Breaking Defense

Gen. Jay Raymond, commander of U.S. Space Command and chief of space operations for the Space Force, announced on April 15 that the United States was aware of and tracking a Russian direct-ascent antisatellite (DA-ASAT) test held that day.

But the facts suggest this was simply a flight test of Russia’s Nudol system, a ground-launched, mobile ballistic missile that has been in development since 2010. No intercept appears to have been attempted, according to the available facts. In order to truly understand the significance of this test, it is important to look at how it fits into Russia’s broader counterspace programs overall and how it compares to U.S. and Chinese counterspace capabilities in operation or development.

In his statement, Raymond claimed the system “was capable of knocking out satellites in low Earth orbit”. While creating the capability to do that is probably the program’s goal, Nudol has not been used to intercept an orbital target. This appears to have been the ninth or tenth flight test of the Nudol program, with several likely flight test failures. To date, it appears that none of these attempted to intercept an orbital target, and were all simply flight tests of the booster or the kinetic kill vehicle. Nudol is thought to be able to reach an altitude of about 1,000 kilometers and there is some debate among analysts over whether its primary mission is counterspace or ballistic missile defense.

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