Space is the new high ground of great-power combat, and the Russians were joining the Chinese in demonstrating they have the ability to launch a direct-ascent attack to destroy a satellite — in this case one of their own. China and India had conducted similar tests in 2007 and 2019, respectively. The United States fired a missile in 2008 to destroy a satellite officials said was leaking fuel.
What angered U.S. officials was that, in showing off their targeting ability, the Russians created a field of debris in low-earth orbit, with 1,500 pieces of the destroyed spacecraft that were big enough to be tracked by radar. This debris could threaten commercial and military satellites, as well as U.S. and Russian astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
State Department spokesman Ned Price used unusually pointed language in criticizing the Russian test, which he said threatens “the interests of all nations” that depend on space-based systems for communications, weather, location and myriad digital information. He said U.S. diplomats had “spoken to senior Russian officials multiple times to warn them” about the dangers of such a test.
“This behavior is not something we will tolerate,” Price said several times. But he didn’t explain how the United States would stop such activity.
Defending space-based systems is the mission of the Space Force, the United States’ newest uniformed service, which is just settling into its digs in the Pentagon. Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, the Space Force chief, hosted me there Monday in a long-scheduled interview, which happened to coincide with the announcement of the Russian ASAT attack.
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