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Germany and the UK have warned of a growing threat from Russian and Chinese space satellites, which are regularly seen spying on satellites used by Western countries.
In recent weeks, countries have highlighted frequent instances of Russia stalking, jamming, or interfering with their satellites in space.
“Russia’s actions, especially in the field of space, pose a fundamental threat to all of us. A threat that we can no longer ignore,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told a conference of space industry leaders in Berlin in September.
Targeting communications satellites can impact satellite imagery, communications, broadband satellite Internet access, and more. According to global think tank RAND, disruptions to navigation and positioning systems could affect not only civil aviation but also military operations.
The warning comes as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its third year. Ukrainian officials said the Russian government was increasing its level of cooperation with China, and Beijing was conducting satellite reconnaissance of Ukrainian territory.
Here’s what officials and experts are saying about the satellite threat in space.
Pistorius pointed out that two Russian reconnaissance satellites were recently spotted tracking two Intelsat satellites used by the German military and its allies. IntelSat is a commercial satellite service provider whose fleet is used by governments and businesses in the United States and Europe.
“Russia and China have rapidly expanded their space warfare capabilities in recent years. They can jam, blind, manipulate and dynamically destroy satellites,” Pistorius added, announcing a multibillion-dollar increase in funding for Germany’s space program.
The head of the UK Space Force also sounded the alarm, saying Russian satellites were stalking British assets in space and disrupting them “on a weekly basis”.
“They have payloads that can observe our satellites, and they’re trying to collect information from them,” Maj. Gen. Paul Tedman told the BBC last month. Jamming is done using ground infrastructure. Russia has spent years developing electronic warfare capabilities amid the Ukraine war.
Separately, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte this year warned again about Russia’s plans to develop nuclear weapons in space to disable and destroy satellites.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly stated that Russia has no intention of deploying nuclear weapons in space. But Russia also vetoed a UN Security Council resolution urging member states not to develop space-based nuclear weapons in 2024, with China abstaining from the vote.
How do satellite “spies” work and how are they detected?
In general, it is relatively easy for the Space Force to detect and locate foreign satellites, but it is difficult to determine their exact capabilities and intentions.
Clayton Swope, an expert and deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., said authorities are inferring the Russian satellite’s intentions based on where it is in space, what is nearby, and historical patterns of what similar satellites have done.
For example, if a Russian satellite lingers near a European communications satellite for an extended period of time, authorities could infer that it is there for espionage purposes.
Experts believe that the Russian satellites that came close to two Intelsat satellites, some of which were used by Germany, were there to intercept signals.
Meanwhile, in lower orbit, Russian satellites have previously tested “things like weapons and projectiles,” Swope told CNN. Authorities can identify satellites similar to those carrying the projectile and determine that they pose a physical threat to other countries’ assets.
“Russia has a history of making these kinds of satellites follow other satellites in a way that makes people think it’s a sleeper cell waiting to attack at a moment’s notice,” Swope said.
“It’s very difficult to differentiate between threats in the sense of weapons and threats in the sense of intelligence gathering,” he added. “We can make a lot of assumptions about the satellite’s capabilities and the operator’s intentions.”
The Russian space agency has previously downplayed the dangers of weapons tests in space.
Germany and the UK are just the latest countries to sound the alarm. The United States and France first warned more than a decade ago that Russian satellites appeared to be spying on their assets, including commercial satellites, and gathering intelligence.
In 2015, the Pentagon announced that a Russian military satellite had been parked near two Intelsat satellites, prompting the United States to contact the Kremlin about the move, which many at the time described as “mysterious.”
And when France and Italy jointly launched an intelligence satellite in 2017, Russian satellites soon began approaching it for reconnaissance, said Juliana Suss, a security policy researcher at the German Institute for International Security Affairs (SWP).
“So this kind of behavior is not new at all, but I think it needs to be seen in the context of Ukraine, and also in the context of the airspace violations that Russia appears to be making with respect to NATO airspace,” Suss told CNN about recent reports on satellite spying and jamming. “All of this should be seen in a broader context.”
Experts told CNN that China is an equal or greater threat than Russia.
While the Russian threat has become more pressing for Europe, “by far the larger space power is clearly China,” Suss said. Analysts point to China’s sophisticated maneuvers in space aimed at getting close to other satellites, saying they were “incredibly fast and precise, which I think may have raised some eyebrows in the West.”
According to SWP analysts, some of China’s capabilities have raised international concerns. For example, China has tested a satellite with a robotic arm that can move other satellites into different orbits.
China also has “a lot of money to operate in space,” Suss said. “At the moment we don’t see any further Russian space exploration. Russia’s resources are too limited for that.”
Swope, the CSIS analyst, said China’s activity in space is very active, but its objectives are more opaque.
“We don’t always know what they’re doing. They’re doing a lot of different things that leave a lot of people scratching their heads,” Swope added.
Germany has announced that it will allocate up to 35 billion euros ($40.2 billion) over the next five years to space projects.
“Certainly, this is a big number. I think it also reflects that there is now some sort of political will to catch up and really move things forward,” Suess said. But she also stressed that the space race is an ongoing process with no end in sight. “Europe as a whole has a lot of catching up to do. Germany certainly has a lot of catching up to do.”
A German Defense Ministry spokesperson told CNN that space-related procurement measures will reach around 1.9 billion euros ($2.2 billion) in 2025, but “will increase significantly in the coming years.”
The UK government also announced a commitment to increase defense spending this year, outlining that a strategic review of the UK’s capabilities will require “increased attention to space, cyber and electromagnetic domains”. Britain announced in October that it was testing sensors to detect laser threats in space as part of measures to protect British satellites.
But analysis by Chatham House, a London-based think tank, argued that even larger investments were needed in the short term and that the strategic review failed to recognize how pressing the space threat really was, putting the country at risk of falling behind.
France, on the other hand, has been “very vocal about the need for so-called ‘bodyguard satellites,’ satellites whose mission is to protect other satellites,” Swope said. What these satellites will look like is an open question and development is ongoing, he added.
Analysts say the United States still has a historic advantage in space, although it has invested more in recent years. But European allies could benefit through cooperation under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other alliances.
NATO declared space an “area of operations” for the transatlantic alliance in 2019, and several years later announced that Article 5 would apply to space as well. Article 5 is the principle that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all NATO members. But analysts at Rand University argue that NATO needs to “accelerate” its space operations or risk failing at a critical time.
While falling behind is a major concern, especially compared to China’s progress, there is also evidence that Russia has not integrated satellite systems into its military infrastructure in the same way as many other space powers.
Suss gave the example of a Russian fighter jet shot down in Ukraine, which was found not only to have a built-in Russian navigation system, but also to have a commercially available GPS taped to its dashboard. Analysts have also seen evidence that Russia is sourcing commercial satellite imagery from the private market, indicating that its own capabilities are not up to scratch.
“Anecdotal evidence from Ukraine shows that Russia does not have the kind of trust that you would normally expect in its own system,” Suss added.
