How US Could Respond if Russia Shoots Down Satellites

The chief of the U.S. Space Force has outlined how Washington could respond if Moscow shoot down Western commercial satellites.

General Chance Saltzman said at a press conference in Hawaii on September 20 that U.S. military space capabilities are under threat from nations like China and Russia and outlined how Washington could respond should Moscow attack SpaceX's Starlink broadband network, which Ukraine uses for Internet connectivity in Russia's full-scale invasion, Ars Technica reported.

He was responding to questions from reporters about threats made by Russia in October 2022 that the country could down Western commercial satellites should they be used to assist Ukraine in the war.

Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department, said last October that the use of "commercial, infrastructure elements in outer space for military purposes" by the West constitutes an "extremely dangerous trend."

On Monday, Vladimir Ermakov, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control, echoed Vorontsov's remarks when he said quasi-civilian Western satellites could be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike.

Saltzman suggested that the United States would defend its commercial satellites should they come under attack.

In a modern war, "there are going to be commercial entities, commercial organizations, commercial capabilities and assets that get caught up in the conflicts," Saltzman said.

"Space is no different than sea lanes. It's no different than civilian airliner traffic in Europe right now. The U.S. has a long history of saying we're going to protect the things that we need to be successful. So it would stand to reason that that same philosophy would extend into space, and I have no reason to believe that that will be different."

Newsweek reached out to Russia's Foreign Ministry via email for comment.

Neither Russian official elaborated on which companies have assisted Ukraine in the war via satellite technology. But in the early days of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Elon Musk's SpaceX deployed its Starlink satellites to help provide Kyiv with internet service. Musk has said that SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet system provides Ukraine with a "major battlefield advantage."

The company has so far privately funded a network of nearly 4,000 satellites to be launched into low-Earth orbit. Ukrainian troops use Starlink for battlefield communications in the war with Russia.

Newsweek reached out to SpaceX via email for comment.

In February, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, said the company was preventing Kyiv from using the network to control drones in the region, saying the service was "never meant to be weaponized."

Musk has also refused to allow Ukraine to use Starlink internet services to launch an attack on Crimea, which was annexed by Russia, to avoid complicity in a "major act of war," he said.

"There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol," he wrote in early September on X, formerly Twitter. "The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation."

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said in October 2022 that the U.S. would "continue to pursue all means to expose, deter and hold Russia accountable for any such attack should that occur."

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