Prime Minister Andy Burnham is reportedly holding up approval of a £2.4 billion contract for Britain's next generation of military satellites over concerns about British jobs.

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The competition between Airbus and Lockheed Martin has become a significant political and industrial dispute, with thousands of skilled jobs potentially affected. These concerns are understandable, but the decision also raises serious questions about Britain's ability to operate independently during a military crisis.

In September, the Government published its new UK Space Strategy, supported by £7.8 billion of planned funding through to 2030, promising greater resilience, sovereign capabilities and an integrated national satellite communications network. It explicitly commits to maintaining Skynet as the foundation of Britain's sovereign military communications, supported by allied and commercial services.

These are sensible ambitions. Given the controversy surrounding the Skynet procurement, ministers now need to show how they will deliver it.

The urgency of that question became clear this week when suspected cyberattacks disrupted supermarket refrigeration systems across Europe. In Belgium, Ireland and Sweden, temperatures rose sharply, forcing retailers to remove or discard food. On 3 November, the head of Britain's National Cyber Security Centre confirmed that vulnerable technology had also been exploited in a small number of cases affecting the UK food supply chain.

The incidents demonstrate how vulnerabilities in remotely managed equipment can have consequences far beyond a computer screen. Britain's military systems are more heavily protected, but ministers should be asking equally difficult questions about who can access them and what happens when those systems fail.

Ukraine has exposed another form of vulnerability. For approximately ten days, Ukrainian forces experienced........

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