In space no one can hear you scream, warns the memorable tagline of the sci-fi chiller Alien.
However, that doesn’t mean everyone is completely deaf to what’s going on out there, as two eavesdropping Russian spacecraft are demonstrating – to the considerable concern of Western leaders gathered at last week’s Munich Security Conference.
Luch-2 and its older sister Luch-1 are Moscow-controlled military ‘interceptor’ satellites which have what space officials refer to as a ‘history of unusual manoeuvering’.
In plain English, they’re coming very close – sometimes dangerously so – to key Western communications satellites so they can listen to the sensitive information the West is relaying, and potentially sabotage or destroy them.
Worse, it’s feared this data might not be encrypted because the satellites were launched before such security technology was available.
European security officials have told the Financial Times that the two Luchs (which in Russian means shaft of light) have not only been able to intercept the communications of at least a dozen of Europe’s most important satellites, they are also likely to have intercepted the spacecraft’s ‘command link’ with their controllers back on Earth. With that, the Russians could change their trajectories and even send them crashing to Earth.
Of the more than 12,000 satellites spinning around our planet in various orbits, around 500 are ‘geo-stationary’ – positioned deeper into space and moving at the same speed and direction as Earth’s rotation to maintain a fixed position over the planet.
These satellites, which are often used for military and civilian purposes, and serve crucial functions not only in the UK and Europe but for parts of Africa and the Middle East, have been targeted. They are now shadowed by Russian craft, which sometimes get to within six miles.
Aggression in space has been a key plank of the so-called ‘hybrid war’ that the Kremlin is waging on Ukraine’s supporters, writes Tom Leonard
The shadowing has significantly increased in the past three years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine ramped up tensions between Moscow and Western Europe. Aggression in space has been a key plank of the so-called ‘hybrid war’ that the Kremlin is waging on Ukraine’s supporters, a conflict which also includes terrestrial sabotage.
Since its launch in 2023, Luch-2 has approached 17 European satellites, all of them owned by Nato countries. Although they’re used for civilian purposes, such as satellite TV, they can also carry sensitive government and some military communications.
Experts say the Luch craft are clearly positioning themselves between the satellites and the Earth, within the narrow cone of data beams transmitted between the two. Moscow may be poaching the satellites’ command data – instructions from ground stations that control its systems and the operations of its payload.
Even if the data is encrypted, the Russians can still glean useful information such as how the satellite is being used and where it is sending its communications to.
Satellite warfare, identified as a major threat to international peace at the Munich conference, has been developing for some years. Luch-1 caused an outcry in 2015 after it parked itself directly between two US Intelsat satellites for two months, coming within a few miles of them. Since then, Russia has launched more advanced military satellites.
The US and UK say these are actually ‘attack satellites’ that operate like a Russian matryoshka, or ‘nesting doll’, by releasing a smaller sub-satellite that in turn releases an anti-satellite weapon. Last June, one of these nesting-doll craft, Kosmos 2558, set off alarm bells when it started zig-zagging out of the usual path taken by orbiting satellites.
It then launched a smaller, unidentifiable module that moved close to a US satellite. The little craft is believed to be a so-called Kinetic Kill Vehicle (KKV), designed to disable or even destroy satellites. Such kill craft, which have also reportedly been developed by the Chinese, can use weapons such as lasers or robotic grappling arms. The latter could grab a satellite and pull it out of its orbit, effectively rendering it useless.
In the event, last summer’s nesting doll operation turned out to be a reconnaissance exercise.
How should the West respond if Russia uses nuclear weapons to destroy satellites in space?
Satellite warfare, identified as a major threat to international peace at the Munich conference, has been developing for some years
Major General Paul Tedman – head of UK Space Command – has warned that Moscow was stalking British military satellites and jamming them ‘on a reasonably persistent basis’
But an even more devastating space war development – which one US defence chief has called a ‘Pearl Harbour in space’ – is the possibility of Russia detonating a nuclear weapon in space.
The US discovered in 2024 that the Kremlin was developing an anti-satellite missile tipped with a nuclear warhead for a potential surprise attack in low orbit.
Nuclear experts at the Pentagon have since conducted simulated blasts that revealed such an explosion would destroy thousands of western satellites as well as kill everyone on the International Space Station. The US has been practising how it could respond, primarily by getting replacement satellites – or ones that can monitor the situation – launched as fast as possible.
In a 2023 exercise codenamed Victus Nox, the US Space Force deployed a satellite from the warehouse into orbit in just a week, but sceptics say many satellites would be needed if there was a nuclear space attack.
Many of us fail to appreciate the importance satellites play in our lives and the dire consequences of living without them. Last September, German defence minister Boris Pistorius bluntly laid out the severity of the threat from space.
The minister said satellite networks had become ‘the very foundation of our modern life’, critical to everything from banks synchronising their transactions to navigation tasks that ranged from guiding planes and ships to ensuring a pizza delivery driver finds the right address. Consequently, they are now ‘an Achilles’ heel . . . anyone who attacks them paralyses entire states’, the minister warned.
Future conflicts will ‘be fought openly in orbit’, he said, and the West’s adversaries, Russia and China, had forged ahead in space warfare. ‘In space, there are no borders or continents . . . it is a threat we can no longer ignore.’
To emphasise his point, Pistorius said 39 Chinese and Russian reconnaissance satellites would have flown over the meeting by the time his speech was finished.
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A month later, Major General Paul Tedman – head of UK Space Command – warned that Moscow was stalking British military satellites and jamming them ‘on a reasonably persistent basis’.
The Ministry of Defence said it was developing new technology to detect when adversaries were using lasers to dazzle satellites and to intercept or interrupt their communications.
Days later, it was revealed that the European Union and Nato are to start work on a ‘defence space shield’ to protect military and communications satellites from attacks by Russia and China.
In Ukraine, satellites have demonstrated their importance in modern warfare. Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system came to the rescue of Ukraine when Russia destroyed its opponent’s internet connection, potentially crippling its defences. Instead, it has been able to rely on Starlink.
Earlier this month it was revealed that Russian troops fighting in Ukraine found their own communications going dark after Kyiv asked Musk to stop Kremlin forces illicitly using Starlink. Russia – which is sanctioned – had evaded export restrictions by smuggling in Starlink devices and sending them to the front line.
They were fitting Starlink connections on their drones to make them better at homing in on targets and resisting electronic jamming. A Ukrainian government defence adviser called it a ‘catastrophe’ for the Kremlin.
Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, has plans to launch its own satellite internet operation in low-Earth orbit as an alternative to Starlink. It could provide a perfect opportunity for the West to tell the Kremlin it isn’t the only power that can make life difficult for its adversaries out in space.
