Pentagon Intelligence Warns Rivals Are Preparing to Fight the Next War in Space

The first moves of the next major war could take place hundreds of miles above Earth, according to a new Defense Intelligence Agency assessment. The report says U.S. adversaries are exploring ways to blind American forces by jamming communications, disabling GPS, striking satellites with lasers or destroying them outright.

The DIA details how China and Russia are building increasingly sophisticated tools to disrupt or destroy U.S. satellites. Among them is a Russian satellite designed to carry a nuclear weapon into Earth's orbit.

American forces depend on satellites to communicate across battlefields, navigate ships and aircraft, track enemy forces, detect missile launches and guide precision weapons. Losing those systems could leave troops struggling to see, communicate and strike. "We can't do military operations the way that we do them today without satellites, without systems in space," said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who previously spoke to Fox News Digital. He added that whoever controls space and can deny it to an opponent holds "a huge asymmetric advantage in a conflict."

The stakes reach beyond the military. Satellites support GPS navigation, communications, banking, transportation and the electric grid, so a large-scale attack in space could disrupt services that millions of people use daily.

According to the report, Chinese military thinkers have identified reconnaissance, communications, navigation and early-warning satellites as targets for attacks meant to "blind and deafen the enemy." The DIA assesses that Beijing could begin threatening or gradually degrading an adversary's space architecture during a crisis as a "prelude to war." Russia, for its part, sees U.S. dependence on satellites for precision strikes and power projection as a "critical vulnerability." Its doctrine calls for attacks ranging from temporary jamming and sensor blinding to the destruction of spacecraft and their supporting infrastructure.

The DIA describes the threat as a continuum. It starts with attacks that temporarily disrupt a satellite without destroying it, then moves through cyber and orbital attacks to kinetic weapons and, at the far end, a nuclear detonation in space.

Some of these tactics have already appeared in real conflict. During Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. and Iran "took offensive actions against each other's space capabilities to degrade and disrupt military actions on both sides," the DIA said. The report does not describe those operations, but notes that jamming near the Strait of Hormuz in June disrupted U.S. aircraft and shipping vessels.

China already rehearses jamming satellite communications and GPS in military exercises. It also has ground-based lasers able to disrupt or damage satellites in low-Earth orbit, and the DIA assesses it could field space-based directed-energy systems by the late 2020s. The Shijian-17 satellite carries a robotic arm that can grapple another satellite, and Shijian-21 used similar technology in 2022 to move a defunct Chinese navigation satellite into a higher orbit. The DIA noted that technology used to service or remove satellites can also serve military purposes.

Russia has repeatedly placed its spacecraft near U.S. satellites. Cosmos 2543 trailed a U.S. national security satellite after its 2019 release, approached it several times and later fired a projectile in what the DIA called an anti-satellite weapons test. Cosmos 2558 was sent near another U.S. government satellite in 2022, and Cosmos 2576 was launched in 2024 into the same orbit as a U.S. national security satellite before moving toward it. By 2025, Cosmos 2588 was maneuvering within roughly 93 kilometers of another U.S. government satellite. Russia is also developing Burevestnik, an air-launched weapon meant to "kill" satellites in low-Earth orbit, which would fly from a modified MiG-31 and could reach orbit with little or no warning.

The most serious concern is nuclear. "Russia is developing a satellite designed to carry a nuclear weapon," the assessment states, warning of the "rapid and sudden loss or degradation of thousands of satellites" worldwide. Radiation belts from such a blast "could persist for years," damaging satellites that initially survived. Then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner raised alarms in February 2024 over a "serious national security threat," later revealed to involve a Russian nuclear anti-satellite capability. As recently as April, U.S. Space Command chief Gen. Stephen Whiting said officials were "very concerned" by reports of such a plan, but declined to confirm that Moscow was developing one.