The White House has confirmed it is monitoring a new Russian anti-satellite weapon it says is being developed but not yet deployed, calling it “disturbing” but not an immediate threat to anyone’s safety.
National security spokesman John Kirby would not directly confirm or deny reports that the new Russian weapon was nuclear, but he did say it was “space-based” and that it violated the 1967 Outer Arms Treaty. Space Treaty, which prohibits the deployment in space of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction.
Kirby briefed reporters at the White House amid a wave of speculation following cryptic comments about the new threat by Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan was scheduled to meet Thursday afternoon with the “gang of eight” congressional leaders from both parties to discuss the threat, after Sullivan and other US officials expressed surprise at Turner’s decision to hold a classified briefing.
“While I am limited by how much I can share about the specific nature of the threat. I can confirm that this is related to an anti-satellite capability that Russia is developing,” Kirby said. “This is not an active, deployed capability, and while Russia’s pursuit of this particular capability is concerning, there is no immediate threat to anyone’s safety. We are not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack people or cause physical destruction here on Earth. That said, we have been closely monitoring this Russian activity and we will continue to take it very seriously.”
He added that the weapon believed to be in development “would be space-based and it would be a violation of the Outer Space Treaty to which more than 130 countries have signed”.
The existence of the new national security threat was disclosed by Turner on Wednesday in an apparent violation of the secrecy provisions under which the “gang of eight” is briefed by members of the administration. On Thursday, Sullivan expressed surprise at Turner’s decision to make a public call for the case to be declassified.
During a visit to Albania on Thursday, Foreign Minister Antony Blinken said: “It’s not an active capability, but it’s a potential one that we take very, very seriously and I expect we will more have to say soon. Stay tuned for that.”
Blinken added that the Biden administration was “also consulting with allies and partners on this issue”.
“President Biden’s focus is on the security of the U.S. and its people and as we approach this and every other issue, that is first and foremost on his mind,” he said.
Before the Outer Space Treaty was signed in 1967, the US conducted a series of high-altitude nuclear tests, the largest of which was Starfish Prime in July 1962, which lit up much of the sky over the Pacific Ocean. caused an electromagnetic pulse that was much larger than expected, and caused the formation of radiation belts around the Earth, causing satellites to malfunction in their path.
Starfish Prime demonstrated that a nuclear explosion in space could have an indiscriminate impact on all satellites in orbit, paving the way for the nuclear powers to sign the Outer Space Treaty five years later.
John Logsdon, the founder of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, said that if Russia was planning to launch an anti-satellite nuclear weapon, it could mean Moscow has “developed a technologically more sophisticated system, where its effects on is somehow limited”.
On the other hand, launching a nuclear-powered spacecraft designed to jam other satellites would mean a return to the Soviet past, when Moscow launched several such craft, according to Logsdon.
In 1978, a Soviet nuclear-powered satellite, Kosmos 954, malfunctioned and crashed in northern Canada, spreading radioactive debris over hundreds of kilometers.
Russia has been working intensively on conventional anti-satellite technology for the past 14 years, the Secure World Foundation think tank reported last year in a report on Global Counterspace Capabilities.
“There is strong evidence that since 2010, Russia has begun a set of programs to recover many of its Cold War-era counterspace capabilities,” the report said. It added that much of the Russian activity was focused on surveillance, but noted that Moscow had deployed two “sub-satellites” at high speed, suggesting that some of the Russian activity was “of a weapons nature”.
A transition to nuclear-powered “killer” satellites would not be illegal, and Logsdon argued that they would not change the balance of power in the continued militarization of space.
“Not at all,” he said. “It’s just another way for a spacecraft to get power, whether it’s through solar panels, or another way to produce electricity, or a nuclear reactor.”
