Russia’s fight against NATO grows in space. This time, British space assets have been threatened.
This comes amid Britain’s central role in opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. U.S. Space Command has monitored an increasing effort by Russia and China to “actively deny access to and use of space by the United States and its allies and partners” over the past several years.
Modern militaries depend on space assets for navigation, communication, and intelligence. The British military is no different. The Royal Air Force Space Command reported that its assets have come under close surveillance by Russian satellites in an effort to jam them.
This happens when a hostile satellite enters into the same orbit as its target in an effort to spy, jam, or destroy them.
“They’ve got payloads on board that can see our satellites and are trying to collect information from them,” Maj. Gen. Paul Tedman, commander of the Royal Air Force Space Command, told the BBC.
Tedman connected the “weekly” effort to interfere with British space assets to the war in Ukraine, noting that Russian efforts against British satellites have significantly increased since the 2022 invasion.
Tedman told Reuters that modern militaries “can’t effectively understand, move, communicate, and fight” without their space assets because they are blind, and most high-tech weaponry relies on space data.
The same is true when it comes to being able to monitor Russian, Chinese, Iranian, North Korean, or another hostile countries’ missile launches because specialized satellites provide early warning to missile launches. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius noted last month that Russian satellites had also shadowed IntelSat communications satellites used by the German military.
“Russia and China have expanded their capabilities for warfare in space rapidly over the past years: They can disrupt satellite operations, blind satellites, manipulate or kinetically destroy them,” Pistorius said. “They can disrupt satellite operations, blind satellites, manipulate or kinetically destroy them.”
Russia and China have tested anti-satellite weapons, also known as ASATs, in the past decade. The growth of space-related threats was a key reason the first Trump administration created the U.S. Space Force.
In 2021, Russia launched a missile that destroyed a defunct satellite threatening the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) with a shower of high-velocity debris. And in 2017, Russia launched a satellite that released a sub-satellite that was believed to potentially be a projectile weapon.
Russians have been involved in space weaponry since the 1960s during the Soviet era.
Threats posed by Russian and Chinese ASATs also worry the Pentagon, which observed Russian satellites cooperate to isolate and surround another satellite this year, a tactic that could be used to neutralize an American, British, or any other nation’s satellites.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) noted in its 2024 annual report that Russia was “expanding its arsenal of jamming systems, directed energy weapons, on-orbit counterspace capabilities, and ground-based ASAT missiles that are designed to target U.S. and allied satellites.”
U.S. Army Gen. James Dickinson, then-U.S. Space Command commander, said in 2021 of the Russian test the same year: “Russia’s tests of direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons clearly demonstrate that Russia continues to pursue counterspace weapon systems that undermine strategic stability and pose a threat to all nations.”
A 2024 report by Britain’s Royal United Services Institute noted that a Russian deployment of an electromagnetic pulse weapon (EMP) could be disastrous. Satellite electronics are notoriously sensitive and susceptible to electromagnetic pulses unless sufficiently hardened.
“The detonation of a nuclear device in space would be even more destructive,” the RUSI report said. “Unlike a direct ascent anti-satellite attack, which would seek out an individual satellite to target, a nuclear explosion would have indiscriminate and long-term effects on the orbit in question.
“Unless satellites are hardened against electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) and radiation, the EMP would immediately affect satellites in the area, and the detonation would leave behind a high-radiation environment that would mean non-hardened satellites in the affected orbit degrade faster than usual.”
Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner noted last year that Russia was believed to be planning to deploy nuclear weapons in space.
The 1962 Starfish Prime test by the U.S. Air Force remains a textbook case because it showed how a nuclear explosion in low Earth orbit could short-out anything with electrical circuitry from at least 1,000 miles away. The 1.45 megaton nuclear blast knocked out streetlights in Honolulu and satellites in orbit.
RUSI noted that such attacks could also damage Russia’s own satellites in addition to American or allied satellites.
“For me the threats that are kinetic are the ones we should be worried about, because that’s not a switch you can just turn on and off,” Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) told Newsmax. “It is certainly an act of war to destroy a satellite in that way.”
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