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Russia's development of nuclear space weapons alarms the United States.
An attack by Putin would also have consequences on Earth.
US officials are planning countermeasures.
Washington, DC – Russia is developing a space-based capability to attack satellites with a nuclear weapon.
An aggressive move that has alarmed U.S. national security officials and lawmakers.
They fear Russia could disrupt or disable critical communications and intelligence systems, according to people familiar with classified information on the matter.
“This is not an active capability that has been deployed,” White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Thursday.
Kirby did not address the question of whether the system was designed to use a nuclear weapon or perhaps was powered by nuclear energy.
However, citing previous news reports, he said he could "confirm that it is related to an anti-satellite capability that Russia is developing."
Navy John Kirby claims Putin's space weapon 'not an immediate threat' to Earth
“While Russia’s pursuit of this specific capability is troubling, there is no immediate threat to anyone’s safety,” Kirby said.
“We are not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack people or cause physical destruction here on Earth.
However, we have closely monitored these Russian activities and will continue to take them very seriously.”
It was a nuclear-armed — not nuclear-powered — weapon, said two U.S. officials, who like others familiar with the intelligence spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
Space weapons pose a threat due to the density of satellites: also consequences for the civilian population
Revelations that Russia has developed a new type of space weapon have revived fears about the use of nuclear weapons in space that date back to the Cold War era and the beginnings of the space age.
Space today can no longer be compared to what it was in 1957, when the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik triggered a years-long space race that culminated in 1968 with the US landing on the moon.
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Today there are thousands of satellites orbiting at dizzying speeds, enabling everything from the GPS signal with the blue dot on your phone to the image on your television.
A conflict in space affecting these satellites would have far-reaching consequences, not only for the world's armed forces, but also for civilians around the globe.
“Crossing the nuclear threshold”: Expert expects escalation of a space conflict
The use of such a weapon would be highly escalatory and would mean crossing the nuclear threshold,” said Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“It would cause irreparable damage to the low Earth orbit environment,” Panda said.
“We could potentially be faced with a cascade of collisions of defunct satellites that would render large parts of low-Earth orbit unusable for all of humanity.”
Since the start of the Ukraine war, the use of commercial satellites to track Russian troop movements, provide internet and communications links to the ground, detect missile launches, and guide precision munitions has heightened concerns that Russia is using these systems as well as the country's official military and intelligence satellites could target the USA.
US House of Representatives wants to react – Pentagon warns about satellite weaknesses
For years, Pentagon officials have warned that their satellites are vulnerable to attack, and both Russia and China and others have proven them right.
In 2007, China fired a missile that destroyed a weather satellite.
In 2021, Russia shot down another dead satellite.
According to the White House, Putin is working on an anti-satellite weapon.
© IMAGO/ITAR-TASS/Alexander Kazakov
Exactly what the new Russian weapon is remains unclear, but the system poses a “serious threat to national security,” as House Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio) put it.
“I call on President Biden to declassify all information regarding this threat so that Congress, the administration and our allies can openly discuss the actions necessary to respond to this threat,” Turner wrote in a statement on Wednesday.
Information released too early?
US government wanted to keep space weapons plans secret longer
Briefing reporters on Thursday, Kirby said only that the system was "an anti-satellite capability that Russia is developing."
He said the government intended to eventually release the information about the Russian system, but that the information was released too soon after Turner's cryptic public statement.
National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby speaks at the White House press conference in Washington, DC on Thursday, February 15, 2024. © Ken Cedeno/Imago
“The intelligence community has serious concerns about the full release of this information,” Kirby said, not-so-subtly criticizing Turner for preempting the government's process and creating a media frenzy surrounding the Russian system.
Russia also uses satellites: nuclear weapons in space as a “suicide-kamikaze attack”
Many national security experts consider a nuclear-powered weapon to be more plausible than a warhead.
If the weapons system Turner warned about was actually a nuclear bomb, its use would amount to a "suicide kamikaze attack," said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Russia has a number of its own military and intelligence satellites in orbit that would also be affected by a nuclear detonation.
“You destroy yourself, but in the process you hurt others,” he said.
“If Russia tried to use a nuclear weapon in space, it would be sloppy and reckless.
It would hit satellites indiscriminately, including our own.”
Outer Space Treaty bans nuclear weapons in space – serious consequences of a Russian nuclear detonation
Installing a nuclear weapon in space would also be a violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. “The only inviolable law and consensus agreed upon in international space law is: No nuclear weapons in orbit, on the Moon or on celestial bodies.” said Brian Weeden, director of programming at the Secure World Foundation, a think tank.
Given the strict nature of the treaty and its widespread adoption, detonating a nuclear warhead in space “makes no political sense,” he said.
“It destroys any credibility they have with the United Nations and the Chinese.”
According to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nuclear detonation in space would immediately affect satellites within EMP [electromagnetic pulse] range.
Additionally, the detonation would create a high radiation environment that, in the long term, would accelerate the degradation of satellite components for unshielded satellites in the affected orbit.
Russia's nuclear space weapons would also affect Putin's allies and the ISS
This could affect China's satellites as well as the inhabited space station that China has built in low Earth orbit.
“It would turn the whole world against them, including China and Latin American countries and India too,” Harrison said.
“They would be messing with everyone if they used a nuclear EMP weapon in space.”
The International Space Station, which is jointly operated by the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada, would also be affected by a nuclear detonation.
But that has never stopped Russia from its aggressive tactics in space.
When Russia blew up the dead satellite in 2021, it created a debris field so large that it threatened the ISS and forced its inhabitants, including Russian cosmonauts, to prepare for an emergency evacuation.
Space is becoming more and more populated: Russia's anti-satellite mission is “ruthless saber rattling”
“As space becomes more populated, people would not be eager to cause widespread destruction in orbit,” said Jack Beard, director of the space, cyber and national security law program at the University of Nebraska College of Law.
“The Russians have shown how ruthless they are with their anti-satellite mission.
It was an irresponsible action that harmed everyone, including themselves. So they didn't go beyond reckless saber rattling."
During the Cold War, the United States tested nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapons, Panda said.
“But we no longer have such a capability,” he said.
No country has it, although U.S. officials say Russia appears to be developing such a weapon.
“Militaries do not tend to value indiscriminate impact space weapons,” he said.
US Space Force plans to defend against space attacks – retaliation in space is difficult
In unveiling a new strategy for the US Space Force last year, General Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations, said its "counterspace activities may be necessary to prevent the adversary from attacking our forces with space-based targeting systems.
But we will balance our counterspace efforts with the need to maintain the stability and sustainability of the orbits we must use,” he said.
The U.S. has placed an international moratorium on destructive anti-satellite attacks that create dangerous debris fields in space and would likely not fire a missile in response, Weeden said.
Still, the Pentagon has a "full range of capabilities" to thwart an attack, from electronic warfare to cyberattacks on ground stations, he said.
But countering attacks in space is complicated and depends on the nature of the threat, he said.
In an emergency, Panda said, depending on the altitude at which such a weapon is deployed, the United States could convert a missile defense interceptor to defeat such a weapon in low Earth orbit.
Starfish Prime shows the destructive potential of space weapons: one in three satellites destroyed
A nuclear weapon has already been detonated in space, in 1962 by the United States.
The 1.4-megaton bomb called Starfish Prime, which was more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II, detonated at an altitude of about 240 miles and destroyed about "a third of the satellites in orbit." said Harrison.
“Our satellites were affected.
“It even destroyed Britain’s first-ever satellite, which had been launched just months before.”
The effects of such an explosion “will be felt for weeks and months,” Weeden said, because the radiation lingers for a long time.
Russia's concerns about satellite war intelligence – Pentagon relies on “distributed architectures”
Russia is increasingly concerned about the proliferation of commercial satellite constellations in Earth orbit, such as:
B. those from companies like Maxar and Planet, which enable real-time images of war events.
Other constellations, such as SpaceX's Starlink internet system, which now has 5,400 satellites in orbit, have allowed Ukraine to stay online during the Russian attack and served as a communications lifeline for the war-torn country.
These capabilities are the result of a revolution in manufacturing that has made it possible to build satellites that are smaller and relatively inexpensive, yet extremely robust.
Rather than fielding just a few large, expensive satellites that pose easy targets, the Pentagon is increasingly relying on “distributed architectures,” in which hundreds or even thousands of satellites orbit the globe.
If one fails, another can replace it.
Putin's jamming experiments: Tobol system against Ukraine's Starlink use
Still, Moscow has been experimenting with its Tobol electronic warfare systems to disrupt Starlink transmissions in Ukraine, according to a cache of sensitive material that leaked online last year via the messaging platform Discord.
It was not specified whether the Russian tests of the Tobol system were successful.
However, Pentagon officials have said that Russia has tried unsuccessfully to disrupt its constellation.
The Pentagon's reliance on commercial technology was even codified in the Defense Department's 2022 National Defense Strategy: "We will increase collaboration with the private sector in priority areas, particularly the commercial space industry, and leverage their technological advances and entrepreneurship to develop new capabilities." make possible."
A few months after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Lt. Gen. John Shaw, deputy commander of U.S. Space Command, said he was "certain that my counterpart in Russia, whoever he is, is not very happy about Starlink because it is supports Ukraine.
And with the commercial images, such as
B. Maxar's products, which are polluting the world news about what is happening in Ukraine, are certainly not very happy for them either.
And we know that they are likely to take steps to stop these commercial services because they run counter to Russia’s national interests.”
Privatization of satellite operations “an extremely dangerous trend”
A few days later, Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Nonproliferation and Armaments Department, said during a meeting at the UN that the proliferation of privately operated satellites is "an extremely dangerous trend that goes beyond the harmless use of space technologies and at “has become clear from recent developments in Ukraine.”
He warned that “quasi-civilian infrastructure could become a legitimate target for retaliation.”
A nuclear-powered weapon, such as an electronic warfare system or directed energy system, would make more sense than a nuclear warhead, according to several national space security experts.
It could be used more precisely to destroy on-board computers or blind satellites.
Russia's nuclear space weapons have been in development for a long time - what is plausible?
According to the Secure World Foundation, Russia has been developing such weapons for some time.
In a report last year, the foundation wrote that a nuclear reactor would be powerful enough to support jammers.
They could operate on a wide range of frequencies and jam electronic systems over a wide range, including some of the orbits where the Pentagon parks its most sensitive satellites.
Such a system "is much more plausible than the 'atomic bomb ASAT' [anti-satellite weapon]," Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics wrote on “This would not be a new capability for Russia, but it would be the first use in a space-based weapon system.”
Harrison agreed.
“I suspect they want to use it against one of our big targets,” Harrison said.
“For some of our military systems, taking out a few satellites is enough to have a big impact.”
To the authors
Abigail Hauslohner
is a national security reporter at The Washington Post focusing on Congress.
In her decade at the paper, she served as a correspondent, writing on topics ranging from immigration to political extremism, and covered the Middle East as the Post's Cairo bureau chief.
Christian Davenport
covers NASA and the space industry for The Washington Post's Finance Editor.
He has worked for the Post since 2000 and has served as a Metro editor and a military affairs reporter.
He is the author of The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos (PublicAffairs, 2018).
Ellen Nakashima
is a national security reporter for The Washington Post.
She was a member of three Pulitzer Prize-winning teams: in 2022 for investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, in 2018 for reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election, and in 2014 for reporting on the hidden extent of government surveillance.
Shane Harris
writes about intelligence and national security.
He was a member of reporting teams that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and two George Polk Awards.
He was also awarded the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense.
Shane is the author of two books, The Watchers and @War.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on February 16, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.