The United States and Japan on Monday introduced a United Nations Security Council resolution stressing that countries should abide by a treaty banning the deployment of nuclear weapons in space, a message that appeared to be aimed at Russia.
Washington believes Moscow is developing a space-based anti-satellite nuclear weapon whose detonation could wreak havoc by disrupting everything from military communications to phone-based ride-hailing services, a person familiar with the matter said.
Russia is a party to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits “the placement in Earth orbit of any object carrying nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction” and has previously expressed its opposition to the deployment of nuclear weapons in space.
The Russian defense minister also denied that such a weapon was being developed. The treaty prohibits the deployment of nuclear weapons in orbit; however, developing one is not prohibited.
In resolutions seen by Reuters, the United States, the only country to use nuclear weapons in war, and Japan, the only country to be attacked by nuclear weapons, urged countries bound by the treaty not to put such weapons into space or to develop nuclear weapons. them.
Reports of possible developments in Russia emerged on February 14 after a Republican congressman issued a cryptic statement warning of a “serious national security threat.”
The clearest public indication that Washington believes Moscow is developing such a weapon was a comment by a White House spokesman on February 15 that the lawmakers’ letter related to space-based anti-satellite weapons that Russia was developing but had not yet deployed would violate outer space treaty.
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