Even as Russian forces crossed the border into Ukraine in the early stages of their invasion, a hack that damaged the internet connected to a satellite communications network was already underway. This strike was less obvious.
Western countries claim that Russia’s cyberattack, which it launched an hour before its ground invasion in February 2022, was intended to sabotage Kyiv’s command and control during the crucial early stages of the conflict.The cyberattack, which hit modems linked to a communication satellite, had far-reaching effects – stalling wind turbines in Germany and cutting the internet for tens of thousands of people and businesses across Europe. Following the attack, Ukraine scrambled for other ways to get online.For governments and security analysts, the cyberattack underscored how satellites –– which play an increasingly critical role helping militaries position troops, run communications, and launch or detect weapons – can become a key target during war.
As countries and companies build out satellite constellations, a growing number of governments are vying for technology that could disrupt or even destroy adversaries’ assets – not just on land, like Russia’s alleged cyberattack – but in space too.Enter signal jamming and spoofing, high-powered lasers to dazzle imaging sensors, anti-satellite missiles and spacecraft with the capacity to interfere with others in orbit – counterspace technologies that analysts say leading powers like the United States, Russia and China could use to target each other’s satellites.An extreme example of a potential counterspace weapon was thrown into the spotlight earlier this year when US intelligence suggested, according to CNN reporting, that Russia was attempting to develop a space-based, anti-satellite nuclear weapon – a claim Moscow has denied.
Far from only affecting military-use satellites, such a weapon could have broad, devastating impacts – for example, upending satellites the world relies on to predict the weather and respond to disasters, or even potentially affecting global navigation systems used for everything from banking and cargo shipping to hailing a ride share and ambulance dispatch. Last week, the US accused Russia of launching a satellite “presumably capable of attacking others in low Earth orbit,” with American officials saying it follows prior Russian satellite launches of likely “counterspace systems” in 2019 and 2022.Tracking countries’ development of counterspace capabilities is difficult, given their closely guarded nature and the dual use ambiguity of many space technologies.
Both Russia and China have advanced their development of tech that could be used for such purposes in recent years, while the US builds on related space research and capabilities, according to experts and open-source reports.Development of counterspace technologies is playing out amid a new era of focus on space – where the US and China are competing to put astronauts on the moon and build research bases there and advances in satellite launch technology mean a growing number of actors, including US adversaries like North Korea and Iran, are putting assets in orbit. And as geopolitical rivalries mount on Earth, experts say Beijing and Moscow are increasingly interested in finding ways to deny the US – as the country with the most ground-based capabilities linked to space – the ability to use them.The idea of weapons aimed at or positioned in space remains highly controversial, but it isn’t new.
Decades ago, the US and the Soviet Union vied for technologies to knock-out each other’s satellites, with Russia’s 1957 launch of Sputnik – the world’s first artificial satellite – quickly followed by US counterspace tests.Since the fall of the Soviet Union, America has become the pre-eminent power when it comes to capabilities in space linked to conducting military operations on Earth, analysts say – a strength Russia and China have hoped to turn against it to even the battlefield.“Developing counterspace capabilities such as (anti-satellite) weapons provides a means to disrupt your adversary’s space-based capabilities, whether it is communication, navigation, or command and control systems and logistics networks that rely on space-based systems,” said Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, director of the Center for Security, Strategy & Technology at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.
“Denying the US any advantage it may have from the use of space in a conventional military conflict is what is driving Russia and China in terms of their capability development and strategies,” she said.
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