As Russia ramps up its nuclear strategy — with a very sensible and secret attempt to put the first plutonium warhead into orbit and with simulated tactical bomb explosions near Ukraine — it is poised to provoke a clash with the 32-nation NATO alliance, most sensible defense leaders say. Academics in the United States
In the past, the White House has denounced Moscow’s clandestine project to release a spacecraft equipped with a nuclear warhead, even as space defense experts across the American war game are looking at how to save this new space superbomb from a threat to American satellites and how to react if the weapon is still on fire.
President Vladimir V. Putin has climbed a nuclear-escalating pyramid, but it is not yet clear what process will end with the explosion of a resistant nuclear warhead in low-Earth orbit, said Spenser Warren, an expert on Russia’s nuclear modernization under Putin’s rule. of the California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.
“Russian nuclear threats have skyrocketed at various points,” Warren told me in an interview, adding her recent virtual detonations of tactical bombs on a fake Ukrainian battlefield, her suspension of the New START arms treaty between the U. S. and Russia, and now her weapons. race. Perfect an orbital bomb to shake the skies.
Hypothetically, the White House could simply respond to Russia’s release of a nuclear-tipped craft by shooting it down with an anti-satellite missile as part of an act of self-defense, says Dr. Kelly. Laura Grego, a leading expert on nuclear weapons and missile defense, and area security at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“You can use a conventionally armed interceptor of the type that the United States and others have developed to destroy nuclear weapons,” he told me.
But this project would be risky, he warns.
“Russia could simply detonate the nuclear weapon preemptively if it saw the interceptor launch and suspected where it was headed,” he says.
As a co-author of the Outer Space Treaty, Russia is obliged never to put a nuclear bomb into orbit, he stresses. “The position to check compliance with the legal responsibility not to place nuclear weapons in outer space is before launch. “
“It’s a lot more complicated once you launch a weapon like that. “
But Russia has suspended nuclear inspections required by the New START Treaty and will in fact oppose any request through the United States or the UN to its nuclear weapons centers to place the bomb in orbit.
“There would possibly be contextual clues as to whether a satellite carries a nuclear weapon,” says Dr. Grego, “but I think there are pretty clever techniques to disguise it as anything else, at least for a while. “
Russian rockets occupy a central position in the center of Moscow. The Kremlin is expanding its nuclear strategy. . . [ ] with a nuclear-tipped spacecraft to patrol the planet (Photo via NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty Images)
“When we had a civilian commitment to Russia, there was a general consensus not to place nuclear weapons in space,” says John Hamre, a former deputy secretary of defense and now president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, one of Washington DC’s most sensible defense think tanks.
But Russia could abandon this détente in the area right now, he told me in an interview.
During an engaging CSIS informal talk, moderated by Dr Hamre, entitled “The Nuclear Option: Deciphering Russia’s New Space Threat”, he said: “This implies that there is now a weapon in orbit or that there may simply be a weapon in orbit. “And that’s a very deep implication. Nuclear weapons in space are profoundly different from nuclear weapons here on planet Earth.
“We’re used to thinking about explosion effects, shock waves and all that kind of stuff. All this is the product of a terrestrial environment,” he added.
In an interview just after that meeting, Dr. Hamre told me, “Much of the destructive quality of nuclear weapons on Earth comes from heat (detonation heats air molecules) and the effects of explosion (the compression of air being violently propelled through the atmosphere). . ). Part of the power of the explosion is transmitted through the impact on the ground, generating ejections. There’s none of that in space. Therefore, almost all power is dissipated in the form of X-rays. . »
“A nuclear detonation in space,” he says, “would extend many miles away. “
Even in the last arms festival that marked the First Cold War, when Moscow and Washington clashed to control thermonuclear bombs capable of setting entire continents ablaze, both sides agreed to ban celestial weapons so that their race to the moon would remain peaceful.
Russia’s rejection of the space pact by attacking its apocalyptic warheads in orbit would put an end to this long truce.
Today, in the shadow of the former Soviet space superpower, Russia runs “a structurally space-oriented program,” says James Clay Moltz, one of America’s most sensible space defense specialists and a professor at the Monterey Naval Postgraduate School.
To mask Russia’s decline as a space power, “Putin turns out to have as his only card to threaten American satellites and even his own surroundings,” Professor Moltz told me in an interview.
“But the use of a nuclear weapon in orbit would be an act of terrorism,” he said.
“Electromagnetic pulses and radiation would indiscriminately kill astronauts on the International Space Station and taikonauts on China’s Tiangong station. “
The explosion could destroy “thousands of satellites that supply critical data for the global economy and human security on land, sea and air,” added Professor Moltz, of a world-famous book series on the unfolding risks of wondrous conflicts of force in space, adding crowded orbits.
“Any country that committed such an act,” he claimed, “would immediately become a foreign pariah. “
If Russia detonated a powerful nuclear warhead near the International Space Station, killing its American and European astronauts and destroying a number of American satellites, this act of aggression could temporarily escalate into a superpower conflict, according to Professor Jack Beard, one of the world’s leading experts on the patchwork of UN treaties governing space defense and director of the Space Law Program. and Homeland Security at the University of Nebraska College of Law.
The Russian Soyuz rocket is about to be introduced on the ISS. Enhanced space rest with Array co-construction.
Professor Beard, who recently published the first “Comprehensive Handbook on the International Law of Military Activities and Operations in Space,” says the explosion would likely annihilate only one ring of SpaceX satellites, but also U. S. defense spacecraft orbiting Earth along the same orbital. airplane.
If it were a triple attack on the United States – adding its astronauts, its New Space allies and its military satellites – it would be identified as an “armed attack” within the meaning of the UN Charter that justifies the use of force in itself. “Defense,” Professor Beard told me.
Even if this hypothetical warhead did not explode on U. S. soil, he said, the White House and Defense Department would most likely consider “an armed attack on the United States itself. “
The president would temporarily claim that the United States reserves the right to respond with armed force.
And even if the bombing was carried out beyond U. S. borders, Beard says, that doesn’t necessarily rule out an attack on the territory of the guilty state.
Professor Beard, a former Pentagon legal adviser, says that when Libyan state-sponsored terrorists were in the Berlin nightclub bombing that killed three Americans in 1986, President Ronald Reagan responded with a series of airstrikes across Libya.
In addition to the deaths of U. S. astronauts in space, the destruction of U. S. military satellites may also warrant the use of force in response, Beard said.
If the United States decides to use force to protect itself, it could also try to invoke Article Five of the NATO agreement, which provides for collective defense after an attack on one of the alliance’s members, he said.
The beginnings of the next global war, unleashed in space, would be unleashed.
A community. Many voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts.
Our network aims to connect other people through open and thoughtful conversations. We need our readers to share their perspectives and exchange ideas and facts in one space.
To do so, please comply with the posting regulations in our site’s terms of use. Below we summarize some of those key regulations. In short, civilians.
Your message will be rejected if we realize that it seems to contain:
User accounts will be blocked if we become aware that users are engaged in:
So, how can you be a user?
Thank you for reading our Community Standards. Read the full list of publication regulations discovered in our site’s terms of use.