US-UK drills target Russia’s nuclear space weapons threat

The nuclear threat is no longer limited to Earth; it has grown beyond the planet to space.

In the wake of the growing nuclear race, the West is ramping up the drills and wargame exercises involving the US Space Command and its allies, such as the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, to counter a possible Russian nuclear strike from space.

As per the US officials, Russia has been involved in sending the orbital device to space, capable of monitoring and attacking satellites.

Officials also warn that the conflict in space would not just be a military affair; it could strike down the foundations of modern society.

America’s top military space commander emphasized on Tuesday that the West must now respond in kind.

“The necessity of manoeuvre in space has intensified over the past year, as we have watched China demonstrate their orbital refuelling and logistics prowess,” Gen Stephen Whiting, head of the US Space Command, told the Space Symposium.

He added, “We need a different strategy to deter and win a global, protracted conflict against a great power. That strategy is manoeuvre warfare.”

According to a military news site, the open-source reports mentioned that deployment of such weapons would cause destruction to all satellites in orbit.

In May 2024, the US claimed that it had detected a new device named Cosmos 2576 that was launched from western Russia.

“We have observed nominal activity and assess it is likely a counter-space weapon presumably capable of attacking other satellites in low Earth orbit,” said a spokesperson for the US Space Command.

“Russia deployed this new counter-space weapon into the same orbit as a US government satellite.”

However, the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergey Ryankov, dismissed these US claims stating Russia is already against deploying nukes in orbit.

Even Russia accused the US of turning the space into a military battleground.