Space Middle Powers are uniquely reliant on space-based services outside their direct national control; this reliance combined with the fragility of and lack of stability in the space domain lead to a series of key vulnerabilities that need to be addressed and managed.
Today’s space domain is increasingly complex. As more and more actors become invested in space assets and services, the management of man-made risks is becoming more challenging. One of the groups that is most exposed to such risks are those States that are highly space dependent yet have not traditionally played a central or direct role in exploiting space resources and do not fully control all elements of the full life cycle of assets that they rely on. For the purposes of this paper, these are being defined as Space Middle Powers.
Citation: Daniel Golston and Ben Baseley-Walker (2015). "The Realities of Middle Power Space Reliance", UNIDIR, Geneva.