Think Tank: U.S. Space Assets Highly Vulnerable to Russia, China

WASHINGTON, Feb. 13, 2025 – As China and Russia become increasingly capable of disabling United States' space assets, especially satellites, experts at the Council on Foreign Relations see an alarmingly fragile U.S. hold on this critical component of American leadership.

“In recent years, the U.S. has begun to deploy a larger number of smaller assets in other orbits to distribute the risk. Even so, U.S. efforts to counter the vulnerability of its satellites have not kept up with the threat,” Nina Armagno, Jane Harman, and Esther Brimmer wrote in a task force report.

According to their analysis, Russia has already interfered with U.S. satellite operations when it invaded Ukraine in 2022.

“[A] Russian cyberattack disabled terminals for Viasat, a U.S. company on contract to provide satellite communications to Ukraine,” the report said.

The Council on Foreign Relations sees Russian nuclearization of satellite weaponry as a real possibility despite international treaties in place to prevent such action. A nuclear weapon deployed in orbit would be a serious threat to U.S. satellites, especially low-Earth orbit telecommunications systems like Elon Musk’s Starlink.

The experts warned that Russia is not the only country that could militarize space technology. China may have similar intentions.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense quoted in the report, “The [People’s Liberation Army of China] views space superiority, the ability to control the space-enabled information sphere and to deny adversaries their own space-based information gathering and communication capabilities."

Even if China is not pursuing space power as a tool for military prowess, the country intends to meet or exceed U.S. space influence by 2045, according to the report.

That being said, they reminded U.S. policymakers that “not all competition in space raises geostrategic enmity.”