![\"Thermonuclear](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764280095_912_0x0.jpg\")
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Europe’s top space powers, like the U.S., are racing to defend against Russian nuclear strikes in orbit (Photo by \u00a9 CORBIS\/Corbis via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Corbis via Getty Images<\/p>\n
As Russia threatens atomic attacks on Ukraine and its Western allies, and prototypes a nuclear-armed spacecraft, space powers across Europe are racing to defend against nuclear strikes in orbit.<\/p>\n
Leaders stretching from Paris to Berlin are stepping up space defenses while warning Moscow\u2019s military provocations are now spreading across the celestial sphere.<\/p>\n
Even as Vladimir Putin escalates his missiles blitzes on Ukraine, as part of a greater plan to restore the Russian empire, he could be lowering the threshold on actual use of nuclear warheads to conquer target countries, says Spenser Warren, Stanton nuclear security postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University\u2019s Kennedy School of Government.<\/p>\n
One of the world\u2019s leading experts on the Kremlin\u2019s crusade to modernize its nuclear arsenal<\/a>, Warren told me in an interview that Putin could be moving closer to detonating tactical bombs on the current and future battlefronts of Eastern Europe, and to launching satellites that secretly conceal atomic bombs.<\/p>\n In a book he co-authored on the defense-tech race now pitting Moscow against Washington, published by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Warren predicts the looming face-off between these rivals could play out not just across the Earth\u2019s northern hemisphere, but also in the heavens.<\/p>\n The White House has accused Moscow of developing nuclear bombs, to be lofted into orbit, in violation of the Outer Space Treaty\u2019s ban on weapons of mass destruction anywhere in space. <\/p>\n Russia\u2019s nuclear-tipped ASATs could stalk the thousands of Allied satellites that now circle the globe – from American missile tracking sentinels to SpaceX spacecraft beaming broadband to besieged Ukrainians. <\/p>\n A single Russian nuclear-armed orbiter could, with one blast, destroy thousands of satellites now flying through low Earth orbit. Shown here is an image combining a blend of exposures showing all the satellites circling the planet. (Photo by: Alan Dyer\/VW Pics\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/p>\n VW Pics\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n In a future conflict, Warren forecasts, Moscow might unleash the space version of a surprise Pearl Harbor ambush, using space nukes to preemptively level the orbital battlefield. <\/p>\n \u201cRussia may be willing to degrade its own satellites as part of a broad anti-satellite (ASAT) strike<\/a>,\u201d he says, \u201cas it is less space-dependent than the United States and expects an American ASAT strike in the early stages of a conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n President Donald Trump called the worldwide build-up of nuclear missiles one of the greatest threats facing the U.S. when he ordered the construction of the Golden Dome missile defense system, featuring space-based interceptors designed to destroy ICBMs within their first 180 seconds of flight. Next-generation interceptors could also be adapted to blast Moscow\u2019s atomic ASATs orbiting the globe without their warheads exploding.<\/p>\n Russia has already assembled the world’s biggest arsenal of nuclear warheads, and is now racing to perfect an atomic-armed spacecraft to threaten the Western space powers (Photo by STRINGER \/ AFP) (Photo by STRINGER\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n Moving in lockstep, Europe\u2019s top space powers are also rushing to expand their orbital defenses.<\/p>\n President Emmanuel Macron, while launching France\u2019s new Space Command center, recently warned: \u201cToday\u2019s war is already playing out in space and tomorrow’s war will begin in space.\u201d<\/p>\n “We are experiencing the espionage, for example by Russia, of our satellites by patrol ships, the massive jamming of GPS signals, cyber attacks against our space infrastructure, the tests of anti-satellite missiles, the development of anti-satellite weapons, and even the particularly shocking Russian threat of nuclear weapons in space<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n To counter these skyrocketing threats, President Macron said he is channeling 10 billion euros into France\u2019s new national space strategy to \u201ccarry out military space operations\u201d projected ahead, and to strengthen its space alliance with NATO.<\/p>\n Nuclear power France is mulling the extension of its atomic umbrella to protect fellow democracies threatened by Moscow, even as it prepares to defend against nuclear attacks launched in orbit (PHoto by Galerie Bilderwelt\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n Getty Images<\/p>\n Macron, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, is also pushing for the build-up of the army, echoing a call to arms delivered to the French National Assembly and Senate by defense chief Fabien Mandon.<\/p>\n General Mandon told legislators that Russia could be ready to attack NATO “in three or four years,\u201d but added: “Russia cannot scare us<\/a> if we are willing to defend ourselves,” reported Le Monde, France\u2019s leading broadsheet newspaper.<\/p>\n France\u2019s closest space ally, Germany, is ramping up its mapping of threats in orbit, and emanating from ground-based launch pads, to prepare for potential space assaults ahead.<\/p>\n In Berlin, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius declared that while satellite networks now form the foundation of modern societies, “Anyone who attacks them can paralyze entire states.\u201d <\/p>\n Kremlin space commanders have \u201crapidly expanded their capabilities to conduct war in space<\/a> in recent years,\u201d he said, including the ability to \u201ckinetically destroy satellites.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEvery attack on satellites does not only affect the military or the space industry \u2013 it affects millions and millions of people.\u201d<\/p>\n To protect German security and freedom in space, the defense minister said, 35 billion euros is being pumped into the Bundeswehr Space Command over the next five years.<\/p>\n Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said to guard against Russia’s expanding ability to fight space wars, the German government is pumping 35 billion euros into the Bundeswehr Space Command (Photo by Andreas Rentz\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n Getty Images<\/p>\n Pivotal spacecraft will be hardened against attacks and protected by \u201cguardian satellites,\u201d while Germany\u2019s space fleet is augmented by state-of-the-art missile warning systems. <\/p>\n \u201cThe conflicts of the future are no longer limited to the Earth\u2019s surface or the deep sea,\u201d Pistorius warned. \u201cThey are also played out openly in orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Mulvihill, a vice chancellor research fellow focusing on nuclear warfare at Teesside University in the UK, told me in an interview that President \u201cMacron\u2019s comments about future wars fought in space\u201d are being echoed by space security scholars across Europe and around the world.<\/p>\n After writing his doctoral dissertation on Britain\u2019s defense masterplan to safeguard government elites during a doomsday nuclear war, and to provide aid to any scattered British survivors who emerge from fallout shelters in this final conflict, Mulvihill teamed up with filmmakers at the British Broadcasting Corp. to transform his research into the documentary \u201cA British Guide to the End of the World<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n He predicts that a series of Russian nuclear strikes hundreds of kilometers above the Earth could end all human spaceflight, and crewed orbital stations, for generations. <\/p>\n Russia\u2019s nuclear ASATs, he says, are \u201ca potential (and cheap) countermeasure to Golden Dome.\u201d<\/p>\n But nuclear explosions in space are, he points out, \u201cindiscriminate and would destroy satellites of both friend and foe.\u201d<\/p>\n When the U.S. tested a powerful thermonuclear warhead at the height of the Cold War with the Soviets, he says, this Starfish Prime blast destroyed one-third of all satellites then circling the Earth.<\/p>\n These days, with 10,000 spacecraft now whizzing through space, the detonation of even one Russian super-bomb could take out thousands of satellites, along with the dual human outposts circling the planet.<\/p>\n SpaceX Starlink satellites, repeatedly excoriated by the Kremlin for extending internet lifelines to citizens across shell-shocked Ukrainian cities, likely remain a prime potential target of a Russian space assault, Mulvihill says.<\/p>\n SpaceX Starlink satellites, which are beaming lifesaving internet connections to Ukraine’s bombed-out cities, likely remain a prime potential target of Russian nuclear strikes in orbit (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY \/ AFP) (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n Because SpaceX now flies 8000 satellites above the Earth, \u201cshooting down a single unit with a ground launch missile would not impact operations.\u201d <\/p>\n In contrast, he says, detonating a nuclear warhead near the orbital ring hosting these satellites could destroy vast swaths of the Starlink constellation.<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout the full-scale invasion of Ukraine Russia has attempted to use nuclear threats.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNuclear threats and spooky insinuation of orbital nuclear weapons form part of broader hybrid warfare techniques that encompass recent incidents of cyber attacks, drone disruption and sabotage in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n Bursting a thermonuclear warhead near the International Space Station, or the Chinese Space Station, would likely kill its astronauts, and render the outpost uninhabitable.<\/p>\n Russia’s detonating a nuclear warhead near the Chinese space station would likely kill its astronauts and render the outpost uninhabitable (Photo by Jin Liangkuai\/Xinhua via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cNuclear explosions in space release their energy as deadly radiation including x-rays and gamma-rays, that could kill a crew of a nearby space station.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWreckage from a [nuclear] war in low Earth orbit could close space off to humanity\u201d into the far-off future.<\/p>\n \u201cSpace warfare,\u201d he predicts, \u201ccould also escalate quickly into nuclear warfare on Earth.\u201d <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Mulvihill says the \u201cEnd of the World\u201d documentary that he co-created with the BBC presents the terrifying tableaux of a crushed civilization and future in the aftermath of an all-out atomic war of \u201cMutually Assured Destruction.\u201d <\/p>\n Like this British vision on a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, he says, \u201cI think films such as \u2018Oppenheimer\u2019 and \u2018House of Dynamite\u2019 are currently doing important work of bringing the risk and implication of nuclear warfare back to public perception.\u201d<\/p>\n If these doomsday broadcasts ultimately trigger a rising wave of popular calls to scale back or completely abolish all nuclear weaponry, government leaders across the Western democracies could ultimately act on those appeals.<\/p>\n As massive protests against the nuclear arms race spread across the globe, leaders in the Western democracies might act to reduce and ultimately eliminate these doomsday weapons from the face of the Earth. Shown here is a Berlin anti-nuclear march led by activists representing the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. (Photo by Tobias Schwarz \/ AFP) (Photo by TOBIAS SCHWARZ\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cIt is said that ABC\u2019s \u2018The Day After\u2019 and BBC’s \u2018Threads\u2019 helped change the course of Reagan Administration nuclear policy in the 1980s,\u201d Mulvihill says. <\/p>\n U.S. members of Congress petrified by the prospect of an intercontinental nuclear war with Russia, and by the Kremlin\u2019s atomic brinkmanship on and above the Earth, are already moving to press for worldwide disarmament.<\/p>\n While championing the hyper-realism of the nuclear attack and compressed timelines for the American president to decide on a massive retaliation that could kill hundreds of millions of people depicted in \u201cA House of Dynamite,\u201d<\/a> Senator Edward Markey is now using the film to push his pending resolution<\/a> calling on the White House to \u201cactively pursue a world free of nuclear weapons as a national security imperative.\u201d<\/p>\n Markey, co-chair of the bicameral Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, and a coalition of fellow-minded senators, are urging the president to convene urgent talks to convince \u201cthe other 8 nuclear armed countries\u201d to collectively and simultaneously \u201celiminate their nuclear arsenals according to negotiated timetables.”<\/p>\n British nuclear scholar Michael Mulvihill says: \u201cI think since the end of the Cold War public perceptions of nuclear weapons have been that they are artifacts that belong in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n Victoria Samson, one of the top American scholars on space security, and on war and peace in orbit, says although Moscow has already launched one satellite, Cosmos 2553, suspected of being a precursor mission to lofting its atomic ASATs, \u201cEven with Russia at its most aggressive posture, I don\u2019t see them using this capability lightly.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI would not see them using this preemptively as it\u2019s so escalatory, it would very likely lead to conflict on Earth,\u201d adds Samson, who is Chief Director, Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation, a globally influential think tank promoting the pacific use of space, for the benefit of all humanity, based in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only reason to use one [nuclear anti-satellite missile] would be to eradicate a lot of satellites at one time and that would definitely be aimed at Western space capabilities.”<\/p>\n \u201cRussia does understand that there would be consequences to detonating a nuclear warhead in orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite Vladimir Putin\u2019s cascade of threats to deploy nuclear warheads against Ukraine and its Western backers, and his clandestine race to perfect the ultimate space bomb, Samson says: \u201cThis is still something that I would see using only in an end of days, Hitler in the bunker scenario for Putin.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Europe’s top space powers, like the 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