While Russian forces continue to gain ground on the Ukrainian front, there is another area on which Moscow seems to be banking, for several months, in an attempt to destabilize Washington, Kiev’s main military ally: space. In this key area, tensions are accumulating. Latest episode to date, the revelation, Wednesday May 22, of the deployment of a “space weapon” Russian “in the same orbit as a US government satellite”by Pentagon spokesperson General Pat Ryder, who spoke at a press conference.
“Russia has launched a satellite into low Earth orbit that we believe is a space weapon capable of attacking other satellites in low Earth orbit”, declared General Ryder. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the accusations and said only that Russia was acting “in full compliance with international law”. They reveal, in the eyes of experts, a revived competition between Moscow and Washington in the field of military space.
“In recent years, in meetings between military space officials, China has been the main concern. Russia appeared to be a little outdated”explains General Michel Friedling, France’s first space commander, between 2019 and 2022. “But since then, there has been a strong comeback from Moscow, which seems to be stepping up its efforts even today”continues General Friedling, author of a book on the threats and challenges of the new space age (Space CommanderBouquins, 2023) and founder of Look Up Space, a start-up specializing in space debris monitoring and the security of orbiting satellites.
“Game of cat and mouse”
Moscow has mastered most of the know-how concerning anti-satellite weapons since the 1960s and 1970s, when the rivalry with Washington in space was at its peak. With the fall of the Soviet Union, these programs were shelved. However, since 2014, the year of the annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in Donbass, Russia has reactivated them and increased the development of anti-satellite weapons. Long unsuccessful, these initiatives ended up regaining credibility at the turn of 2019-2020 and, since then, there has been a constant “cat and mouse game” with the United States, according to General Friedling.
In December 2019, Moscow thus triggered a first alert, for Washington, by successfully launching a satellite called “Cosmos 2543”, capable of releasing, once in space, two other small satellites, a sort of “Russian dolls”. » satellites, as the experts have called them. This initiative contravenes the rules of use in the space domain where, to prevent objects from colliding, each State first registers, with the General Secretariat of the United Nations, any object it intends to place in orbit. A few months later, in June 2020, this same Cosmos 2543 went so far as to practice launching a space “torpedo”, according to the Pentagon, while anti-satellite shots traditionally take place from the ground.
You have 64.51% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.