Space Force chief: Intelligence officials ‘making sure we get lessons learned’ from recent Russian satellite maneuvers near commercial sat

The U.S. military was keeping a close eye on a Russian satellite that raised alarms in recent weeks as it maneuvered near a commercial synthetic aperture radar satellite, according to the Space Force’s top officer.

The incident involving Russia’s Cosmos 2612 and a system operated by ICEYE — a company that owns a large constellation of SAR satellites and provides intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to governments — occurred amid growing concerns about Moscow’s space-based weapons that could threaten other platforms on orbit, including military and commercial sats.

ICEYE technologies have been used to support Ukraine, which is at war with Russia. Earlier this year, the company announced a new agreement to expand its space-based intelligence assistance to the Ukrainian armed forces.

American national security agencies were keeping tabs on Cosmos 2612, Gen. Douglas Schiess, chief of space operations, suggested Wednesday during an event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

“The U.S. government, the U.S. Space Force, is the best there is in the world at space domain awareness and having the ability to know what’s going on in space, so obviously we were tracking that situation. We were working through that. Our component commander out at Vandenberg was working that and making sure that the commander of U.S. Space Command knew exactly what was going on, when it was going on,” he said.

“That’s an example there of other nations, potential adversaries, using space to be able to message to others that ‘hey, we have a capability,’ and that we have to take … [into account] what does that mean for us and what does it mean for our allies and partners,” Schiess added.

The general suggested that the incident further highlighted the need for the Space Force to be able to defend U.S. assets.

“We were watching that, and we will continue to learn from it. And our intel folks, along with the Intelligence Community, we’re making sure that we get lessons learned from that,” Schiess said.

Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in an article last month that the potential threat posed by Cosmos 2612 had broader implications.

“A Russian counterspace activity in the vicinity of Western satellites should be assessed within the context of aggressive Russian gray zone activities targeting U.S. and European interests. To date, neither the United States nor Europe has been able to deter Russia from expanding the scope and frequency of these gray zone actions. As Russia appears poised to increase hostile actions in outer space to test Western resolve, the United States and Europe should decide how they would respond to a hostile act in space and make that response clear,” they wrote.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink revealed in September that the U.S. military has weapons on orbit.

During Wednesday’s event, Schiess indicated that the announcement was made as a deterrent signal to adversaries.

“Secretary Meink and I were pleased to be able to get that across the line to be able to talk about that — we have on-orbit weapons that are there to defend the joint force from space-enabled attack. And so it was a deliberate decision,” he said. “But it wasn’t just at our level. It went all the way up to the secretary of war, on hey, it’s time to be able to talk about this.”

Schiess added: “To be able to have a deterrent force, we have to have, one, the capability and then have the will to use it, and … our adversaries need to know that we have the capability. And so this announcement gave us the option to talk about that we actually do have on-orbit weapons that are there to protect what we need to be able to do in the space domain.”

Although Pentagon leaders are now trumpeting the existence of those platforms, they’re being tight-lipped about the systems’ specific characteristics and capabilities and the U.S. military’s overall mix of on-orbit and ground-based counterspace weapons.

Historically, space systems and activities have been some of the Pentagon’s most highly classified programs

“We at this time are not going to talk about what kind of weapon that we have on orbit or the mix of weapons that we have across the whole force,” Schiess said in response to questions from DefenseScoop at Wednesday’s event. “But what I would tell you is, we are looking at that from a force design perspective and what that looks like for the future. … I talked about offensive versus defensive [capabilities], and … all of those things are being looked at as we look to … the next years’ budgets and the things that we’re doing.”