PARIS — Thousands of soldiers paraded down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, on foot, on horseback, in tanks and even on a flying hoverboard. But the real action, increasingly, was somewhere far away: outer space.

President Emmanuel Macron of France set the stage for last Sunday’s annual Bastille Day military parade by announcing the creation of a space command within France’s air force.

Stressing that France and Europe’s independence was at stake, the president said that the command would “ensure our defense of space within space.”

The move by France, the Continent’s leader in space, was the latest sign that the era of fighting in space — disabling or even shooting down satellites on which warfare on earth is increasingly dependent — was getting closer.