A senior French military official has warned of an increase in "hostile as well as hostile" activities in space, particularly from Russia, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.
Major General Vincent Choussot has joined growing voices among Western powers that security threat is growing, the agency notes.
There has been a significant spike in hostile activity since Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine in February 2022, Choussot, who heads the French Space Command, told Reuters. In his first interview since taking office last month, he said adversaries, especially Russia, had diversified their methods of sabotaging satellites, with jamming, laser jamming and cyberattacks becoming common practice.
The conflict in Ukraine has shown that "space is now a fully-fledged operational field," Choussot said.
France, whose government is Europe's biggest investor in space, accused Russia in 2018 of trying to spy on confidential French communications after a Russian spacecraft sneaked up on a Franco-Italian military satellite a year earlier. Since then, France has not provided details of what Paris called the suspicious maneuvers, Reuters reported.
The Russian Defense Ministry and the Russian space agency Roscosmos did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. According to the Kremlin, the West has launched a large-scale hybrid war against Russia, which includes propaganda, cyberattacks, and intelligence operations. Moscow says it opposes any weapons in space and denies US allegations that it has launched weapons into Earth orbit that can inspect and attack foreign satellites. At the same time, China, which is the world's second-largest space spender after the US, is rapidly developing its space capabilities. "Every day we are witnessing dizzying progress - more and more satellites are being launched into orbit for new constellations, schemes of action are being developed that go beyond our previous ideas," Shuso said. The US, Canada and Britain are other Western countries that have publicly warned of growing threats to satellites, which are essential to armies and economies - from financing to energy supplies. "This economic and military dependence on space is increasingly under threat," said the head of Britain's space command. Major General Paul Tedman said in a speech in London last week. The threat is growing "in scale, in complexity and in pace," he said.
For his part, the head of the Canadian military's space force, speaking alongside Shussot at a conference in Paris on Tuesday, said there were now more than 200 anti-satellite weapons in orbit. Western countries are responding by strengthening their own space capabilities, Reuters reported.