Recently, the Russian Federation conducted a successful missile launch that destroyed a defunct Kosmos electronic intelligence satellite. This demonstration of precision targeting by a ground-based anti-satellite weapon was widely decried due to its generation of a debris cloud that crossed paths with the orbit of the International Space Station. However important the threat to astronauts, cosmonauts and other satellites in low Earth orbit, the fact of the matter is that this event is not the first time such an ASAT demonstration has been made. Since 2007, China and Russia have both demonstrated their kinetic ASAT technologies. This has been a known problem for more than a decade, and yet the U.S. Space Force and its warfighting counterpart, U.S. Space Command, still lack credible options to deter and defeat ASAT attacks across all orbital regimes. This is a must do; the alternative would be to leave our nation’s vital space assets vulnerable to attacks that would affect nearly every part of our modern way of life.
Responses to Russian anti-satellite tests should be more about capability than condemnation (Christopher Stone, Defense News)
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