Arms race to nowhere
On Feb. 16, President Joe Biden chose his words carefully about U.S. intelligence reports of a possible Russian nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapon in space. “There is no nuclear threat to the people of America or anywhere else in the world,” he said, adding that such a weapon has not been deployed. Left unsaid: It would pose an enormous danger to satellites upon which billions of people rely.
President Vladimir Putin sometimes boasts about new and exotic weapons systems. Not all of them exist, nor will they. But the latest controversy is a reminder that such boasts can become reality. New weapons and technology often lead to arms races, tension and instability.
A nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapon is a lunatic idea, as has been clear for decades. On July 9, 1962, a then-secret U.S. missile test hurled a nuclear warhead into space from a Pacific atoll. The 1.4 megaton warhead detonated at an altitude of about 250 miles. It caused streetlight blackouts in Hawaii, about 900 miles away, and emitted a huge plume of high-energy electrons that became trapped in Earth’s magnetic field, damaging at least eight satellites in orbit. The United States and the Soviet Union subsequently agreed to ban nuclear tests in the atmosphere and space in 1963 and outlawed placing nuclear weapons in orbit in 1967.
Today, there are more than 8,200 satellites in low Earth orbit, many privately owned and operated. A Russian nuclear weapon in space could disrupt communications for everything from global shipping to combat communications in Ukraine. It would threaten all satellites, including Russia’s.
In a 2018 speech, Mr. Putin displayed a video of what he described as a nuclear-powered cruise missile that might travel thousands of miles at low altitude without refueling. The missile was reportedly the cause of a 2019 explosion at a Russian navy range on the White Sea; last year, Mr. Putin announced that development was complete, although little else is known. Another reported new Russian weapon, Poseidon, is an underwater drone driven by nuclear power and carrying a nuclear warhead that could cause panic and fear if deployed in a coastal harbor.
Meanwhile, China is rapidly and significantly expanding its nuclear arsenal, expected to reach 1,000 warheads by the end of this decade. (Under the New START accord, Russia and the United States are each limited to 1,550 deployed strategic or longrange warheads through 2026.) China is also pursuing other types of sophisticated weapons. In 2007, it used an anti-satellite missile fired from the ground to smash apart a defunct weather satellite, leaving more than 3,000 pieces of traceable space debris, of which more than 2,700 remain in orbit. Most will continue orbiting Earth for decades, according to the Pentagon. China’s ground-based ASAT system is intended to target low Earth orbit satellites. In 2021, China also tested the first fractional orbital launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile with a hypersonic glide vehicle. If deployed, it would use a missile to carry a bomb halfway around the world and then drop it with a speeding sled that might be impossible to stop.
In its report last October, the congressional Strategic Posture Commission concluded that the United States “will soon encounter a fundamentally different global setting than it has ever experienced” in the rise of two nuclear-armed peers, Russia and China, bent on disrupting and displacing the U.S.-led international order. Even though Russia’s resources are being drained by the invasion of Ukraine, and China’s economy is dragging, both seem capable and willing to use technology to probe for asymmetric weaknesses in the United States and perhaps unleash new arms races.
Technology drives weapons competitions. In the 1970s, the United States and Soviet Union developed multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs, which allowed a single missile to carry up to 10 nuclear warheads, each aimed at a different target. This dramatically changed calculations about nuclear warfare. Other advances from the United States came rapidly: precision weapons, low-flying cruise missiles, stealth aircraft and super-accurate ballistic missiles. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, realizing his economy was buckling under the cost of keeping up with the United States, turned to nuclear arms control agreements with President Ronald Reagan. But almost all of those treaties have now been abandoned or expired.
The United States now faces not one but two rivals in Russia and China; competition with them will be necessary, difficult and costly. Right now, Mr. Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine makes arms control negotiation nearly impossible — he cannot be trusted — and China has refused to talk about limits on nuclear weapons. Still, at the very least, extension of the New START accord beyond 2026 with Russia and starting talks with China would be in everyone’s interest. In the long term, arms control treaties might again be needed to contain the dangers, not only of nuclear weapons but also of armaments in cyber, disinformation or something entirely new.