APOGEE STAFF
The harmful effects of direct-ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) weapons are undeniable: clouds of debris hurtling around the planet, posing a threat to manned spacecraft and satellites. As European and U.S. leaders mull ways to engage more fully in space, they can claim common ground on space debris and DA-ASAT weapons.
At the same time, they might give a nod to Russia for galvanizing the sides around the issue. The tipping point came in November 2021 when Moscow fired a Nudol A-235 missile at a defunct military satellite, shattering it into more than 1,800 pieces larger than 10 centimeters and producing a debris cloud that threatened astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The debris still endangers satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). In its 2024 report, “Global Counterspace Capabilities: An Open-Source Assessment,” the Secure World Foundation noted that as of February 2024, 67 pieces from the explosion still orbit the planet.
That’s only a drop, however, in the torrent of space junk from earlier ASAT tests — along with derelict satellites, old rocket parts, tools, screws, rivets and other items that continue circling the planet, some at rates up to 8 kilometers per second and even after decades in orbit.
In its August 15, 2024, report, “Space Debris by the Numbers,” the European Space Agency categorized the junk as: 40,500 space debris objects greater than 10 centimeters, 1.1 million space debris objects from 1 centimeter to 10 centimeters, and 130 million objects from 1 millimeter to 1 centimeter.
It’s no wonder then that Russia’s November 2021 ASAT test would spark near-worldwide condemnation and unite European and U.S. leaders in opposition to kinetic counterspace weapons. Spurred by the incident, the U.S. in April 2022 pledged to halt DA-ASAT testing and urged other countries to do the same. Nearly three dozen nations signed onto the test ban. The U.S. is one of four nations, including India, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia, that have conducted DA-ASAT tests.
Then, in December 2022, the United Nations General Assembly introduced Resolution A/RES/77/41, which proposed a moratorium on DA-ASAT tests. The nonbinding proposal won overwhelming support with 155 states voting in favor, nine against and nine abstentions. Those opposing the resolution — in addition to Russia — included Belarus, Cuba, Iran, the PRC and Syria.
The momentum carried over to the U.N.’s Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) on reducing space threats through norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviors, which included the topic in discussions in 2022 and 2023 to curb space-based military weapons.
The group ultimately fell short of its goal in a surprisingly abrupt fashion. Just as the OEWG was about to deliver its final report to the U.N. General Assembly in late August 2023, the Russian delegation vetoed the document — in effect, preventing dissemination of the OEWG’s findings and recommendations to the larger U.N. body.
The delegation then quashed a procedural report that marked the group’s activity over the past two years. “The fact that even a procedural report describing the technical unfolding of the OEWG was blocked speaks volumes about a desire to see this process fail,” Jessica West, who documented the meeting for Canada’s Project Ploughshares, said in a 2023 Breaking Defense report. Project Ploughshares is a peace research institute.
Today, Russia has little to lose from a disruption to space access, whereas the United States has everything to lose. Moscow is using its aerospace engineering expertise, derived from Soviet-era achievements, to develop counterspace strike capability that can harm vital U.S. space interests.” ~ Clayton Swope and Makena Young, “Is There a Path to Counter Russia’s Space Weapons?”
In statements to media, the head of the Russian delegation, Konstantin Vorontsov, argued that Moscow’s position had been “discriminated against and ignored” — even though a draft of the report made explicit reference to a joint PRC-Russia proposal for a treaty blocking the placement of weapons in space.
Vorontsov complained that the very idea of outlining responsible behaviors in space was illegitimate and internationally divisive and should have never been considered by the U.N. A handful of Russian allies, including Iran and the PRC, backed Vorontsov’s objections. However, in a rebuke to Moscow, several other delegates who supported the OEWG’s work made detailed statements intended to place the group’s progress on the record. Among the proposals to gain support: the ban on DA-ASAT missiles — with some delegates pushing to go further, calling for an expanded ban covering all ASAT weapons, Breaking Defense said.
In another reproach to kinetic counterspace weapons, several European countries in the runup to the OEWG meeting announced their joint opposition to the missiles — in effect siding with the U.S. The coordinated effort consisted of pledges from each of the EU’s 27 member states not to perform DA-ASAT testing. The OEWG published the announcement, which proclaimed in bold text: “The Member States of the European Union commit not to conduct destructive direct-ascent anti-satellite missile tests.”
The statement went on to say: “Concerned that the use of destructive ASAT systems might have widespread and irreversible impacts on the outer space environment, the Member States of the EU consider such commitment as an urgent and initial measure aimed at preventing damage to the outer space environment, while also contributing to the development of further measures for the prevention of an arms race in outer space.”
Then came disclosures that Moscow had pushed the envelope further. To the dismay of many in Washington and Europe, it was disclosed in early 2024 that Russia was possibly developing an advanced anti-satellite weapon far more destructive than any previously envisioned. U.S. political leaders said they were shocked, with some declaring that such a weapon would upend the decades-old security pact, the Outer Space Treaty (OST), setting a deadly precedent for nuclear weapons in space.
U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, then chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters that the Kremlin’s actions constituted a “serious national security threat.” Then-White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the weapon — believed to be still in development — would violate a ban on space-based nuclear weapons that’s stood since 1967’s OST.
Article IV of the treaty expressly prohibits nations from launching into orbit “any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install[ing] such weapons on celestial bodies, or station[ing] such weapons in outer space in any other manner.”
Moscow, meanwhile, has brushed aside the criticism, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling the allegation “a malicious fabrication.”
If the allegations prove correct, they would represent a monumental shift. A nuclear blast in space could prove catastrophic to satellites in low and possibly medium Earth orbit — affecting navigation, communications, internet, television, banking and myriad other services globally. The explosion would spawn a debris field cascading through space potentially for decades, colliding with more spacecraft and creating even more debris.
Victoria Samson, chief director of Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation, a policy research organization with offices in Broomfield, Colorado, and Washington, D.C., told Apogee that it simply “doesn’t make sense” to deploy a nuclear-based ASAT.
“This is not a finely tuned, calibrated weapon that you use against only a certain state,” she said. “It’s like taking a chainsaw to trim a dandelion.”
Meanwhile, the allegations have only led to further polarization between the sides, with Europe and the U.S. firmly opposed to any iteration of kinetic anti-satellite weapons.
“There is likely little daylight between the U.S. and European approach because both depend on space capabilities,” Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit policy research organization, told Apogee.
“France has been more publicly forward leaning about its plans to protect satellites from counterspace threats,” Swope said. “The United States has focused on taking a responsible approach to its counterspace activities. I could assume that means focusing on capabilities that do not generate new space debris fragments.”
In a June 2024 CSIS essay, “Is There a Path to Counter Russia’s Space Weapons?” authors Swope and Makena Young, a fellow at the center’s Aerospace Security Project, noted that Russia simply has far less to lose from the indiscriminate effects of an on-orbit nuclear explosion than the U.S., which fields thousands of military and civilian satellites in LEO. Starlink alone is estimated at 6,350 satellites as of August 2024.
Such a weapon, the authors note, “would probably be capable of disabling hundreds of satellites through radiation effects or the resulting electromagnetic pulse.”
A shadow of its Soviet days, Russia’s space program has languished for years. In 2023, for example, the U.S. deployed 2,221 satellites while Moscow launched 60. Western sanctions imposed during the Russia-Ukraine war have hastened the decline, with rocket engine sales and the Kremlin’s space launch business at nearly nonexistent levels. According to a 2024 report by DefenseNews, Moscow has seen orbital launches decrease and stagnate to only 15-26 launches a year for the past eight years.
Yury Borisov, the head of the Roscosmos space agency, told a Russian TV interviewer in December 2023 that war-related sanctions contributed to $2 billion in export-revenue losses and 17,000 layoffs between 2019 and 2021.
India, the PRC and the United States, meanwhile, have seen their space programs flourish, with the U.S. the continued world leader in space, the PRC at No. 2, and India – with ambitions for a crewed moon flight – likely to overtake Russia.
“Today, Russia has little to lose from a disruption to space access, whereas the United States has everything to lose,” Swope and Young wrote, explaining Russia’s possible motivations. “Moscow is using its aerospace engineering expertise, derived from Soviet-era achievements, to develop counterspace strike capability that can harm vital U.S. space interests.”
Since February 2024, the U.S. has appealed to world leaders to oppose Russia’s nuclear ASAT ambitions. In April 2024, Japan and the United States together introduced a U.N. Security Council resolution that would reaffirm the OST ban on nuclear weapons in space. Russia, a member of the council, vetoed the resolution. By introducing the measure, however, U.S. diplomats were able to reiterate their apprehension over Russia’s counterspace developments.
“The U.S. government has been clear about its concern that Russia is developing a space-based nuclear capability that could have serious consequences to the space environment, saying that such a weapon could make parts of space unusable for a period of time,” Swope told Apogee. “That should concern all countries with space systems. The effects of such a weapon would be global.”
That alleged on-orbit device isn’t the only weapon worrying Western diplomats. At a U.N. Security Council meeting in May 2024, the U.S. accused Russia of launching a satellite a few days earlier capable of attacking other satellites.
“On May 16, Russia launched a satellite into low Earth orbit that the United States assesses is likely a counterspace weapon presumably capable of attacking other satellites in low Earth orbit,” Robert Wood, then a U.S. envoy to the United Nations, told the council. “Russia deployed this new counterspace weapon into the same orbit as a U.S. government satellite,” and its launch “follows prior Russian satellite launches likely of counterspace systems to low Earth orbit in 2019 and 2022.”
Indeed, reports in 2020 confirmed that in late 2019 Moscow deployed a satellite that opened to reveal another satellite capable of firing a projectile at spacecraft, potentially generating thousands of debris fragments. The two satellites reportedly followed a U.S. National Reconnaissance Office satellite. At the time, then-Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond referred to the dual spacecraft as “nesting dolls.”
Since the February 2024 disclosure of a possible nuclear ASAT weapon, the U.S. has acted with greater urgency to rally opposition to Moscow’s counterspace efforts. In addition to proclaiming its objections to ASATs, the U.S. has exerted diplomatic pressure behind the scenes. At a May 2024 CSIS event, Mallory Stewart, then assistant secretary of state for arms control, deterrence and stability, described State Department efforts to appeal to India and the PRC — longtime Russian trading partners — to urge Moscow to reject nuclear counterspace weapons because of their potential to create indiscriminate, catastrophic damage.
“We did discuss this directly with China and with India,” Stewart said. “And we’ve been discussing this with other countries that have a vested interest, of course, in the sustainability of the outer-space environment and at the U.N.”
While no word has come whether this and other efforts have helped, Swope and Young asserted that such strategies might be the best way forward given the countries’ growing reliance on space. “Whatever the nature of those discussions, there is no sign that either China or India have been convinced to help,” they wrote. “But, these are the right two countries to be talking to. China and [India] have the economic leverage to impact Russian national interests. They could require Russia to abandon certain indiscriminate counterspace capabilities or suffer the economic consequences when China and India buy less Russian oil, and China stops selling Russia advanced technologies.”