by Fresh US intelligence circulated in Congress reportedly indicates that Russia is developing an anti-satellite weapon in space with a nuclear component.
News reports speculated about what might increase the military after Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, released a cryptic but alarming statement on February 14, 2024, regarding the intelligence, which he declared as “a serious threat to national security.” Some sources suggested nuclear weapons. Others are skeptical of a nuclear-powered weapon but not a nuclear warhead.
The White House declared the following day that the Russian system is a space-based anti-satellite weapon under development and that if deployed, it would violate the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits weapons of mass destruction in space. The Kremlin responded by dismissing the reports as “malicious fabrications.”
Although the exact weapon is known to the public, the events raise the specter of nuclear weapons in space over time. Relations between the United States and Russia are at an all-time low, and Russia is currently waging a war of aggression in Ukraine.
As a scholar of nuclear strategy, I know that the US reports come at a time of significant change in the nuclear world order. China and others are expanding and modernizing their arsenals. Iran is close to being able to produce a nuclear weapon. Other countries may eventually need their own nuclear weapons.
At the same time, some countries are developing new weapons to attack targets in space. This list includes Russia, the United States, China and India, although there are currently no weapons in space.
Cold war schemes
The recent revelation about Russian space weapons raises the possibility that countries may decide to deploy nuclear weapons in space at some point. Some have tried before.
The US and the Soviet Union researched nuclear detonation in space during the Cold War. In the late 1960s, the Soviets tested a missile that could be placed in low Earth orbit and could come out of orbit and carry a nuclear warhead to Earth.
Neither country has permanently placed nuclear weapons in space. Both were parties to the Outer Space Treaty and the 1963 Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which banned nuclear detonations in space. Moscow and Washington negotiated these treaties to maintain the Cold War arms race.
These treaties restricted behavior in the late Cold War. However, Russia’s violations of nuclear arms control treaties, as well as the withdrawal of the United States and Russia from various treaties since 2002, suggest that they may not be in the future.
Nukes in space
But why would a country want space nukes? There are a few reasons.
Countries could point space-based nuclear weapons at Earth. In theory, weapons from space could avoid early detection radar and missile defenses. However, there are significant disadvantages to dropping nuclear weapons directly from space.
There may be defensive or offensive motivations for placing weapons in space to achieve goals on Earth. Weapons that evade missile defenses could ensure nuclear deterrence. This is a defensive strategy aimed at preventing an attack against the state that put them in space.
Alternatively, these weapons could help a country achieve a first strike capability. A first strike requires the ability to destroy enough of an enemy’s nuclear weapons—or the nuclear command, control, and communications systems necessary to manage them—to prevent nuclear retaliation.
Countries could focus space-based weapons on other regions of space, such as Russia’s developing military. This conjures up images of nuclear weapons hitting asteroids to protect Earth from a collision.
Satellite killers
The reality is less dramatic but no less worrying. The most likely use is to destroy enemy military satellites. Damage to navigation satellites would hinder an adversary’s ability to fight a war. Precision strike weapons and ground-based forces rely on satellite constellations such as GPS or Russia’s GLONASS system to locate and engage targets.
Countries may also want the ability to destroy enemy space weapons, including space-based missile defenses. Although no country has yet deployed these weapons, future leaders may fear and deploy space weapons first to fend off this threat.
Most dangerously, these weapons could destroy or damage satellites vital to the enemy’s nuclear command, control and communications system, including early warning satellites that track missile launches and communications satellites that deliver military orders .
Nuclear weapons damage satellites due to a wave of gamma radiation created by a nuclear detonation. This radiation damages critical subsystems within a satellite.
But such weapons have significant disadvantages. A detonation would damage any satellites within range of the gamma radiation – including those of the attacking country, its allies and neutral countries.
However, a space-based nuclear anti-satellite weapon may have several advantages over other options for attacking countries. Ground-based anti-satellite systems can only engage targets in low Earth orbit.
Even a nuclear-powered anti-satellite weapon in space would create a new threat without a nuclear warhead. Such a device would have a greater range than ground-based anti-satellite weapons and could fulfill its mission over a long period of time. Both factors would increase the number of satellites it could damage or destroy.
Many of the satellites a country may want to reach are placed in orbits higher than the range of ground systems. This is true for some of the US systems that Russia may want to target.
The Kremlin’s interest in space weapons could be an attempt to reduce America’s ability to fight a war; threat to nuclear command, control and communication systems; or hedge against space-based missile defenses. Alternatively, the Russian defense industry may drive their development to make a profit.
A new arms race?
Whatever their initial purpose, placing nuclear weapons in space could destabilize it. Although there is no universally accepted definition of strategic stability, scholars often define it as a combination of crisis stability, based on the risk of increased nuclear stability during a military crisis, and arms race stability – where possible to avoid countries’ actions and reactions. an expensive and dangerous arms race.
Space-based nuclear weapons increase the risk of a country resorting to nuclear weapons during a crisis. Both weapons aimed at Earth and those aimed at targets in space create incentives to use nuclear weapons preemptively.
The threat of either strike creates use-it-or-lose-it pressure, prompting a preemptive nuclear strike to limit the damage an adversary can do. After that, a pre-emptive nuclear strike would likely trigger further escalation, leading to an all-out nuclear war.
Placing nuclear weapons in space could spark a new arms race. Because the sole purpose of space weapons is to destroy the ally’s space weapons, the US can respond to Russian weapons with their own. Russia may then resort to new weapons to maintain its advantage. Others, like China, could respond to American weapons, which could prompt a response from India, followed by one from Pakistan.
There are escalating pressures and the threat of an arms race even if the first mover puts weapons in space defensively. A security dilemma could be created if the introduction of space weapons is what scholars of international relations call a security dilemma: activities that improve the security of one country but make others insecure.
Defensive and offensive weapons are often indistinguishable. The weapons that could improve one country’s security by blocking space-based missile defense could also be used offensively against nuclear command, control and communications systems. Even if leaders in one country thought the other country was acting defensively today, there is no way to know they won’t act offensively tomorrow.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a non-profit, independent news organization that brings you reliable facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Spencer A. Warren, University of California, San Diego
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Spenser A. Warren does not work for, consult with, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article this article, and did not disclose any relevant connections beyond their academic appointment.
