But could a cloud of metal pellets, measuring a millimeter in diameter, be used to destroy several hundred satellites within just one strike? Intelligence reports from not one, but two NATO member countries, indicate that Russia is now developing what is termed a “zone effect” anti-satellite weapon, directly targeting the Starlink network of Elon Musk, now being used as a primary means of battlefield communications by Ukraine.
But even as Starlink’s operational dependability has made it an increasingly valuable support tool for Ukrainian forces, who have been relying on it for high-speed internet access for command and control, weapon-targeting, and drone operation since early during Russia’s all-out assault on Ukraine, Starlink’s very value as a widely available operational resource has also made it a high-value target. Russia’s government has been making threats against commercial satellites such as Starlink that support Ukraine’s military activities, implying that they too are within Russia’s crosshairs. The recent startup of Russia’s S-500 ground-based surface-to-air missile defense system, effective against low Earth satellites, indicates that Russia intends for the Ukrainian crisis to migrate into space.
You blow up a box of BBs, Brig. Gen. Christopher Horner of the Space Division of Canada explains, and the debris blankets an entire orbital regime and takes out every Starlink satellite and every other satellite in a similar regime. Unlike Russia’s 2021 direct-ascent missile test, which destroyed a dead satellite, making a dangerous debris field, the zone-effect weapon relies instead on saturating an orbit with unreachable millimeter-level debris. This could trail satellites now in orbit-launch formations but not yet launched.
The indiscriminate character of such an attack raises major engineering as well as geopolitical forebodings. Low Earth orbit is already crowded, so that NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office estimates in excess of 100 million pieces of debris larger than 1mm are in orbit. The resolution of ground and orbital tracking systems for such debris is much larger, so that they are unable to detect objects smaller than approximately 5 cm in diameter. As ESA’s Holger Krag has explained, impacts of millimeter-sized debris can produce hypervelocity penetrations of solar arrays, as occurred to Sentinel-1A in 2016, creating plumes of damage of tens of centimeters in size.
Solar sails are some of the most fragile parts of satellites, said Clayton Swope of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. They would be right along the strike zone for pellet damage. They might lose functionality even if they are only partially damaged. It’s exactly that kind of event that happened to China’s space station in November when it was thought to have been hit by micro-debris, said Swope. In due time, micro-debris and micro-pellets from crashed satellites would deteriorate in space and pose a danger to other space systems like the International Space Station or China’s Tiangong space station that are in lower orbits.
In defense technology terms, the zone effect phenomenon has similarities with area-denial weaponry. Because of its indiscriminate nature, this technology would be capable of crippling both Starlink and friendly and even Russian and Chinese satellites, making it a “weapon of fear” that would deter with nothing to actually detonate. This is reminiscent of the strategic rationale behind high-altitude nuclear detonations like the 1962 American Starfish Prime test, which filled the Van Allen belts with radioactive ions and killed off a third of satellites in low earth orbit within months. Experts currently hypothesize that a pellet cloud would be capable of killing off satellites in much the same manner, but through mechanical rather than radiative effects.
Mitigation Measures remain limited. Presently, satellite deformation avoidance involves satellite maneuvering as soon as warnings are received, but satellites the size of millimeter balls are beyond tracking systems’ capabilities. Protection against satellite deformation can be ensured by making satellites invulnerable to the strikes, using Whipple Shields or redundant systems, though at increased cost and heaviness. The Commercial Space Integration Strategy issued by the U.S. Department of Defense advocates resiliency through proliferation and rapid reconstitution, but even a proliferated constellation such as Starlink can be affected by a region-specific attack.
The intelligence does not provide information regarding the testing of the Russian system, or when it may become operative. Nonetheless, according to Victoria Samson, the Secure World Foundation, it seems to be perhaps an experimental or even a bluffing effort to induce U.S. counterspace spending. Nonetheless, the underlying geopolitics, namely the frustration of the Russian government by the influence of Starlink in Ukraine and the destructive tests of anti-satellite systems, and its research into space-based nuclear weapons, make the threat not entirely ignorable.
For analysts and policymakers looking at the issue of space security, the zone effect weapon draws attention to the important weakness of the current satellite system’s lack of defense against the untrackable and indiscriminate kinetic saturation of orbit. With warfare reaching the orbits of space, the tool designs, policies, and battle strategies will have to address not only precision strikes, but the confusion left by orbit shrapnel.
