When a Russian \u201cnesting-doll\u201d satellite maneuvered into close proximity to a US satellite last June, it was the latest move in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in space.<\/p>\n
Cosmos 2558 had been observed shadowing USA 326 ever since being launched in 2022. But now it had hatched a surprise by releasing a smaller module that started moving even closer to the US satellite.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the second one we\u2019ve seen do this from the Russian side,\u201d said DeAnna Burt, who was chief operations officer at the US Space Force at the time of the incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have a satellite that then has another satellite within it that then, we believe, is a KK or Kinetic Kill vehicle that would go out and rendezvous with another satellite and potentially harm it or image it or do different things,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Burt retired in October 2025 and spoke to RFE\/RL during a visit to Prague organized by the Aspen Institute. In a wide-ranging interview on January 30, she discussed threats to satellites from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as a shadowy conflict already ongoing since the beginning of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n
Close Encounter In Space<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWe have seen what we would call rendezvous proximity operations, which means\u2026flying around and surveying the other satellite,\u201d Burt said, when asked about the incident last June.<\/p>\n The concern, she added, was \u201cwould they release a kill vehicle\u201d or was it \u201cpurely surveillance and reconnaissance?\u201d It turned out it was the latter. But it was still alarming, not only due to the risk of collision.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you’re seeing in the development here, all of these are tests building up to capability\u2026hypothetically, if I were going to launch a counter space capability, first I’d want to make sure I can acquire targets before I could then strike targets.\u201d<\/p>\n Burt is not the first to warn of such Russian threats.<\/p>\n The previous incident was briefly discussed by the then chief of space operations of the US Space Force, General John Raymond, in comments to Time Magazine<\/strong><\/a> in 2020. \u201cThe way I picture it, in my mind, is like Russian nesting dolls,\u201d he said. \u201cThe second satellite came out of the first satellite.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2024, Raymond\u2019s successor General Chance Saltzman warned of a \u201cDay Zero\u201d if Russia deployed a nuclear weapon in space to destroy satellite capabilities. That year, a claim by the Pentagon<\/strong><\/a> that Russia had \u201clikely\u201d deployed an anti-satellite weapon in space was denied by the Kremlin.<\/p>\n More recently, on January 21, an Atlantic Council report said the United States was \u201cunacceptably vulnerable\u201d to such threats and urged a shift to \u201cresilient satellite architectures.\u201d<\/p>\n Burt said this was something that was already a major US priority: \u201cHaving the ability to take a hit and to be able to recover\u2026with satellites that are on the shelf ready to launch.\u201d<\/p>\n An exercise in 2023, codenamed Victus Knox, saw a new record for a satellite launch, \u201cfrom the warehouse to on-orbit capability in a week,\u201d per a Space Force<\/strong><\/a> statement. But Burt said this was not enough.<\/p>\n \u201cHow do you do that at scale? We’ve done that in a singular sense. How do we get that at scale so that we can build that resilience?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n