The Biden administration, citing intelligence, has confirmed that Russia is indeed creating anti-satellite weapons — although so far they are “not active and do not pose an immediate threat.”
The president’s national security adviser, John Kirby, said the administration had been monitoring developments for a week but planned to keep the information secret — while media reports “pressured” the White House to release the intelligence.
At the same time, Kirby added that although the technology is not yet deployed and inactive, Russia’s desire to create anti-satellite weapons “causes concern.” According to some publications, the weapon is allegedly powered by nuclear energy, but Kirby did not confirm (but did not deny) this information.
As SpaceNews notes, nuclear-powered satellites have been used by both the United States and Russia for decades. The technology involves the use of a nuclear reactor to produce electricity to power onboard systems and electronic weapons. According to some sources, Russian anti-satellite weapons plan to use such an electronic weapon as a “jammer” to disrupt the operation of other satellites.
“People seem to confuse nuclear weapons and satellites with nuclear power,” said defense analyst Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Harrison says that the use of nuclear weapons in space is a clear violation of the Outer Space Treaty, signed in 1967, in particular, by the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. The countries are now apparently continuing to adhere to the agreement so as not to create “a real mess that affects all satellites indiscriminately.”
“We know this because the US dropped a 1.4 megaton nuclear bomb at an altitude of 400 km in 1962. It charged the Van Allen radiation belts and destroyed about one-third of the satellites in low Earth orbit, including the UK’s first satellite,” says Harrison.
For decades, Russia (and other countries) have been developing weapons that can destroy satellites in low Earth orbit:
Meanwhile, the U.S. launched six military satellites on a SpaceX rocket on Wednesday, part of a new generation of spacecraft designed to track hypersonic missiles launched by China or Russia and possible new missile threats from Iran or North Korea, which are also developing hypersonic weapons of their own. .
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