Russia: Commercial satellite constellations providing help to the Ukraine are now targetsRussia this week informed regulators at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that it now considers all European and American private satellite constellations “legitimate targets to be destroyed” if they provide any help to the Ukraine.
Russia tells ITU that GPS/Galileo/GNSS nav & commercial broadcast sats helping Ukraine militarily should expect interference. Same for EutelsatGroup, OneWeb, Starlink constellations, which Russia has said are ‘legitimate targets to be destroyed.
There is more at the full article, but that is behind a subscription paywall.
Russia’s announcement here is probably in response to Trump’s more bellicose statements recently about Putin and Russia.
It is hard to predict what will happen, especially when you have a dictator like Putin in power where rational thinking can never be relied on and no laws apply. For example, destroying any orbiting satellites in low Earth orbit will create space junk that will threaten ISS, and a situation NOT beneficial to Russia.
I suspect Russia will begin by trying to jam these constellations. Let us hope it does not go farther than that.
Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.
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Russia this week informed regulators at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that it now considers all European and American private satellite constellations “legitimate targets to be destroyed” if they provide any help to the Ukraine.
Russia tells ITU that GPS/Galileo/GNSS nav & commercial broadcast sats helping Ukraine militarily should expect interference. Same for EutelsatGroup, OneWeb, Starlink constellations, which Russia has said are ‘legitimate targets to be destroyed.
There is more at the full article, but that is behind a subscription paywall.
Russia’s announcement here is probably in response to Trump’s more bellicose statements recently about Putin and Russia.
It is hard to predict what will happen, especially when you have a dictator like Putin in power where rational thinking can never be relied on and no laws apply. For example, destroying any orbiting satellites in low Earth orbit will create space junk that will threaten ISS, and a situation NOT beneficial to Russia.
I suspect Russia will begin by trying to jam these constellations. Let us hope it does not go farther than that.
Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
There are nations who are now in the space industry who are now able to cause a large space disaster.
I am one who’s internet is via a satellite in earth orbit.
“It is hard to predict what will happen, especially when you have a dictator like Putin in power where rational thinking can never be relied on and no laws apply. For example, destroying any orbiting satellites in low Earth orbit will create space junk that will threaten ISS, and a situation NOT beneficial to Russia.”
The United States is sending weapons capable of hitting Moscow.
Which is rational thinking:
1 Destroying the satellite guidance systems that would used to strike your nation’s capitol
Or
2 Worrying about the ISS while your nation’s capitol is decimated by long range missiles
In any potential war with Russia, or China, our space based assets would be a target as they are so important to our military and economy, which is why it is good we have a Space Force. In the past, our options were reciprocal but now? Who knows what we can do.
We should make clear that any ASAT attack that damages the environment will be met with a response, regardless of whether or not we are involved in the conflict. The response should be removing a country’s ability to operate in space.
wodun: Nice to see you commenting here again, after a very long break.
”Russia this week informed regulators at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that it now considers all European and American private satellite constellations ‘legitimate targets to be destroyed’ if they provide any help to the Ukraine.”
This is nothing new. This most recent invasion of Ukraine opened on 24 Feb 2022 with a hack of a Viasat satellite being used by Ukraine for government communications. In addition, except for Progress, Soyuz, and Glonass, almost all of Russia’s satellite launches the last few years have been hunter-killer satellites to harass American spysats. They can no longer do much of anything else.
”The United States is sending weapons capable of hitting Moscow.”
The Ukrainians have been capable of hitting Moscow and points both north and east for quite some time. This would merely add some stealthiness to their capability.
”…which is why it is good we have a Space Force.”
The Space Force merely operates military satellites and related ground systems. It is not an offensive force.
Overall, the Russians are finding out that they’ve escalated about as far as they can go, but America still has quite a few rungs left on its ladder.
Who has the least amount of space assets in use now?
Russia would inconvenience the west by stooping down 10 sats but the west would decimate Russia with just 10.
Putin is ALL bs. Bluster and Showmanship.
I want Putin to go for it. Just how fast could the west shut down all of the power systems and communication systems. The Ukraine is playing nice right now. They could be concentrating on the civilian infrastructure of Russia.
Those onion domes are easy to target.
What mkent said.
Russia has been crying “wolf” anent “consequences” to the West for aiding Ukraine ever since Feb. of 2022. No “consequences” have been forthcoming. None will be forthcoming. Russia has been doing this sort of grumbling, particularly about Starlink, since the get-go. Not only Russia but the PRC have done their best to mess with Starlink since its inception – with zero meaningful results.
The solution to the Russian threats problem is to end Russia. The way to end Russia is to provide maximum aid to Ukraine and lets the Ukes handle the job. They’ve already handled quite a bit of it. They are manifestly up for handling the rest. Now that Trump appears to have lost him his former sweet girlish laughter anent Vladimir Putin, perhaps we can now get on with the job of handing Ukraine the axe and letting them swing it where they will.
Hi Dick,
I agree completely with your first paragraph. It is always the same song and dance from Putin, and then he ends up doing nothing, or at worst, something well short of what he threatens. I seriously doubt there is anything the Russians can actually do against Starlink, short of repeating Starfish Prime at scale in orbit. But the collateral damage from that would be enormous — to Russian satellites (and, uh, a certain Russian space station) in LEO, too!
I fear the consequences of trying to break apart a great power (however decayed) which has thousands of nuclear weapons and associated delivery vehicles, some of which likely still work; or even a sudden Russian nuke black market, which could be almost as bad. And then there are the inevitable mass refugee flows from these sorts of collapses. Perhaps I value order too highly. But I have come to feel that it is harder to achieve or maintain than most of us assume.
One wishes there was a time-out box in which we could stick Russia for a couple decades. But I think that has been a perennial wish of many of Russia’s neighbors since the 16th century. Then again, it’s always been a rough neighborhood. Several time-out boxes are probably in order.
Perhaps I value order too highly. But I have come to feel that it is harder to achieve or maintain than most of us assume.
Very insightful of you. Order is hard to achieve. We (USAians, at least) tend to take it for granted. Recognizing that order for order’s sake is not necessarily a good thing is hard. Determining which is better (order or chaos) in any given situation is impossible because no one agrees on what “better” means. The current fiery but mostly peaceful protests are a good example.
Is the _potential_ of a terrorist nuke better or worse than propping up the Russian regime? If a nuke goes off in the LA (or NY or both) port, it will suck, but it’s hardly the end of the US. Is no nuke better? Of course. But if Russia collapsed tomorrow, a terrorist nuke in the US is not guaranteed only slightly more probable.
I suppose I’m thinking of some of our own recent regime change adventures and what ensued. Even setting aside Iraq . . . Libya, Syria, and even our puppet state in Afghanistan, all of which were, if we’re being honest, rather vile regimes. No one misses them, not as such. But what they were all replaced with was something worse…and millions of refugee that ended up destabilizing Western Europe.
I tend to think any rogue nukes that popped loose after a Russian collapse would be more likely to end up detonating somewhere in Eurasia, since that wouldn’t require shipment by sea or air. But that would be plenty bad, too!
More likely, though, there is a plausible school of thought that what would come after Putin would be neither chaos or democracy, but a dictator even worse than him. Lots of precedent for that sort of thing in Russian history, too, alas.