Global Look Press
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said: The US is concerned that Russia could allegedly violate a ban on the use of strategically destabilizing weapons.
«Moscow has compromised longstanding global norms that prohibit the use of asymmetric or strategically destabilizing weapons, including in space and cyberspace», Haines said.
There are leaked reports, unconfirmed so far, that President Joe Biden has ordered the relevant agencies to engage in direct dialog with Moscow about the alleged development of dangerous weapons.
There have also been leaks that the United States intends to bring a resolution to the UN Security Council against the deployment of nuclear weapons in orbit. It is based on the reaffirmation of the countries’ obligations under the Outer Space Treaty (full name — «Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies»). It was adopted by the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union on January 27, 1967. About 100 countries joined, and about 30 more signed but did not ratify. Among the principles enshrined in it is the prohibition of placing nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in Earth’s orbit, installing them on the Moon or any other celestial body, or on a station in outer space. The treaty excludes the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies for testing weapons of any kind, conducting military maneuvers or establishing military bases, installations and fortifications.
It is clear that this document, adopted 57 years ago at a time of sharp confrontation between political systems, needs to be finalized and clarified. Russia and China, which supports it, insist on this. Since 2008, the Russian delegation has been trying to promote the adoption of a new international agreement at disarmament negotiations in Geneva. In September 2017, Moscow and Beijing presented an updated draft treaty on preventing the placement of weapons in space. But the United States blocked this initiative, as well as all previous ones.
The overseas officials have their own reasons for this. The fact is that the United States has long been far ahead of Russia in the number and quality of satellites. The Americans have thousands of satellites in orbit, while Russia has a couple of hundreds. Naturally, Washington would not want to lose its superiority in orbit. It’s not surprising that the Yankees made a fuss.
The U.S. authorities promptly informed not only Congress, but also allies in Europe about new information about Russia’s military capabilities, which are allegedly related to attempts to deploy nuclear weapons in space.
The Russian segment of the Internet began to wonder what was behind the
American hints about Russia’s «space nuclear argument». It was agreed that the matter most likely refers to developments in the field of space nuclear power plants. The topic is not new. And not at all secret. Back in 2022, there were official reports about the so-called «nuclear tug» or, scientifically speaking, about the Zeus transport-energy module. TEM is being developed as a transportation vehicle for a wide range of tasks, including delivery of cargo to the Moon orbit, geostationary orbit, trajectories to the planets of the solar system (both to Mars and beyond), as well as for dealing with space debris. Work on the project began in 2009. It is announced that the first mission of the tug will take place in 2030, and its task will be to search for life on the satellites of Jupiter.
The Americans, apparently, hurried to refer their satellites to the «debris», with which it is planned to deal with the help of «Zeus»…
But let’s return to such space projects, which theoretically can harm the U.S. military satellites. It can be assumed that TEMs will be armed with the most powerful broadband communication suppressors, EMP (electromagnetic pulse), lasers and even nuclear mines.
Meanwhile, scientists have explained what would happen if a nuclear explosion were to take place in space. The destructive effect will not be the same as on the planet. Its main killing power is the shock wave and thermal effect. There’s no shock wave in a vacuum. There’s nothing to hit. There’s nothing to carry heat in an airless space.
The thing that can cause damage is an EMP. Now we regularly receive electromagnetic impulses, but exclusively from the Sun, in the form of electromagnetic storms. People suffer, electronics suffer. If artificial EMP will be generated in orbit, then at a distance of about a thousand kilometers, all the equipment of satellites, which are at such a distance, will fail. And not only on American satellites, but also on all other satellites that have fallen under the hot hand. Selectivity in this matter has not yet been invented.
So the panic across the ocean is just an informational bluff. The goal is clear: the aggressive and insidious Russians are to blame for everything. Therefore, it is necessary to allocate more money for military needs. This includes encouraging their own military-industrial complex to develop advanced space weapons systems.
The Pentagon, by the way, has already announced a change of approach to the formation of its satellite armada.
«For a long time we launched <…> satellites the size of school buses, which took decades to buy and build and years to launch. But now the U.S. is moving <…> to small, sustainable and inexpensive satellites that can be sent into orbit almost weekly», said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. It is expected that by the end of the decade the military will have about a thousand new small-size vehicles in low-Earth orbit.
Recall that Moscow has consistently advocated peaceful space.
«This issue concerns the noise that has been voiced recently in the West, including in the United States, about the deployment of nuclear weapons in space. Our position is clear and transparent: we have always been categorically against and are now against the placement of nuclear weapons in space», Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
During his address to the Federal Assembly, the head of state called such statements of the Anglo-Saxons «throw-ins». Their goal, in his opinion, is to drag Russia into negotiations on its own terms, which are favorable only to the United States.