Russia’s plans to deploy nuclear weapons in space could be “catastrophic”, a Canadian military leader has warned on Ukrinform.
Moscow’s reported ambitions “appear quite alarming”, said Brigadier General Christopher Horner, commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Frying electronics
Satellite warfare has been a threat for some years and the latest “devastating” development is the “possibility of Russia detonating a nuclear weapon in space”, said the Daily Mail.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
In 2024 the US believed the Kremlin was developing an “anti-satellite missile tipped with a nuclear warhead for a potential surprise attack in low orbit”. Simulated blast tests by nuclear experts at the Pentagon have suggested that such an attack would destroy thousands of Western satellites.
Satellite networks are “critical to everything from banks synchronising their transactions to navigation tasks that ranged from guiding planes and ships to ensuring a pizza delivery driver finds the right address”.
An anti-satellite nuke would “combine a physical attack that would ripple outwards, destroying more satellites”, with the nuclear component being “used to fry their electronics”, said The Associated Press.
It could “render low-Earth orbit unusable for satellites for as long as a year”, said Republican member of Congress Mike Turner, and the effects would be “devastating”. The US and its allies could be “vulnerable to economic upheaval” and “even a nuclear attack”. The scenario is “the Cuban Missile crisis in space”, said Turner.
Satellite killers
If Russia were to deploy such a “satellite-killing weapon”, it would violate the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, The New York Times said in 2024. This kind of space weaponisation from Russia and China is “one of the primary reasons” the US Space Force was established, said AP.
Now countries are “scrambling to create their own rocket and space programmes to exploit commercial prospects and ensure they aren’t dependent on foreign satellites”, said Fortune.
The US Space Force was launched in 2019 to protect US interests in space and to defend its satellites from attacks by enemies. It’s “far smaller” than the US Army, Navy or Air Force, but it’s “growing”.
Meanwhile, Horner warned that Canada doesn’t have the “capability” to disable a potential Russian nuclear bomb in space. So “my only advice as a military officer is to put pressure” on Moscow so that they don’t follow through with the plan, because that would be an “incredibly terrible thing”.