“Any attack on US infrastructure will see an appropriate response.” This is what spokesman for the National Security Council John Kirby told the press Thursday, October 27. The United States would “hold Russia accountable for such an attack, should it occur”, he added. The reason for this concern from Washington? Russian threats against US commercial satellites, pointing them out as potential legitimate targets.
A Russian Foreign Ministry official, Konstantin Vorontsov, told the United Nations on Wednesday that the use by Western countries of commercial satellites “for military purposes” represented an “extremely dangerous trend”. “These states do not realize that such actions actually constitute indirect participation in armed conflicts,” the Russian official said. “Quasi-civilian infrastructure could become legitimate targets for a response,” he added.
Missile fire, laser…
The storyline is not science fiction. “An attack against commercial satellites is technically possible even if it is not easy to destroy them”, note for L’Express Michel Goya, former colonel of the navy troops, now a historian of the war. “Since the 1980s, Russia has had the technology to strike satellites, by missiles fired from the ground, by laser, or by using ‘kamikaze’ killer satellites in space,” he said. “If Russia did that, it would go into another phase of the war and there would be an escalation. Its satellites would be attacked and the whole world system would be hampered. I don’t think it wants to alienate the world.” , nuance with L’Express General Dominique Trinquand, military expert and former head of the French mission to the UN.
If satellites have never been shot down during military conflicts, Moscow has already done so during exercises on its own machines. Thus, on November 16, 2021, Russia carried out a test firing against one of its old, decommissioned satellites. This anti-satellite missile launch was successful but caused an international outcry. It has indeed generated a cloud of debris that regularly interferes with the International Space Station (ISS). The numerous debris generated become indeed dangerous projectiles. In particular, they can then collide with the thousands of other satellites in orbit, on which States rely for a large number of activities, such as communication.
Konstantin Vorontsov did not specify which commercial satellites he was referring to. But as related International mailaccording Radio Svoboda, the Russian edition of Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, it is basically the Starlink satellite communication system from Elon’s SpaceX company Musk, “widely used by the Ukrainian army”. The company indeed provides kits to connect to the Internet. Radio Svoboda also recalls that the United States regularly provides images from the Maxar, Planet Labs and BlackSky satellites and that the Ukrainian intelligence services have direct links with the specialists of these companies. The latter have also been the subject of computer attacks attributed to Russian hackers.
A destruction of Starlink satellites is however impossible, specifies Michel Goya: “Starlink is a myriad of small satellites, and as there are many of them, we cannot destroy them all.” General Dominique Trinquand is on the same line: “As the constellations of satellites have now doubled, tripled, even quadrupled, there is little chance of obtaining a decisive effect.” Indeed, SpaceX has deployed nearly 3,000 Starlink satellites since 2019 and is carrying out about one launch per week with its own Falcon 9 rockets to accelerate the deployment of its constellation.
As Numerama reminds us, the use of commercial satellites to support Ukraine is of two types: communication satellites, which allow the country to keep telephone and Internet connections operational as well as observation satellites, which provide intelligence by taking pictures of the ground. Maxar Technologies, an American company, made it possible to detect the presence of Russian military convoys, the destruction of Mariupol or even to prove a little more the war crimes committed in Boutcha thanks to its shots from space.
Another possible method: lasers. As reported by BFMTV, General Michel Friedling, who heads the Joint Space Command (CIE), indicated in 2018 that Russia has Sokol airborne lasers on the Ilyushin 76 platform as well as a laser called “Peresvet”, which “could have a anti-satellite capability”. Last July,The Space Review“detected in official documents published in Russia research on a new anti-satellite laser whose launch pad will be installed on a site under the Kona space center. “I’m not sure that the lasers currently being developed are functional”, nuance however General Dominique Trinquand.
…and cyberattacks
More discreet and less dangerous because it does not produce debris, the cyberattack against a satellite could also be used. Russia, like other major players in the conquest of space, has the capabilities. Thousands of Internet users in Europe, who went through the KA-SAT satellite for their access to the web, had been deprived of connection on February 24, just one hour before the start of the Russian offensive. “The European Union and its Member States, as well as its international partners, strongly condemn the malicious cyber activity carried out by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which has targeted the KA-SAT satellite network, operated by Viasat”, affirmed the May 10 the EU in a statement on behalf of the 27 member states.
“Cyberattacks are not carried out against the satellites themselves but against the systems which depend on the satellites. This means that the signals emitted from the satellites will be scrambled, hindered and transformed”, specifies General Dominique Trinquand.
According to this military expert, if the Russians have the ability to “hinder for an hour or two” the world communication systems, a way for them to recall their nuisance capabilities, this cannot however be “definitively”. And for good reason: an attack would disrupt the entire planet, and therefore also Russia. “Attacks against satellites, like those committed against submarine cables, do not only affect the military system: they affect the system we use every day to communicate, pay, etc. I am therefore not convinced that the Russians want to alienate the world,” said General Dominique Trinquand.