Russia planning ‘clouds of shrapnel’ in space to take down Starlink satellites, two NATO nations claim

Russia is reportedly developing “orbiting clouds of shrapnel” to target Elon Musk’s Starlink constellation to damage Ukraine’s prospects on the battlefield. Two NATO-nation intelligence services suspect Moscow could be building a new anti-satellite weapon to hit Starlink internet services. The Associated Press reported that the intelligence findings show that Russia is working on what is being called a “zone-effect” weapon. This involves flooding Starlink orbits with hundreds of thousands of high-density pellets to disable multiple satellites at once. According to the findings, Russia sees Starlink’s high-speed internet service as a grave threat to its ambitions in Ukraine. Battlefield communications, weapons targeting and several other areas in Ukraine depend on Starlink satellites amid the ongoing war with Russia.

However, this attack would not just take out Starlink satellites, but other orbiting systems would also be affected, triggering a catastrophe in space. If Russia deploys such a weapon, it risks damaging its own fleet of satellites, besides China’s, experts say. Notably, both countries have a fleet of thousands of orbiting satellites that they use for communications, defence and other purposes. Chaos in Earth’s orbit would take down their satellites as well, which means Russia might not go ahead with this plan, according to analysts. Victoria Samson, a space-security specialist at the Secure World Foundation, said, “I would be very surprised, frankly, if they were to do something like that.”

However, others think something like this is possible since Russia has been “pursuing an indiscriminate nuclear, space-based weapon”, as alleged by the US in the past. Canadian military’s Space Division, Brig. Gen. Christopher Horner said, “I can’t say I’ve been briefed on that type of system. But it’s not implausible.” He added that if what the US says about Moscow’s ambitions of having a nuclear weapons system is accurate, then it wouldn’t be shocking if “something just short of that, but equally damaging” is developed and placed in space.

Notably, Russian President Vladimir Putin has clarified in the past that his country has no intention of deploying nuclear space weapons. It had also called on the United Nations to push and stop the orbital deployment of such weapons. Meanwhile, AP stated that it wasn’t able to verify the findings. Neither Russia nor the US Space Force comment on the matter.

The French military’s Space Command told the publication, “We can inform you that Russia has, in recent years, been multiplying irresponsible, dangerous, and even hostile actions in space”, but did not comment on the particular alleged deployment.