Russia ‘should know better’ than to put an anti-satellite nuke in space, Space Command chief says

CORRECTED at 5:50pm ET to properly attribute comments to Gen. Stephen Whiting that had been misattributed to fellow panelist Gen. Gregory Guillot.

AFA 2024 — A senior US military official said today that it’s “highly concerning” that Russia is apparently considering putting an anti-satellite nuclear weapon in space — a threat that, if realized, “would affect virtually every man, woman and child on Earth.”

“Russia is the OG [original gangster] space power. They put up Sputnik, the first man, the first woman in space. They know better; they should know better,” head of US Space Command Gen. Stephen Whiting said, saying the weapon would be a “violation” of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. “Secondly, it’s indiscriminate. It’s not just going to potentially affect US satellites. It will affect Russian satellites, Chinese satellites, Indian satellites, European satellites, Japanese satellites. Those kind of impacts will have real repercussions for those of us here on planet Earth.

“So, the world can’t and shouldn’t accept that somebody would place a nuclear weapon in orbit,” he told an audience at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Washington.

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This spring the Biden administration, citing “credible information,” accused Russia of using a satellite in orbit to conduct tests that could presage the placement of a nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapon.

“The United States has been aware of Russia’s pursuit of this sort of capability dating back years, but only recently have we been able to make a more precise assessment of their progress,” Mallory Stewart, assistant secretary for the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability, told the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in May.

Stewart noted that Russia claimed the satellite already in orbit was only there for “scientific purposes,” but the US government suspected otherwise based in part on the satellite’s unusual altitude.

In earlier testimony before Congress, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb said a Russian space-based nuclear capability “could pose a threat to all satellites operated by countries and companies around the globe, as well as to the vital communications, scientific, meteorological, agricultural, commercial, and national security services we all depend upon.”

Russia has dismissed the accusation as “fake news,” but the denial does not appear to have changed the conclusions of US space officials.

On Tuesday Lt. Gen. Douglas, the commander of US Space Forces — Space, listed various threats that have emerged to US assets in orbit since the founding of the Space Force in 2019. Among them, he said, “we have a possible threat from Russia on maybe a nuclear capability in space.”