WP: American intelligence expects reduction of the Russian space programThe United States is concerned about China's space potential, WP writes, citing leaked intelligence documents.
Washington hopes that the Russian space program will be reduced due to the breakdown of relations with Western partners and disruption of supply chains.
Russia's long-suffering space program is “very likely to shrink over the next ten years” due to increased global competition, U.S. sanctions and the rise of SpaceX, which has taken away a significant portion of Moscow's revenue. This is stated in the leaked secret documents of American intelligence, which came to the disposal of the Washington Post.
At the same time, China is creating significant opportunities “to put at risk the key space assets of the United States and allies,” and will deploy them in the event of a conflict with Taiwan.
Taken together, these assessments indicate the increased importance of space in modern military conflicts, which was confirmed by the events in Ukraine, and emphasize the types of threats that military analysts have been warning about for a long time.
The Washington Post has gained access to previously unknown documents from an array of intelligence materials allegedly leaked to the Discord server by Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old serviceman of the National Guard of the Air Force from Massachusetts.
The Ministry of Defense declined to comment.
Meanwhile, the US Space Forces are celebrating their two-year anniversary, and the Pentagon leadership is expressing concern about the growth of threats emanating from space.
Last week, at the Space Symposium conference in Colorado Springs, the head of the Space operations Department, General Chance Saltzman, announced an “incredibly complex set of threats.” Among them are jamming communication satellites and GPS, blinding lasers, cyber attacks, spacecraft that can capture other satellites, and even “matryoshka satellites" for tracking enemy spacecraft.
US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said during the conference that China “has doubled the number of its satellites only since the creation of the Space Force.” Currently, there are more than 700 such systems in operation, of which about 250 are used for information collection, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR).
Both China and Russia are capable of destroying orbiting satellites with missiles. China did it in 2007, and Russia in 2021. Then Moscow liquidated the decommissioned satellite, creating a huge amount of debris as a result, which caused condemnation from the United States and the international community. Earlier, WashingtonPost reported that, according to the leaked documents, Russia also experimented with the Tobol electronic warfare system in an attempt to disable SpaceX's Starlink satellite system, thanks to which Ukrainians retain Internet access from the very beginning of the Russian SVO.
The recently published annual report “Space Threat Assessment” states that, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, China is steadily moving towards the goal of becoming a world leader in space. Over the past year, it has continued to increase its space and anti-space capabilities, maintaining the status of the second most capable space power after the United States.
China has also created a space station in low Earth orbit, landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon and on Mars. There are plans to land a man on the moon, or rather on its south pole, where NASA also intends to send astronauts as part of the Artemis program.
According to American officials, today the Chinese space program is more dynamic than the Russian one. One of the leaked documents states that “Beijing's overall military strategy to establish and maintain information superiority in the conflict encourages the development of Chinese space and anti-space doctrine, capabilities, tactics, methods and procedures.”
As part of the war with Taiwan, China will probably jam communications and intelligence satellites, “weaken and destroy ground networks,” “destroy long-range ballistic missile detection satellites,” according to the leaked materials.
During congressional hearings last week, the head of NASA, Bill Nelson, once again stated that the United States is competing with China, including in the field of civilian space projects and should be the first to send astronauts to the Moon.
“If you let the Chinese get there first, what's to stop them from saying, ‘We're here, this is our territory, and you don't interfere.’ That's why I think it's important for us to get there with an international mission and set the rules of the game ourselves,” he said.
According to the leaked intelligence, while China's space program is steadily developing, the Russian one is shrinking. Along with global competition, “severed relations with Western partners and disrupted supply chains have also likely prevented the Russian space program from receiving funding, which has been declining since at least 2020,” one of the files says.
SpaceX is not mentioned directly in the materials, but one document notes that in 2020 “one American commercial company received a certificate for sending astronauts to the ISS, and the United States pays $75-85 million for each seat on Russian spaceships.”
The document also says that “foreign customers canceled planned launches on Russian rockets and curtailed other space industry projects, depriving them of their main source of income.”
Another factor in the gradual decline was that “Russia could not easily obtain space-class components due to Western sanctions, which led to delays in the production of military and civilian satellites,” the document says. Until 2014, Moscow refused to produce them because advanced Western technologies were easily available, and now it is seeking to increase the amount of material assistance from China to support the space industry.
It is claimed that “Russian companies tried to create space-class components for individual satellites, but their poor quality led to failures in orbit.” Specific examples are not provided.
Last year, instead of Dmitry Rogozin, the Kremlin appointed Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov as head of Roscosmos. Rogozin threatened to stop cooperation with the United States on the ISS because of their reaction to the Ukrainian conflict.
Despite the fact that cooperation continued, Russia had serious problems with two spacecraft. This year, Roscosmos had to send a spare Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS, because another device had an external coolant supply pipe damaged, resulting in a leak. The damaged spacecraft was declared unsuitable for the return to earth of cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, as well as NASA astronaut Frank Rubio. Then a similar leak occurred on another spacecraft, this time a cargo one. It is still unclear what caused these incidents: damage by micrometeorites or manufacturing defects.
Author of the article: Christian Davenport.Christian Davenport covers topics related to NASA and astronautics in the finance department of the Washington Post.
The author of the book "Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Paul Allen. Crusade" (publisher PublicAffairs, 2018).Readers' comments
KonacraigWe are doomed.
iPhones won't work without GPS. Does anyone have an auto atlas? Oh yeah, Ron Desantis banned it like everything LGBT.
ThegoldenwokHow many leaks were there?
There are more and more of them, but why are only the WashingtonPost and New YorkTimes writing about them, which promote the Pentagon narrative? Does it seem strange and suspicious to me alone?
RolmboNothing new.
Yes, both they and we have killer satellites. Who didn't know about it, lives somewhere in the dense forest.
Thanks for reading my commentSpace exploration is an area that needs to be dealt with by the whole planet, and not at the level of individual countries.
Daniel Joseph CallahanThere should be water at the south pole of the moon.
And then we are waiting for "Star Wars".
Nocturnal ChatterWe are busy with transvestites and figuring out which school textbooks to ban and how to bring women back to the kitchen.
Once these tasks are completed, we will catch up with China, don't worry.
BlueTruthHmm, everyone has been aware of this for a long time, the main media constantly write about it.
Why present the information stolen by a 21-year-old traitor as a shock and revelation? Do you really want the Pulitzer Prize?
Stan ContinopleSailed.
The leaks are over, there is nothing to tickle the nerves of the public. That's enough already.
ScottOfTheAntipodesI can't stand Trump.
I laughed at the creation of Space Forces, but maybe he really chose the right time then. Even a broken clock shows the exact time twice a day…
Putins Losing – BiglyThe main thing here is to fit everything into your favorite narrative in order to politicize it…