Kremlin satellite KO plan a crippler
WHAT does the future of warfare look like? America got a glimpse way back on July 9, 1962, when the United States fired a Douglas Thor missile well beyond the Kármán Line that marks the beginning of outer space.
Known as Starfish Prime, the 110,000-pound intercontinental ballistic missile carried a 1.4 megaton W-49 thermonuclear warhead that was detonated high over the Pacific Ocean.
That one bomb not only damaged Hawaiian electrical systems and equipment hundreds of miles away, it damaged or knocked out more than one-third of the world’s 24 orbiting satellites.
World-changing strike
Six decades later, there are more than 5,500 known satellites orbiting Earth. More than 3,500 are American, 541 Chinese and 172 Russian. And unlike then, these satellites are key to modern society, carrying Internet signals, communications and global positioning systems. Knocking out these satellites with a nuclear explosion would ground drones, cut off troops, even blind a nation to a first-strike attack.
That’s why Moscow’s likely plan to deploy space-based weapons is so terrifying. It’s the Pearl Harbor of the 21st century — a strategic move that changes the world.
Russia’s path to blinding America in space would come about in multiple if not interconnecting ways. One would be the brute detonation of nuclear warheads in outer space using its vast array of ICBMs, including the Sarmat, Putin’s new super-heavy ICBM that can carry 10 or more nuclear warheads. Another would be deployment of anti-satellite weapons, which, like nuclear weapons, would violate the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that Washington and Moscow signed.
Russian ASATs would take on a number of delivery forms, including aerial- and ground-based missiles and space-based lasers.
Regardless of which, the goal would remain the same: to turn off the eyes and ears of America.
Flying blind
The results could be devastating. Not only could battlefields in Ukraine begin to play out in Moscow’s favor, so too could any future movement of Russian troops in Eastern and Central Europe against NATO member states — particularly in the strategically significant Suwalki Gap that separates Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave from Belarus.
The risks to US national security extend far beyond Russia. Blinding Washington in this manner puts MAD — mutually assured destruction — in a whole new light. How MAD can you get if you lack the ability to find out who even fired a missile and from where.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, were quick to downplay the immediacy of the danger. The intelligence community has been monitoring the Russian program and don’t believe an anti-satellite launch is imminent.
That is a dangerous mistake. Now is not the time to underplay this emerging threat. Chinese President Xi Jinping knows any successful invasion of Taiwan would require turning off US satellite intelligence — and upending American logistics of militarily coming to Taipei’s aid.
This danger cannot be treated lightly — nor without a robust US response to Russia’s apparent determination to weaponize space in violation of the OST.
Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang are watching. The West is in a global ideological war with Russia and China that’s increasingly turning hot in areas beyond Ukraine. Ukraine, Oct. 7 and Beijing’s machinations against Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific are all interconnected.
Space is the logical final frontier for Putin. The Kremlin has clearly realized Ukraine’s most valuable asset aside from the country’s fighting spirit are the eyes and ears that US and NATO are affording Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals. Putin therefore is shifting his fight to deny Ukraine that advantage.
Treaty with scorn
It is increasingly clear the OST entered into by the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom alongside 110 other countries in banning “nuclear weapons or any other kinds of mass destruction” in space is becoming untenable.
It is just another in the long list of broken Russian promises.
Putin since invading Ukraine for the second time in February 2022 has proven he is willing to upend every aspect of the global order that’s been in effect since World War II’s end — and in the process repeatedly abrogating Russia’s own obligations as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
Weaponizing space is just one more step in that direction. Washington must wake up.
Officials admit we currently have no way to protect our satellites or counter an attack. Add hardened networks, satellites, weapons, etc. to the effects of EMP and radiation to the growing list of things the Biden administration needs to accomplish.
Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Retired Col. Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer.