Moscow's race to perfect a nuclear-armed anti-satellite missile to threaten Western spacecraft is sparking the U.S. and its Allies to rapidly step up their space defenses. Shown here are Russian nuclear missiles parading through Red Square. (Photo by NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty Images)

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Mounting evidence that Russia is racing to perfect a nuclear-armed spacecraft to target Western satellites in low Earth orbit is sparking the U.S. and its Allies to speed up and expand their space defenses, says a leading space security scholar in Washington D.C.

Moscow’s simultaneous threats to target American and European spacecraft that are aiding Ukraine by beaming broadband internet connections to the besieged democracy, or high-resolution imagery of invading Russian tanks and missile brigades, are triggering more Allies to begin arming for space clashes, says Victoria Samson, Chief Director, Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation, one of the top space defense think tanks in the U.S.

Samson, an internationally acclaimed expert on the world’s military space powers and their competing modernization drives, says the United States remains the global leader in terms of space defenses, but adds that a fusillade of threats being fired off by the Kremlin is causing more American commanders to talk about preparing for the first war in space.

While the Kremlin is developing three separate anti-satellite missile systems, Samson told me in an interview, the most alarming is the Nudol ASAT.

There is evidence that the Nudol, which Moscow demonstrated five years ago by blasting a Soviet-era satellite, with its cloud of super-speed shrapnel dangerously crossing the orbit of the International Space Station, is now being adapted to carry a nuclear warhead to perpetually challenge Western satellites that circle the planet.

In a fascinating paper that she co-authored for the Secure World Foundation, Samson says: “It is possible that the nuclear armament of the Nudol under at least some circumstances is being considered.”

“Depictions of the Nudol TEL [Transporter Erector Launcher] have features that appear to be environmental control systems on the missile tubes, a feature typically associated with nuclear-armed missiles.”

“And there is precedent for such a decision: the 51T6 Gorgon was nuclear-tipped due to persistent skepticism regarding the efficacy and reliability of non-nuclear missile defense.”

“Some Soviet and Russian military strategists have discussed the desirability of nuclear ASATs for reliable, rapid, and wide-area kinetic and electromagnetic pulse effect,” adds Samson, an expert on nuclear weaponry and onetime scholar at the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, a consortium of arms control groups in Washington.

At the same time, she adds, some defense analysts now “argue that Russia has shifted its nuclear doctrine towards the use of tactical nuclear weapons for war-fighting.”

After the White House recently classified the potential deployment of an atomic-armed satellite in orbit as a high-risk threat, the Department of Defense is likely speeding to perfect an array of weapons systems to destroy the Russian space-bomb.

The detonation of a Russian nuclear warhead in the high traffic zones of low Earth orbit would shoot out a massive electromagnetic pulse that could destroy vast swaths of satellites, and potentially prove lethal to astronauts aboard the International Space Station or the Chinese space station, Samson says.

She points to an extensive, alarming study conducted by scientists at the Nuclear Threat Reduction Agency, who simulated, on a sophisticated supercomputer, a series of nuclear bomb blasts in orbit.

These nuclear scholars discovered that a 5000 kiloton nuclear warhead, ignited in the vicinity of the International Space Station, “inflicts severe damage on the ISS."

The blast “would cause radiation sickness to the astronauts within approximately one hour and a 90% probability of death within 2-3 hours.”

Aware of the dangers of a nuclear explosion in orbit, the U.S. introduced a resolution in the United Nations Security Council two years ago that called on the world’s space powers to reaffirm their adherence to the Outer Space Treaty’s ban on launching nuclear weapons into orbit, but Russia rapidly vetoed the measure.

That prompted then-National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to remark that if Moscow had not been developing a nuclear ASAT, it would not have killed the UN measure. “As we have noted previously,” Sullivan said, “the United States assesses that Russia is developing a new satellite carrying a nuclear device.”

Space security scholar Samson told me that although the U.S. currently does not have an operational anti-satellite program, two of its missile defense systems could rapidly be adapted into ASAT weaponry.

“The Aegis BMD system is a theater missile defense system that’s designed to go against medium-range ballistic missiles,” she says, while “the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system is the system that's designed to defend against ICBM-class threats.”

That means Ground-based Midcourse Defense missiles might be adapted to target and destroy a Russian satellite concealing a nuclear warhead.

When the U.S. begins building out its Golden Dome missile defense network, which would be the world’s supreme shield against missile attacks, it will have many more options to defeat a Russian thermonuclear bomb heading into space.

With anti-missile defenses positioned across American launch centers, on next-generation fighter-bombers, and in orbit, the U.S. would field an array of attack options on the newest Russian nuclear weapons platform.

The orbital sector of the Golden Dome is slated to feature rich constellations of leading-edge space-based interceptors designed to blast an enemy’s just-launched missile, during the first several minutes of its boost phase, before it could shoot out a cluster of independently targeted warheads.

The space-based interceptors “that are part of the Golden Dome design could be used as ASATs,” Samson told me.

“If the United States does move ahead with its plan for a space-based interceptor layer of a proposed ‘Golden Dome for America,’” she adds in the report, “these weapons would have co-orbital counterspace capabilities.”

But the biggest challenge in constructing the Golden Dome is its astronomical price.

Todd Harrison, one of the foremost space defense scholars in the U.S., based at the American Enterprise Institute, “did an analysis in September 2025 of what Golden Dome could cost, depending on which architecture the United States decides to go with,” Samson recounts in the Secure World Foundation report.

“The smallest amount was for a limited tactical defense that had no space-based interceptor layer; it would cost an estimated $252 billion over 20 years.”

“The largest amount was for a ‘robust all-threat defense’ that matches what the White House has said it would like Golden Dome to do,” she adds, “it would cost an estimated $3.6 trillion over 20 years.”

Harrison, who holds an advanced degree in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told me in an earlier interview that the Golden Dome’s web of orbiting missile interceptors - celestial guardians perpetually circling the Earth - could in theory protect the United States against an all-out Russian nuclear attack.

But to defend against the Kremlin’s entire fleet of intercontinental ballistic missiles, he told me, the shield would have to include 200,000 interceptors.

One vulnerability in the proposed American super-shield, Samson points out, is that as the Golden Dome is being assembled above the Earth, it would present a prime target for Russia’s orbital super-bomb, “as it could take out the space-based interceptor layer pretty quickly.”

Moscow also quite likely has SpaceX’s fantastic rings of Starlink satellites in its cross hairs, Samson says, because they have kept Ukraine’s missile-bombarded citizens and its icon of democracy, President Volodymyr Zelensky, plugged into the World Wide Web. Russia has already targeted SpaceX founder Elon Musk with an endless volley of threats, while deploying jet fighters and missile outfits to destroy Starlink terminals across Ukraine.

Exploding one nuclear device near the Starlink constellation might take out thousands of SpaceX satellites.

The Kremlin’s lofting an apocalyptic atomic bomb into orbit would present such an all-out danger that the White House shouldn’t risk allowing the launch to take place, and then attempt to destroy the weapon as it speeds through space, Samson says.

“If the U.S. had solid intel that a satellite with a nuclear payload was about to be launched, they might need to get it left of launch, or before it leaves the launchpad.”

“This could be escalatory if it is proven that the U.S. was the one who did that.”

“But in a calculus of whether it’s better to wait and create orbital debris from a destroyed satellite, or even risk missing the satellite/not mitigating the danger, it might be a better choice to do left of launch - if the intel is there.”

A team of specially trained American commandos, Samson predicts, could swiftly take out Moscow’s nuclear ASAT before it takes flight, and escape the scene before any Kremlin commissars can halt their operation.

Pointing to the extraordinary capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from his fortified citadel in the Venezuelan capital, by elite American Delta Force troops who helicoptered into the heavily guarded compound, Samson says she “would recommend a Special Operations Forces attack,” a mission that leaves behind no evidence of its protagonists.

There are signs that Special Operations squads might already be training for a lightning raid on a Russian launch site hosting the atomic ASAT.

In a report on the training of 70,000 Special Operations troops in the U.S. issued after the discovery of the clandestine Russian nuclear spacecraft project, scholars at the Congressional Research Service said these forces are drilled across nine “core activities,” including on “Counter-proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

Special Operations teams “support USG [U.S. government] efforts to curtail the conceptualization, development, possession, proliferation, use, and effects of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), related expertise, materials, technologies, and means of delivery by state and non-state actors.”

They are also instructed to perfect “short-duration strikes and other small-scale offensive actions employing specialized military capabilities to seize, destroy, capture, exploit, recover, or damage designated targets.”