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CNN reported that Russia is trying to build a nuclear space weapon to destroy satellites.
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Space security experts said the Business Insider reports could be true, but it’s not time to worry just yet.
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They said a secret weapon was more likely to raise global tensions than to be used.
This week’s cryptic intelligence reports that Russia is building an unspecified nuclear space weapon have sparked fears among Americans who worry that rising nuclear threats could mean a global catastrophe.
Experts on space security and the risks of nuclear weapons told Business Insider that rumors of Russia creating such a weapon are likely true but that it is not time to panic just yet.
CNN reported, citing unnamed officials familiar with the information, that the device that military officials have been briefed on is a type of nuclear EMP designed to “destroy satellites by creating a massive energy wave when detonated, which could be affecting a huge range of commercial and government sectors. satellites that the world below depends on to talk on cell phones, pay bills, and surf the internet.”
NPR reported that the White House confirmed that Russia is working on a weapon that could threaten satellites in space but that nothing has been deployed.
The deployment of such weapons would violate the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by the Soviet Union and 113 other countries – including the US -. Violation of the treaty would require international retaliation.
What would a space nuke do, exactly?
However, Russia has been developing anti-satellite weapons for years, John Erath, senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, told BI.
“They’ve tested one, they’ve destroyed one of their own satellites, and they’ve proven they can do this,” Erath said. “So these reports that came out this week are not surprising at all. It is certainly very credible that they would be working on something new and more effective as a way to take down American satellites. But that’s where it gets a little complicated because that’s not actually a nuclear weapon.”
Nuclear weapons, by their nature, are imprecise, meaning that even a fairly controlled explosion would take out anything in the immediate vicinity – so Russia couldn’t target American satellites without endangering its own, many of them operating at a similar orbit.
The potential damage is not negligible: In Starfish Prime, a weapons test in 1962 during the Cold War, a 1.4 megaton nuclear warhead detonated at about 250 miles altitude — a low earth orbit, which is between 62 miles altitude and 1,250 miles. Ultimately, that test knocked out about a third of the active satellites in orbit due to the explosion, its debris, and the radiation left behind.
These days, that height is where the International Space Station, the Hubble Telescope, and about 4,000 SpaceX Starlink satellites now operate.
GPS satellites operate higher than that, in mid-Earth orbit (about 12,500 miles up), and the US’s billion-dollar intelligence-gathering satellites, the nuclear command control satellites, and many SATCOM satellites are in geostationary orbit, about 22,370 miles up.
Current information on Russia’s potential weapon does not indicate that it would be anywhere near the size of the Starfish Prime warhead, or how high it would be, said Victoria Samson, senior director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation, BI said.
“Our knowledge is good, but it is not omniscient,” said Samson, referring to the position of the United States before it invaded Iraq regarding the development of weapons of mass destruction. “So, I hope this is misinformation. But we don’t even know exactly what they think is happening just because of the classification, so a lot of it is just speculation.”
The most significant risk at this time, noted Samson and Erath, is the possibility that such a weapon would escalate international tensions between the US and Russia and normalize nuclear threats instead of diplomacy.
“If nuclear blackmail is normalized as a tool of international relations, then everyone will want to have the ability to do it,” Erath said. “At the end of the day, you don’t make threats unless you’re willing to make them, and somebody’s going to want to make one at some point.”
He added: “And a nuclear attack anywhere in the world is a very serious thing. It’s not going to be the old Cold War mantra of destroying the world many times; that’s science fiction. But the effects are there, in both . neighborhood and around the world, it will still be devastating.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
