This is something that may affect us all:

SATELLITE 🛰️ SECRET WARS

There’s so much space junk up there it’s almost impossible to quantify it. Everything from flakes of paint to lumps of dead boosters and old satellites. If it was just sat there doing nothing it would be one thing, but it’s orbiting the Earth at speeds averaging 17,000kph. Every last piece represents a threat to existing and new satellites.
Some of that rubble has been utterly unnecessary and is the result of anti-satellite weapons tests and from Russia and China.
If any of you are fans of the classic live action Jerry Anderson series U.F.O. they remarkably, predicted this problem and based an entire episode on it - in 1970!  Aliens used the rubble to undermine Earth’s defences by hiding in it. Ed Bishop who played Colonel Ed Straker later ended up as my  neighbour, and is buried in our local churchyard. Life’s odd. His character was my childhood hero.  Cold, selfless and unthanked. Sacrificing even his own family for the greater good. What does that say about me? Age 10 when I first saw that episode! Anyway…
So here we are 53 years later and guess what? Russians and Chinese have both been using the space rubble to conceal their activities. On top of that they’ve been restricting their operations to ‘down hours’ - the times they know the US and its allies have lowest coverage to spot what they’re up to. They also trend heavily to using American but also allied nations public holidays to enact their mysterious and suspicious behaviours, knowing the chances of being detected are far smaller.
Recently a new generation of Russian satellites - still labelled with innocuous numbering by Roscosmos - in this case Cosmos-2570 - has turned out to be a Matryoshka; one of those ‘nested dolls’ where there are several smaller duplicates it then deposits, in almost impossible to spot orbits - often protected by accompanying debris in the local area. It’s high risk but the purpose of the satellites is still not clear.
These are not the first; Cosmos-2565 launched in November last year did a similar thing.
China has also deposited similar satellites in key areas on at least two occasions this year.
So the question is what are they?
Regrettably it’s not good news.
The general consensus is they’re weapons designed to move quickly and take out key comms or reconnaissance satellites, sitting dormant and deliberately difficult to track, obfuscated by the amount of debris they hide behind.
These remain highly classified and deniable - the mere fact of their existence is deeply destabilising. If they were used for instance, to remove the early warning satellites that spot strategic missile launches - and add to that the Russians advanced launch technology that already reduces the ability to see when these missiles fire, it seriously undermines Western early warning of a nuclear strike.
As a whole such systems contribute to an increasingly sophisticated and dangerous strategic posture - not so much by the Chinese who have other interests than nuclear war. For Russia they regard this strategic nuclear option as ever more critical to their survival as a world power.
For Russia, their vast nuclear arsenal is the ultimate card to play, when the rest of their might is revealed largely as a modern military embarrassment from outside.
We should not be surprised. Russians have lived by the sword, died by the sword, and creation of fear is their greatest strength and characteristic, while also their weakness. Their brutality is legendary. Why should holding the world to the threat of destruction not be entirely in keeping if it came to it? And if a few more satellites make us afraid and press us into accepting submission? What of it? Job done.
That’s why the phrase, “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance”, may be cliché, but remains endlessly true.

The Analyst
c/- @Dianna_DiDi