Russia Just Showed How Vulnerable America Is to ‘Scorched Earth’ Space War

A Russian anti-satellite weapon forced American astronauts on the International Space Station into the space equivalent of hiding in a bunker last week, showing just how disturbingly vulnerable the U.S. is in space.

The weapon, a direct-ascent anti-satellite missile, was launched with no warning to America and struck an old satellite during a demonstration. The impact created a massive debris field of more than 1,500 pieces, any of which could do devastating damage to the orbital infrastructure upon which the American military depends.

What’s even more disturbing is that two Russian cosmonauts, Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, were on the ISS during the event. That indicates that Vladimir Putin is willing to risk his own citizens’ lives to demonstrate Russia’s prowess in space warfare. Effectively, the Russian Federation put at risk the lives of those two cosmonauts, as well as four American astronauts — Mark Vande Hei, Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, and Kayla Barron. German astronaut Matthias Maurer was also on the station during the dangerous demonstration. All seven astronauts were forced to take cover in the return vehicle.

This was the fourth time a satellite has been shot down by a missile, proving that Moscow now has this potentially game-changing capability. Russia has attempted such a demonstration before but always missed its target. China has also displayed similar capabilities as have India and the United States. However, these nations’ weapons tests were much less destructive.

“Russia has demonstrated a deliberate disregard for the security, safety, stability, and long-term sustainability of the space domain for all nations,” the U.S. Space Command’s General James Dickinson told CNN. “The debris created by Russia’s DA-ASAT will continue to pose a threat to activities in outer space for years to come, putting satellites and space missions at risk, as well as forcing more collision avoidance maneuvers. Space activities underpin our way of life and this kind of behavior is simply irresponsible.”

The satellite in question posed a debris risk to the space station due to the high altitude of the test, which will cause the debris to remain in orbit for a long time and which risks triggering a chain reaction. Effectively, the Russian weapon’s test was the equivalent of firing a shotgun in a crowded room where anyone hit by the initial blast would also be forced to let off a shotgun blast of their own. This is the best way to think about the potential cascade that Russia risked triggering, which scientists call the Kessler syndrome, in which each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions. Scientists estimate that this kind of weapon could generate so much debris in orbit that mankind’s ability to safely access space would be jeopardized for multiple generations.

What the Russians did is simple yet very difficult to defend against, as even a small object moving at high orbital speeds can damage a much larger spacecraft, creating numerous dangerous objects that could go on to create even more such objects in an exponential chain reaction that would end with blank screens and disrupted U.S. military communications.

A war in space would be devastating for the American people, the military, and the U.S. economy. Each of the over 1,500 pieces of new space debris is a huge hazard for satellites that enhance America’s military advantages and provide critical services such as broadband Internet, cellphone service, GPS, weather forecasting, satellite radio, and television to the U.S. economy.

Worse still, an adversary such as Russia or China (which first shot down a satellite in 2007) would probably be perfectly happy to deny space access to both themselves and America in a conflict, as the U.S. military is far more reliant on space superiority to achieve its objectives than they are. Both near-peer powers have demonstrated the potential to shoot down satellites in a way that creates vast debris clouds in orbit of the type that could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges incredibly difficult for everyone. But that would be more of a loss for America.

America’s plans to win any potential conflict with the Russians are heavily dependent on space technology. America isn’t able to defend Europe against the Russians tank for tank and gun for gun, as the Russians have vastly more tanks than America’s European allies. Instead, the U.S. uses its space advantage to enhance the capabilities of small groups of American warfighters and our allies.

For example, the F-35 fighter relies heavily on space-based communications satellites to create the “network centric warfare” effects that make it such a powerful tool in America’s arsenal. The satellites that are now vulnerable to Russia are the same ones ensuring that America’s precision weapons can pinpoint targets so accurately that strike errors are measured in inches.

That advantage is reliant on our satellites. If Russia knocks out our reconnaissance satellites, the U.S. military would be effectively blind. Without our communications satellites, we’d be deaf. Without our navigational satellites, we’d be unable to aim. The critical military importance of space was obscured in recent conflicts, where the U.S. fought against entities such as Saddam’s Iraq or the Taliban, which had essentially no counter-space capabilities.

The current network of large U.S. military and intelligence satellites does provide a major war-winning advantage over other countries, but it was built to operate in an uncontested environment. It simply isn’t resilient to threats.

In 2017, the U.S. Air Force pledged to invest $6.6 billion in protecting satellites over the next six years. But the service could spend upwards of $10 billion on space operations from combined public and classified budgets, according to the Air Force Times.

One thing is clear: The Russians have shown that our current level of satellite protection is inadequate and that the U.S. is terrifyingly vulnerable to this sort of deliberately destructive “scorched earth” space warfare.