US commercial satellites become legitimate targets if used during hostilities in Ukraine, warns Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department.
After the “failure” in Elon Musk’s Starlink, Western satellites are threatened with blackout, while Russian sources state that there is a serious possibility that the Russians will launch an attack in space, resulting in the destruction of satellites of key importance for the West. The Russian leaks were followed by the destruction of the space station in Odessa, after a Russian attack with precision weapons.
According to Vorontsov, “quasi-political infrastructure could be a legitimate target for retaliation.” “As a result of the West’s actions, the stability of peaceful space activities, as well as numerous socio-economic processes on earth, on which the well-being of people, mainly in developing countries, depends, are exposed to unjustified risks,” the Russian ministry official said. Foreign.
Vorontsov emphasized that the use of space for military purposes could lead to a sharp destabilization of the situation and put an end to the possibility of limiting and reducing armaments in the future.
Currently, the Armed Forces of Ukraine use SpaceX’s Starlink satellites for communication and practically for free. Recently, the owner of the space company, Elon Musk, was angered by the burden of spending (which by the end of the year will exceed 100 million dollars) and promised Kyiv the end of philanthropy for military purposes. However, very soon, apparently under pressure, he announced that he would continue to support Ukraine.
Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites, which function as a global communications and data transmission system, are actually a strategic battle control system. In addition, Earth remote sensing satellites perform the role of reconnaissance satellites. They perform cartography with information that is updated in about 15-20 minutes, determine the positions of our troops, various combat objects with a grid of coordinates. Based on such images, you can quickly assign coordinates for hits. That is, all these satellites are used by the Pentagon for military purposes.
This is why Russia is targeting Elon Musk’s satellite network.
Russia has two ways to affect satellites. First, electronic warfare (EW) systems – such as “Tirada-2S”, disrupting their activities. Furthermore, it is possible to affect a communications satellite in this way so effectively that it becomes a useless piece of metal hanging in orbit. The second way is anti-satellite weapons – an air-to-space missile, included in the arsenal of the S-500 anti-aircraft missile system. Russia has missiles capable of reaching targets in near space. In addition, it has an anti-missile system, which, if desired, can be reoriented to anti-satellite, although this is not its main function. A massive amount of space debris can disable any satellite constellation.
