By BlueShift | 2025-11-14

Ukraine's use of Starlink satellites for drone control and civil and military communications in its war against Russia demonstrates the vital role satellite constellations can play in a military conflict.

But as nations such as Ukraine make increasing use of space assets to help them during a conflict, analysts say adversaries will seek new ways to make these same satellites a target in order to prevent them from operating.

Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations provide continuous high-speed internet coverage, regardless of the geographic area, including in dead zones not covered by terrestrial infrastructure.

The use of LEO satellite constellations has multiplied in recent years, and Starlink dominates the market with more than 7,000 satellites deployed out of a planned 42,000 -- a full 60% of the total number of active satellites in LEO.

On previous occasions, Russia has signaled or actively demonstrated it is preparing to conduct interference operations or warfare in the space domain.

Since the start of the Ukraine War, suspected jamming of Global Navigation Satellite System signals in Finland has surged, for example, with Helsinki suspecting the satellite-navigation jamming signals originate from Russia.

In April, NATO sounded the alarm over reports that Russia may be exploring the deployment of nuclear weapons in space -- a move that could jeopardize thousands of satellites essential to global security and daily life.

And in June, Russian satellite Kosmos 2558 -- which has been continuously pursuing the orbital path of US surveillance satellite USA 326 since 2022 -- released an unknown object into orbit that US officials dubbed "Object C."

Object C is thought to be an anti-satellite (ASAT) device designed to disable orbiting satellites.

Anti-satellite systems

Most of Russia's current anti-satellite systems can only neutralize a few satellites at a time, and are ineffective against constellations of hundreds or thousands.

To bridge this gap in its capabilities, analysts theorize, the Kremlin may be exploring the development of zone effect anti-satellite weapons -- a relatively cheap but crude tactic that also allows for plausible deniability.

In one scenario, hundreds of thousands of high-density millimeter-sized balls could be released into orbits where adversary satellite constellations are operating, according to a European military source.

These balls would act as a cloud of bullets, inflicting crippling damage on satellites passing through them.

Unable to detect and thus avoid such small objects, satellites would suffer structural impacts that would themselves generate debris, potentially triggering a chain reaction.

According to the principles of the Kessler syndrome, this chain reaction could make many key orbits unusable, potentially for many years.

Saturating the orbits where connectivity constellations operate would prevent rival powers from developing constellations and expose existing constellations (Guowang, Qianfan, Oneweb, Kuiper) to major damage, analysts say.

A deliberately created cloud of space debris would cause significant damage to targeted satellite constellations that pass through it, they observe, but would come with a heavy price tag in the form of enormous collateral damage.

This is because the space assets of the perpetrator of such an attack also would be vulnerable to the damage inflicted by deliberately placed space debris.

Clandestine operation

Micro-balls could be released by nanosatellites in formation, potentially launched alongside dozens of other military or civilian satellites, according to the military source.

This type of clandestine operation would be difficult to attribute, and as space monitoring capabilities do not currently allow the detection of millimeter-sized objects, nearly impossible for satellites in the path of these debris fields to avoid.

The repercussions of such an attack could disrupt the entire space ecosystem.

For reference, the destruction of the Russian satellite Kosmos 1408 in November 2021, during a direct-ascent anti-satellite missile test, impacted Starlink satellites operating at an altitude of 500km.

According to SpaceX reports, more than 1,700 of the 6,873 collision avoidance maneuvers performed by Starlink satellites between December 1 and May 31, 2022, were aimed at avoiding debris from Kosmos 1408.