Russia is developing a nuclear warhead designed for satellite deployment, a crude but devastating weapon that could wipe out the vast majority of orbital infrastructure the West depends on for everything from GPS navigation to military communications. That warning comes from Victoria Sampson, chief director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation, who told The Sun that intelligence reports point to an active Russian program to weaponize space in ways that would hit the United States and its allies hardest.
"It's very possible that Russia could start a war in space," Sampson said.
The claim lands at a moment when Western defense officials are already sounding alarms. General Stephen Whiting, head of U.S. Space Command, has described himself as "very concerned" about the Kremlin's nuclear satellite plans, according to a report in The Times. Major General Paul Tedman, who leads British Space Command, warned last year that Russia had been attempting to jam the UK's military satellites on a weekly basis. And Germany's defense minister has accused Moscow of eavesdropping on satellites used by European armies.
None of this is theoretical. Russia has already demonstrated the capability to destroy satellites, both from the ground and from orbit.
Sampson laid out a layered threat picture that goes well beyond a single weapons program. Russia, she said, has shown it can blow up its own satellites in orbit using another co-orbital satellite, essentially maneuvering a spacecraft close enough to a target to release high-velocity projectiles.
"It's basically like spraying it with bullets or a gun. The idea is you can send a message to another country saying 'hey, if you're going to be interfering with us, we can shoot down one of your satellites'."
Moscow has also launched a ground-based interceptor to directly strike a satellite, demonstrating what Sampson called "destructive counter space capabilities." These are not blueprints or aspirations. They are tested systems.
Below the threshold of physical destruction, Russia is already waging a quieter campaign. Sampson confirmed that Russian forces are actively conducting electronic jamming and GPS spoofing operations. Civil aviation in the Baltics has experienced repeated GPS interference attributed to Russian activity. And in May, Russia was accused of knocking out the GPS signal of an RAF jet carrying then-UK Defence Secretary John Healey, an incident that, if confirmed, represents a direct provocation against a NATO ally.
The broader pattern of Russian aggression extends well beyond orbit. Ukraine's ongoing drone campaign against Russian infrastructure reflects a conflict in which both sides are pushing the boundaries of unconventional warfare, and space is the next frontier.
The math favors the aggressor. Russia operates roughly 370 satellites in orbit. The United States has approximately 11,000. China has about 1,000. A nuclear detonation in low Earth orbit, the scenario intelligence reports suggest Russia is pursuing, would likely destroy more than 80 percent of all satellites in space, according to the report.
That asymmetry is the core of the problem. Sampson put it bluntly: Russia has "a lot less physical infrastructure in space that could be interfered with, lowering the impact of a conflict." The country with the least to lose has the most incentive to strike.
"Space is really important for a lot of countries as a national security enabler but the more countries depend upon space, the more of an incentive it is for their adversaries to deny, degrade, disrupt, destroy, or somehow intervene with our ability to use space."
Russia's declining civilian space program compounds the risk. Sampson described Russia as "a failing state" in space terms, plagued by corruption and quality control problems, with no meaningful commercial space sector. The International Space Station, one of Moscow's last footholds in cooperative space activity, is expected to go out of service within five or six years. Once it does, Russia will have even less reason to exercise restraint in orbit.
The nuclear threat from space is not the only domain where adversaries are expanding their strike capabilities. Satellite imagery has revealed China's sprawling nuclear missile infrastructure designed to ensure strike capability against the United States, a parallel buildup that underscores how exposed American assets have become on multiple fronts.
Sampson does not expect Russia to open with a nuclear detonation in orbit. The escalation ladder, she said, would begin with tools Moscow is already using.
"I think what we'd see is, frankly, what we've already been seeing, cyber attacks and things like jamming or spoofing."
The physically destructive options, co-orbital attacks, ground-launched interceptors, and the nuclear option, would come later, and likely only alongside a ground conflict between Russia and a major adversary like the United States. The reason is attribution. Kinetic strikes in space are easy to trace back to their source, making them far more escalatory than electronic warfare.
"The more kinetic type things and more physically destructive stuff are very easy to understand who did it so those are pretty escalatory," Sampson said.
That distinction matters. It means the opening phase of a space war may already be underway, weekly jamming attempts against British military satellites, GPS disruption over the Baltics, interference with NATO aircraft, without triggering the kind of response that a missile launch would demand. Russia is testing boundaries in a gray zone where the rules of engagement remain undefined.
Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts to manage the broader Russia-West confrontation continue on parallel tracks. A prisoner swap and short ceasefire tied to Victory Day offered a brief respite in the ground war, but the space domain operates under no such pauses.
Western governments are not ignoring the threat. Sampson noted that countries across the alliance have been creating dedicated military space organizations, U.S. Space Command, British Space Command, and their counterparts, precisely because they recognize how vulnerable their orbital infrastructure has become.
"The West is definitely taking these sort of threats of space capabilities seriously. That's why you're seeing such an increase in terms of countries creating their own military space organisations."
But building bureaucracies is not the same as closing capability gaps. The United States has 11,000 satellites in orbit, a staggering advantage in peacetime, and a staggering liability in a conflict where a single nuclear blast could take out four-fifths of them. The more the West integrates space into its military and civilian infrastructure, the more catastrophic any disruption becomes. Internet service, mobile communications, GPS-guided precision weapons, intelligence collection, all of it runs through orbit.
The Kremlin, for its part, has refused to respond to any of the allegations detailed in the report. That silence is consistent with Moscow's longstanding approach: deny, deflect, and continue building.
The geopolitical landscape grows more volatile by the month. The recent pause in U.S.-Iran hostilities illustrates how quickly military confrontations can escalate and how fragile any restraint proves to be. In space, there is no ceasefire mechanism, no hotline, and no treaty with teeth.
Critical questions hang over the entire assessment. The specific intelligence reports underlying the nuclear satellite claim have not been publicly identified. The 80 percent satellite-destruction figure lacks a named source or study. The precise dates of Russia's co-orbital and ground-launched anti-satellite tests are not specified. And no named U.S. intelligence agency has independently confirmed the nuclear warhead development beyond what Sampson characterized from unnamed reports.
These gaps matter. They do not discredit the threat, the demonstrated capabilities are real, the jamming is ongoing, and the satellite math is brutal. But they do mean that policymakers and the public are being asked to prepare for a scenario whose contours remain partly classified and partly speculative.
The loss of key national security voices makes these conversations harder, not easier. The sudden death of Senator Lindsey Graham removed one of the Senate's most vocal advocates for robust defense posture at a moment when the threats demanding attention are multiplying faster than the institutions meant to counter them.
Russia may be a declining space power, but declining powers with nuclear weapons and nothing left to lose in orbit are not less dangerous. They are more dangerous. Moscow has fewer satellites to protect, a crumbling civilian space program, and a demonstrated willingness to jam, spoof, stalk, and destroy orbital assets. The West has built its entire military and economic architecture on the assumption that space remains a sanctuary.
That assumption is the vulnerability. And Moscow knows it.
