SAEDNEWS: According to reports, Russia is developing a new anti-satellite weapon specifically designed to target SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation.
According to the technology desk of the Saad News Agency, citing The Independent, reports suggest that a so-called “zone-effect” weapon is designed to saturate Starlink’s orbital hardware with hundreds of thousands of high-density metal pellets.
Such a weapon would likely be capable of disabling multiple satellites simultaneously. However, it would also carry a serious risk of causing catastrophic damage to other spacecraft and instruments orbiting Earth. The stated aim of this development is to limit the West’s dominance in space — a dominance that has played an important role in supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia.
That said, analysts who have not directly reviewed the underlying research express skepticism. They question whether such a weapon could be deployed without triggering uncontrollable chaos in Earth’s orbital environment. Such disruption would not only affect Western companies but would also impact institutions and countries such as Russia and China, which rely on thousands of satellites for critical communications, military operations, and other essential functions.
These clear consequences — including the potential risk to a state’s own space infrastructure — are believed to be one of the main reasons Russia has refrained from deploying such a weapon.
