Russia to target US satellites as legitimate targets in Ukraine war

warisboring.com

10 points·mikece··8 comments

Russia has hit hospitals, apartment complexes, and nuclear power plants during this war. There's very, very little that they could designate as legitimate targets that would surprise me.

This is not a new threat. It was first made September 12, 2022:

https://documents.unoda.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Unoff...

Source: "Open-ended working group on reducing space threats / Statements: second session" https://meetings.unoda.org/section/oewg-space-2022_general-s...

I'm skeptical of Russia's current ability to project force in space.

I could be wrong but this seems primarily aimed at Starlink, especially after Elon said he cannot keep donating service for Ukraine. Nothing is official yet but it seems the EU and US Dept. of Defense are going to pay Starlink for continued service to the Ukrainian fighters which seems like a pretty active part of the belligerency.

This is just Russian scare-mongering and should be ignored.

The US should treat the satellites just as if they were US flagged merchant ships. Anything less emboldens Russia.

Sure, if they want to escalate the war. Drawing redlines where there wont be civilian casualties is a bad idea.

I strongly disagree. If Russia was destroying a U.S. unmanned ship in international waters, it’s identical. That would not be allowed. Neither should this. Fear of repercussions is the only thing which keeps Russia from challenging the US. At a minimum, destroying every Russian satellite is the appropriate response. While SpaceX has a cost advantage in satellite deployment, Russia can’t win a satellite destruction battle. The US should take advantage of that asymmetry.

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