Russia says there is still time to stop an arms race in space after US orbital weapons admission

Russia believes there is still time to prevent an arms race in space by drawing up a legally-binding international treaty to outlaw the deployment of offensive weapons there and called on the United States and other nations to set aside their scepticism about the idea, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday.

Ryabkov was commenting after the U.S. acknowledged this week that the Pentagon is operating weapons in Earth’s orbit, a landmark moment in the militarisation of space. U.S. Space Force chief Douglas Schiess said that enlisted members of his military branch “operate on-orbit weapons that can defend the Joint Force against space-enabled attacks.”

Speaking at a news briefing in Moscow, Ryabkov said the United States had not notified Russia – one of the world’s top three space powers – about its new weapons capability, but said the U.S. statement had not come as a surprise.

“This is nothing new to us; we are monitoring all of this, recording it all, and drawing the appropriate conclusions,” he said, noting that Moscow had long spoken of the need for a treaty that would rule out the use of force in space or the threat of force against objects in space.

“The Americans and other Westerners, in particular the British, have for many years used inflammatory excuses to cover up their unwillingness to move in this direction; they seek out spurious arguments to avoid doing so and attempt to turn the tables by accusing us of activities which, in their view, are destabilising in nature,” said Ryabkov.

“But we believe that it is not yet too late to create an environment that would preclude an arms race with escalating risks of open conflict in outer space.”

Bloomberg: New US space weapon adds to arsenal to counter Russia, China

The revelation by the Air Force this week that the US now has a weapon in space stoked speculation — but few answers — about the weapon’s capability, Bloomberg notes.

“As much as you want to know, Beijing wants to know even more,” Lieutenant General Greg Gagnon, commander of the Space Force’s Combat Forces Command, which trains personnel to operate systems such as the on-orbit weapon, said on Wednesday.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink announced at a conference on Monday that the US now has a space weapon that would be used to protect American forces, prompting a warning from the Russian Foreign Ministry of the “the gravest consequences” if it is used.

The weapon is the orbital component of the current US space arsenal that has consisted of ground-based jammers intended to temporarily disrupt Chinese and Russian communications satellites, though not to destroy them.

“We’re not going to talk about the specifics of what we’re doing — whether we’ve tested it, not tested it, or anything else,” Meink told reporters Monday after his disclosure.

Asked how the newly disclosed on-orbit capability fits with the current arsenal, Gagnon said “all weapon systems kind of complement each other, and you bring them together when you synchronize them in military operations.”

Yet “this one is based in space so it’s already different,” said Victoria Samson, a space weapons analyst for the Secure World Foundation. “There are reports that China and Russia are thought to have spaced-based jammers and I thought it strange we would not,” she said.

Jammers might also be easier to place on orbit than lasers or particle beam weapons, Samson said.

Still, if the US just fielded jammers that temporarily blind a Chinese or Russian satellite, one “could be left with the impression the United States is possibly not willing to use kinetic weapons in the physical space domain,” said Clayton Swope, a space and aerospace fellow at the Center For Strategic and International Studies, referring to more destructive technologies.

In 2022, the United States pledged that it would not conduct destructive, direct-ascent anti-satellite missile testing.

“This is a very specific pledge,” Swope said.

“The idea behind that specific testing moratorium was that there is no reason to create debris that could jeopardize the use of space in peacetime,” he continued, adding that “wartime is another story.”

“The reason we have capabilities is to help create deterrence,” Gagnon said. “When you go to war, you break things.”

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