WASHINGTON — What would it mean if Russia used nuclear warheads to destroy American satellites? Your home’s electrical and water systems can malfunction. Airline, rail and car traffic may come to a standstill. Your mobile phone may no longer work.
These are some of the reasons why there has been concern this week over reports that Russia may be pursuing nuclear weapons in space.
The White House has said the danger is not immediate. But reports of the new anti-satellite weapon build on longstanding concerns about space threats from Russia and China. Much of the country’s infrastructure now depends on U.S. satellite communications — and those satellites have become increasingly vulnerable.
It also wouldn’t be the first time a nuclear warhead has been detonated in space, or the only option China and Russia are pursuing to disable or destroy a U.S. satellite.
Here’s a look at what happened in the past, why Russia might now pursue a nuclear weapon for space, and what the US is doing about all the space threats the country faces.
THE PAST: STARFISH PRIME AND PROJECT K
Both Russia and the US have detonated nuclear warheads in space. In the 1960s, little was known about how the relatively new weapons of mass destruction would work in Earth’s atmosphere. Both countries experimented to find out. The Soviet tests were called Project K and took place from 1961 to 1962. The U.S. conducted 11 of its own tests, and the largest and first successful test was known as Starfish Prime, said Stephen Schwartz, a nonresident senior fellow at the Bulletin of Atomic scientists.
Starfish Prime was launched in July 1962, when the US fired a 1.4-megaton thermonuclear warhead at a Thor missile and detonated it about 250 miles above Earth.
The rocket was launched about 800 miles from Hawaii, but the effects of the tests were seen around the equator.
“The large amount of energy released by the blast at such a high altitude caused widespread auroras throughout the Pacific Ocean,” said a 1982 Department of Defense report on the tests.
The blast knocked out several satellites, including a British one called Ariel, as radioactive particles from the eruption came into contact with them. Radio systems and the power grid in Hawaii were temporarily disabled, said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. The debris caused satellites in their path to malfunction “along the lines of the old one-reel Saturday matinee,” the 1982 report said.
When the former Soviet Union conducted its own test as part of Project K, it did so in a slightly lower orbit and “refreshed systems on the ground, including underground cables and a power plant,” Kristensen said.
A year later, in 1963, the US and the Soviet Union signed a nuclear test ban treaty, which banned further testing of nuclear weapons in space.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby declined Thursday to say whether the emerging Russian weapon has nuclear capabilities, noting only that it would violate an international treaty that prohibits the use of “nuclear weapons or other types of weapons of mass destruction” in prohibits orbiting the earth.
SATELLITE ATTACK TODAY
It’s the ability to do that kind of damage that makes it logical for the Russians to want to deploy a nuclear warhead in space, especially when they see their military and economy weakened after the past two years of fighting the U.S. supported Ukraine, said John Ferrari. , a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
A space-based weapon that could cripple U.S. communications and the U.S. economy could be an intimidating equalizer, and would be just the latest development in efforts by both Russia and China to weaponize space, he said.
In recent years, China has tested a satellite with a robotic arm that can maneuver toward a system, grab it and knock it out of orbit.
Russia has developed a ‘nesting doll’ satellite that opens to reveal a smaller satellite, and then opens to reveal a projectile that can destroy nearby satellites. In 2019, the Russians maneuvered a nesting doll near a US satellite.
When one of these nesting doll systems “parks next to one of our high-end NRO capabilities, they are now putting that asset at risk,” said US Space Force Deputy Chief of Space Operations Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt. at a space conference in 2022. NRO is the National Exploration Agency.
Russia also made headlines around the world when it conducted a more traditional anti-satellite test in 2021, shooting down one of its own systems. As with the Starfish test, the impact created a large cloud of orbiting debris, putting even the International Space Station at risk for a time.
THE NEW SPACE FORCE
The rapidly evolving threat in space was one of the key drivers behind the creation of the US Space Force, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing Thursday. In the years since its founding in 2019, the service has focused on developing a curriculum to train its service members, called Guardians, in detecting threats from space and wargame scenarios about what conflict in space would look like.
The creation of the Space Force increased spending on satellite systems and defense mechanisms. Previously, when space needs were spread among the military services, spending on a new satellite would have to compete for funding with ships or fighter jets — and the services had a more immediate need for aircraft and ships, Ferrari said.
But there is still more work to be done, and the revelation that Russia may be pursuing a nuclear weapon for space raises critical questions for Congress and the Defense Department, Ferrari said. If Russia uses a nuclear weapon to take out satellites and that cripples the US economy, does that justify the US bombing Russian cities in return?
“How do you respond to that? You don’t have a good option,” Ferrari said. “So now the question is, ‘What is the deterrence theory for this?’ ”
