WASHINGTON: US Space Commander Gen. Jay Raymond blasted Moscow today for calling for space arms control even while his people are tracking a Russian test of a direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) missile, one Russian system among several that threaten US space systems.
““Russia’s DA-ASAT test provides yet another example that the threats to U.S. and allied space systems are real, serious and growing,” Raymond said in a terse statement. “This test is further proof of Russia’s hypocritical advocacy of outer space arms control proposals designed to restrict the capabilities of the United States while clearly having no intention of halting their counterspace weapons programs,” he added.
Todd Harrison, head of the Aerospace ad Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed. “This is yet another example of Russian hypocrisy when it comes to the weaponization of space,” he told me in an email. “Russia claims it will not be the first to deploy space weapons, but it has been testing and demonstrating counter space weapons since the 1960s. It should also serve as yet another wake up call for those who think the Space Force is not needed.”
Frank Rose, former State Department assistant secretary in charge of arms control during the Obama Admistration, also concurred. “Fundamentally, the test Gen. Raymond described is consistent with all the things the US government and independent experts have been saying about the evolving Russian ASAT program,” he told me in an email.
Other experts voiced caution — noting that little detail has yet to emerge about the exact parameters of the test. The SPACECOM announcement today gave no details of the test’s parameters, or whether it it involved destroying a target on orbit.
Several space watchers said the Russian test looks like one in a series of tests of the PL-19 Nudol and was not against an actual target. The Nudol is a mobile ASAT missile launcher that can reach satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO)
The Secure World Foundation (SWF) Global Counterspace Capabilities report found that the Nudol mobile ASAT missile has been tested “as many as nine times in the past,” SWF’s Brian Weeden told me in an email.
Victoria Samson, SWF’s Washington office director, noted that up to now Russia has not tested a debris-creating ASAT. On the other hand, China, the US and India (the most recent, on March 27, 2019) have all done so within the last decade.
Veteran space object tracker Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said that if it is just another Nudol booster test that does not create debris, it is “unclear why the US has its knickers in a twist.”
The test comes as the US military has been heavily caught up in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, both in trying to protect its own forces while maintaining mission readiness, and in helping other US government agencies with patient care efforts such as transporting testing swabs. Senior DoD officials have consistently expressed concerns that adversaries might see the current crisis as a ‘window of opportunity’ for aggressive anti-US activities.
“Space is critical to all nations and our way of life. The demands on space systems continue in this time of crisis where global logistics, transportation and communication are key to defeating the COVID-19 pandemic,” Raymond noted in the statement.
Rose, who is now a senior fellow at Brookings Institute, praised the Trump Administration’s military moves so far to counter growing space threats from both Russia and China — including the stand up of Space Command. However, he said that military might alone is not the answer to those threats — diplomacy is also needed. And on the diplomatic side, he said, “I give them very low marks.” The State Department, he explained, “has essentially been absent” in trying to find ways to lessen tensions in space.
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