‘Spaceblindness' is not an ignorance of rockets or satellites or is ‘seablindness’ simply an ignorance of ships or oceans. Both describe a failure to recognise the strategic significance of domains upon which societies increasingly depend, requiring long term, permanent commitments. They are manifestations of a deeper problem: the inability of states to perceive, understand and prepare for the strategic consequences of dependence on environments that remain largely invisible in everyday political and national life. Because these domains operate ‘over the horizon’ and humans struggle to think in anything other than terrestrial terms, or ‘land think’, which includes the transitory environment of the air.
Sea-Space Dependency
The similarities begin with dependence. Historically, maritime nations often took the sea for granted precisely because it became an accepted part of national life. Trade arrived in ports, naval forces protected distant interests and maritime commerce underpinned prosperity, yet the mechanisms enabling these outcomes possible remained largely invisible. Public attention focused on naval battles during wartime, overlooking the continuous strategic function performed by maritime power in peacetime.
Space increasingly occupies a similar position. Satellites have become so deeply integrated into everyday life that they are almost invisible. Navigation systems, financial transactions, weather services, communications networks and military command systems depend upon orbital infrastructure, yet these dependencies rarely enter wider strategic debate. The very success of space systems have made them easy to ignore.
In both cases, invisibility breeds complacency, this is perhaps the defining characteristic of strategic blindness. Societies rarely devote sustained attention to those domains that function effectively. Instead, strategic awareness often arrives only after disruption. Maritime supply chains become visible when they fail or come under attack. Undersea cables receive attention only after they are damaged and satellite constellations become strategically important only when threatened. Yet strategic shock frequently becomes the first lesson in strategic dependence.
Technological Revolutions: Warships and Spaceships
A second similarity concerns the tendency to confuse technology with strategy. Maritime history demonstrates that fleets alone do not constitute maritime strategy. Ships are instruments employed in pursuit of political objectives. Effective maritime strategy depends upon institutions, education, logistics, industrial capacity, commercial shipping, alliances, legal frameworks and coherent strategic thought. Throughout history, navies have succeeded not simply because they possessed impressive vessels, but because those vessels formed part of broader systems capable of sustaining national power.
The same danger now exists in space, yet contemporary discussion frequently concentrates on launch systems, anti-satellite weapons, commercial constellations and emerging technologies. These developments are undoubtedly important. But technological capability alone does not constitute space strategy any more than aircraft carriers or submarines constitute maritime strategy. The critical questions concern how space capabilities support national objectives, how institutions organise them, how military and civilian expertise interact, and how governments translate technological potential into strategic advantage. Technology matters, but strategy gives space technology purpose much like civilian maritime capabilities and naval power on the seas today.
Admiralty from Seabed to Space
A third similarity lies within institutions. One of the enduring lessons of maritime history is that successful maritime powers cultivated institutions capable of thinking strategically over long periods. Admiralty, hydrographic offices, dockyards, merchant shipping organisations, scientific organisations and professional education collectively sustained maritime capability across generations because they educated society on domain hostile and distant from day-to-day human life. An understanding of the sea and its impact on life emerged from those institutions
The same challenge confronts space today. Space is often discussed through the lens of innovation, air forces, and technological competition. Far less attention is devoted to developing the institutional foundations required to sustain strategic thought. Space forces, civil agencies, commercial providers, universities and governments play important roles, these institutions can either often evolve at a different pace to strategic ideas needed to guide them, the result is a growing imbalance between technological development and strategic understanding.
Perhaps the most important lesson offered by maritime history is that strategic cultures do not emerge automatically. Geography can only go so far to maritime awareness because seapower has always depended upon education, political leadership, institutional development and sustained public understanding. Without these, even maritime nations have repeatedly exhibited ‘seablindness’, as seen in Britain in the 21st century. The same is likely to prove true for space even with the true space powers like the United States and those seeking to disrupt that dominance, such as China. Like the seas, space is a long-term strategic game, one a nation will either execute or be left out of., The victor being one that applies the best of maritime strategy and to space, bringing civilian and military power together.
Growing dependence upon orbital infrastructure and space technologies, which does make the news, will not automatically produce strategically space-minded societies. Space awareness cannot be assumed simply because satellites and space assets both civilian and military have become indispensable. It must be deliberately cultivated through education, professional military thought, institutional experience and informed public debate.
The comparison, however, should not be misunderstood. This is not an argument that space is simply another ocean, nor that maritime history provides a perfect blueprint for space operations, though it remains far superior to air power theory. Space remains a distinct strategic environment governed by different physical realities, technologies and legal frameworks, again maritime being the closest to draw experience from, then use theory which some propose. Simple analogies can obscure as much as they reveal, and nations must draw on lessons from other domains and until that experience gathers pace in space itself.
The key value of maritime history offers something unique. Maritime experience show how nations learned to understand environments that were simultaneously distant, unfamiliar and strategically indispensable. It illustrates how institutions evolved, how strategic cultures developed, how commercial and military interests became interconnected and how national power increasingly depended upon domains extending beyond territorial boundaries.
Seen in this way, ‘seablindness’ and ‘spaceblindness’ are not simply analogous concepts. They are recurring manifestations of a broader strategic phenomenon. States repeatedly fail to recognise the significance of domains that quietly sustain their security and prosperity until crises expose those dependencies, only for them to be quickly forgotten again when the news cycle moves on. Strategic blindness therefore emerges not from ignorance of technology, but from deficiencies in strategic culture, institutional development and a lack of strategic education across politics, policy, doctrine, and business.
If maritime and naval history offers one enduring lesson to contemporary space strategy, it is this: strategic dependence must be understood before strategic crisis forces that understanding upon us. The challenge for the 21st century is therefore not merely to build better satellites, launch more spacecraft or establish new military organisations in orbit. It is to cultivate the strategic understanding, institutional maturity and intellectual foundations necessary to ensure that growing dependence upon space is matched by an equally sophisticated appreciation of its place within national strategy. From seabed to space.
The danger is not that progress in space will stall; it is that nations arrive there still strategically blind when they need not.
Dr James WE Smith is supported by the British Academy and facilitated by King’s College London with his research on the future of maritime and space strategies. He is grateful to the support and feedback offered by civilian and military organisations in the United States for this research. James completed his PhD in the Department of War Studies in 2021 which examined how government and defence organisation impacts how they think about strategy and how can they act strategically. He is a fellow at various international professional institutions and organisations.