telegraphic Communications’, 1937, MS. Marconi 240, Marconi Archives, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford University.

²³ For an overview of the role of cables in U.K. defense strategy in WWI, see Jonathan Winkler, ‘Information Warfare in World War I’, The Journal of Military History, vol. 73, no. 3 (2009).

²⁴ For a comprehensive history of U.K. codebreaking in WWII, see John Ferris, Behind the Enigma: The Authorized History of GCHQ, Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency (New York: Bloomsbury, 2020), 223–264.

²⁵ For a history of Britain’s secure speech system, see Richard Aldrich, ‘Whitehall Wiring: The Communications-Electronics Security Group and the Struggle for Secure Speech, Public Policy and Administration, vol. 28, no. 2 (2012).

²⁶ ‘Programme Analysis and Review (PAR) Defence Satellite Communications’, July 27, 1973, DEFE 13/669, TNA.

²⁷ The British Joint Intelligence Committee had determined in 1959 that the Soviet Union possessed the capabilities to interfere with submarine cable communications and to jam wireless transmissions. See Michael Goodman and Huw Dylan, ‘British Intelligence and the Fear of a Soviet Attack on Allied Communications. Cryptologia, 4, vol. 40, no. 1 (2016).

²⁸ The U.S. government created the Defense Communications Agency in 1960 to centrally manage U.S. strategic communications networks, see ‘The Creation of DCA: 1947–1960’, DISA, https://www.disa.mil/about/our-history.

²⁹ ‘Programme Analysis and Review (PAR) Defence Satellite Communications’, July 27, 1973, DEFE 13/669, TNA.

³⁰ ‘Annex – proposed amendments to CISG (61)23’, undated, CAB 21/5408, U.K. National Archives (TNA hereafter).

³¹ Headrick, Invisible Weapon, 75–78.

³² David N. Spires and Rick W. Sturdevant, ‘From Advent to Milstar: The U.S. Air Force and the Challenges of Military Satellite Communications’, in Beyond the Ionosphere, ed. Andrew Butrica (Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997), 67.

³³ Note by MoD and MOA in consultation with GPO, ‘Feasibility of Using Intelsat for Military Communications’, undated, AVIA 65/2070, TNA.

³⁴ Spires and Sturdevant, ‘From Advent to Milstar’, 67.

³⁵ A satellite could provide eleven tactical-quality voice circuits or five commercial-quality voice circuits, see Spires and Sturdevant, ‘From Advent to Milstar’, 67.

³⁶ ‘Letter from McNamara to Thorneycroft’, October 14, 1964, DEFE 13/389, TNA.

³⁷ Memo from Healey to the PM, ‘Strategic Implications of Space’, November 6, 1964, CAB 21/5445, TNA.

³⁸ ‘Report of the Space Review Committee’, September 1965, DEFE 68/83, TNA.

³⁹ Notably, the Bondi report underscored Britain’s limited ambitions in space. Clearly, due to the enormous costs associated with space technologies, U.K. officials preferred to leverage Britain’s relationship with the United States to get access to space services.

⁴⁰ Draft of Overseas Policy and Defence Committee, ‘Operational Use by the UK of the US Interim Defence Communications Satellite Project’, undated, AVIA 65/2070, TNA.

⁴¹ Britain would retain its relay station in Nairobi until 1966, see memo from chancellor of the Exchequer, ‘Collaboration with the Americans in Military Satellite Communications’, October 26, 1964, DEFE 13/389, TNA.

⁴² Memo from CDS to secretary of state for defence, ‘Military Satellite Communications’, October 20, 1964, DEFE 13/389, TNA.

⁴³ G. Plowden, ‘Report of the Bondi Committee’, August 10, 1965, CAB 21/5445, TNA.

⁴⁴ Ibid

⁴⁵ ‘Wireless and Cables’, December 3, year illegible, MS. Marconi 240, Marconi Archives, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford University. For an overview of the Imperial Wireless Chain, see Headrick, Invisible Weapon, 130.

⁴⁶ Draft of Overseas Policy and Defence Committee, ‘Operational Use by the UK of the US Interim Defence Communications Satellite Project’, undated, AVIA 65/2070, TNA.

⁴⁷ Ibid; letter from Healey to McNamara, ‘Military satellite Communications’, November 9, 1964, DEFE 13/389, TNA; ‘Memorandum for Secretary of State’, March 23, 1965, DEFE 13/389, TNA.

⁴⁸ Memorandum for P.D. Nairne, ‘Background Notes’, February 24, 1965, DEFE 13/389, TNA. Notably, McNamara was the key U.S. official overseeing negotiations with Britain concerning defense satellite communications. It is not clear to what extent, if any, other senior officials in the Johnson administration were involved.

⁴⁹ ‘Memorandum for secretary of state’, March 23, 1965, DEFE 13/389, TNA.

⁵⁰ Memorandum for the PM, ‘Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference’, May 22, 1965, DEFE 13/389, TNA.

⁵¹ ‘Memorandum from Tilling (GPO) to 10 Downing’, June 1, 1965, DEFE 13/389, TNA.

⁵² Slotten, Beyond Sputnik, 150

⁵³ ‘Letter from G.H. Green to the private secretary for the secretary of state for defence’, October 15, 1965, DEFE 13/389, TNA.

⁵⁴ Letter from Healey to McNamara, ‘Satellite Communications’, January 6, 1966, DEFE 13/389, TNA.

⁵⁵ ‘Letter from McNamara to Healey’, January 27, 1966, DEFE 13/389, TNA.

⁵⁶ Memorandum for the secretary of state, ‘US/UK satellite communications talking points’, April 26, 1966, DEFE 13/389, TNA.

⁵⁷ Note on the Negotiations in Washington 21^st/24^th March, 1966, April 20, 1966, AVIA 65/2070, TNA.

⁵⁸ ‘Note on the Negotiations in Washington 21^st/24^th March, 1966’, April 20, 1966, AVIA 65/2070, TNA.

⁵⁹ Ibid

⁶⁰ ‘Interim U.K. Defence Satellite Communications System’, June 7, 1966, AVIA 65/2070, TNA.

⁶¹ For an overview of de Gaulle’s decision, see Garret Martin, ‘The 1967 Withdrawal from NATO – A Cornerstone of de Gaulle’s Grand Strategy’, Journal of Transatlantic Studies 9, 232–243 (2011).

⁶² For background on the British rationale for withdrawal from ELDO, see John Krige, Angelina Long Callahan, and Ashok Maharaj, NASA in the World: Fifty Years of Collaboration in Space (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 59–63.

⁶³ Britain’s pull back from space cooperation with European allies after its failed attempts to enter the European Economic Community in 1963 and 1967 made partnering with the United States on space projects even more vital.

⁶⁴ John Krige details the U.S. aim to use space cooperation as a means of ‘positive disarmament’. See chapter 4 in John Krige, Sharing Knowledge, Shaping Europe: U.S. Technological Collaboration and Non-Proliferation (Cambridge: MIT, 2016).

⁶⁵ ‘Editorial Note’, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Vol. XXXIV, Energy Diplomacy and Global Issues.

⁶⁶ Krige, Sharing Knowledge, Shaping Europe, 116.

⁶⁷ Ibid

⁶⁸ ‘Report on US/UK Discussions on UK Military Communications Satellite Requirements’, March 21–28, 1966, AVIA 65/2070, TNA.

⁶⁹ ‘Operational Use by the UK of the US Interim Defense Communications Satellite Project’, June 2, 1966, AVIA 65/2070, TNA.

⁷⁰ Jonathan Winkler, Nexus: Strategic Communications and American Security in World War I (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 195–197

⁷¹ ‘UK/US Satellite Communications Talking Points, undated, DEFE, 13/389, TNA.

⁷² Memorandum by the secretary of state for defence, ‘Draft Overseas Policy and Defence Committee Operational Use by the UK of the US Interim Defence Communications Satellite Project’, June 17, 1966, AVIA 65/2070, TNA.

⁷³ ‘Annex A’ in ‘Outline Defence Communications Network Plan 1968–72, February 1, 1967, FCO 19/9, TNA.

⁷⁴ Ibid

⁷⁵ William James, ‘Global Britain’s Strategic Problem East of Suez’, European Journal of International Security, 6, 2021, 180.

⁷⁶ Ibid

⁷⁷ Ibid., 179

⁷⁸ ‘Minutes from Parliament’, March 7, 1966, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1966/mar/07/defence.

⁷⁹ Chiefs of Staff Committee, Defence Policy Staff, ‘The Requirements for Satellite Communications’, October 10, 1969, DEFE 34/130, TNA.

⁸⁰ Ibid

⁸¹ Ibid

⁸² James, ‘Global Britain’s Strategic Problem East of Suez’, 172.

⁸³ Ibid. Secure encrypted voice communications required bandwidth that could not be met by existing high-frequency communications systems.

⁸⁴ Background, ‘European Space Cooperation’, February 19, 1969, FCO 55/348, TNA.

⁸⁵ Ibid

⁸⁶ Ibid

⁸⁷ Ibid

⁸⁸ ‘Defence Satellite Communications − 1974 to 1978’, March 11, 1975, DEFE 72/56, TNA.

⁸⁹ ‘Skynet II replenishment: Brief on the current situation’, May 17, 1972, DEFE 72/56, TNA. U.K. firms carried out 45% of the development work associated with Skynet-II sub-systems, see ‘Defence Satellite Communications − 1974 to 1978’, March 11, 1975, DEFE 72/56, TNA.

⁹⁰ ‘Airbus’ Golden Jubilee for Skynet Secure Satellite Communications’, Airbus, November 22, 2019, https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019–11-airbus-golden-jubilee-for-skynet-secure-satellite-communications.

⁹¹ Minute for defence secretary, ‘Communications Satellites’, undated, DEFE 72/56, TNA.

⁹² Letter from Weinstock to D. G. Rayner, ‘Skynet III’, May 18, 1972, DEFE 72/56, TNA.

⁹³ Ibid

⁹⁴ Note of a meeting in CSA’s room, ‘Satellite Communications’, November 10, 1972, DEFE 72/56, TNA.

⁹⁵ ‘Satellite Communications’, July 31, 1980, DEFE 19/221, TNA.

⁹⁶ Study for the Chiefs of Staff Committee, ‘The Relative Merits of Satellite and Submarine Cable Communications for Government Long-Distance Communications’, April 11, 1963, DEFE 5/137, TNA.

⁹⁷ Ibid

⁹⁸ Memorandum from BG T Stanbridge, ‘Programme Analysis and Review (PAR) – Defence Satellite Communications’, May 30, 1973, DEFE 72/56, TNA.

⁹⁹ For a history of Corporate, see Lawrence Freedman, The Official History of the Falklands Campaign Volume 1: The Origins of the Falklands War (New York: Routledge, 2005) and Lawrence Freedman, The Official History of the Falklands Campaign Volume 2: War and Diplomacy (New York: Routledge, 2004).

¹⁰⁰ Richard Aldous, Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012), 81.

¹⁰¹ According to a U.S. report, Britain was using 21 communications channels on the American DSCS network. See Memorandum from the acting Director of the Defense communications Agency (Layman) to Secretary of Defense Weinberger, ‘US Communications Satellite Support to UK Naval Forces’, April 9, 1982, Foreign Relations of the United States 1981–1988, vol. XIII, Conflict in the South Atlantic, 1981–1984.

¹⁰² Memorandum from B.C. Farrer, ‘MoD Working Party on the Way Ahead in Space’, July 5, 1983, DEFE 69/1204, TNA.

¹⁰³ Ilaria Parisi, ‘France’s Reaction Towards the SDI: Transforming a Strategic Threat into a Technological Opportunity’, in NATO and the Strategic Defence Initiative, ed. Luc-Andre Brunet (New York: Routledge, 2022), 121–124.

¹⁰⁴ ‘Policy for the Use of Space for Defence’, April 22, 1981, DEFE 69/1204, TNA.

¹⁰⁵ Background paper attached to minute ‘Space-Forthcoming Meeting Between S of S and Ministers of State, DTI’, sent from W. D. Reeves, November 12, 1984, DEFE 13/2066, TNA.

¹⁰⁶ For more details concerning Zircon, see Ferris, Behind the Enigma, 322. Through Zircon the British would have also demonstrated to their U.S. counterparts that they could develop space-based intelligence systems that could contribute to their intelligence partnership.

¹⁰⁷ Even though Skynet-3 had been cancelled, the MoD designated the new series the fourth generation since the technology was now more advanced than that planned for Skynet-3.

¹⁰⁸ A review of U.K. military requirements called for ‘greater operational capability in the mid-1980s, including EHF [extremely high frequency], SHF [super high frequency], UHF [ultra high frequency], and resistance to ECM [electronic counter measures]’. This is to be met by a ten-year (1985–95) British Skynet IV project’. See ‘Policy for the Use of Space for Defence’, April 22, 1981, DEFE 69/1204, TNA. For a detailed explanation of the rationale for a third Skynet-4 satellite, see ‘NGASR 7123 – Skynet 4 Stage 1 Programme: Procurement of Third Satellite (Skynet 4C)’, June 12, 1983, DEFE 13/2066, TNA and ‘Skynet 4C: Operational Justification’, November 28, 1984, DEFE 24/2905, TNA.

¹⁰⁹ Memorandum from E.J. Risness, ‘Defence Space Policy’, August 23, 1982, DEFE 69/1204, TNA.

¹¹⁰ Ibid

¹¹¹ ‘Defence Space Policy (draft)’, August, 1982, DEFE 69/1204, TNA.

¹¹² Ibid

¹¹³ ‘NGASR 7123 – Skynet 4 Stage 1 Programme: Procurement of Third Satellite (Skynet 4C)’, June 12, 1983, DEFE 13/2066, TNA.

¹¹⁴ Minute from Howe to Thatcher, ‘Launcher for Skynet 4’, December 12, 1983, PREM 19/2067, TNA.

¹¹⁵ Ibid

¹¹⁶ Ibid

¹¹⁷ ‘Skynet 5: A Proven and Trusted Partnership’, Airbus, https://www.airbus.com/en/products-services/defence/milsatcom/skynet-5. There are plans underway for the sixth generation as well, see ‘MoD Contracts Airbus for Skynet Telecoms Satellite’, BBC, July 20, 2020, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53476881.