Both countries have deployed ground-based laser and communicationsвЂ“jamming equipment that can disable satellites. China has started training specialized units with weapons that can blast apart objects in orbit. Raymond tells TIME that Russia executed a previous, unreported projectile launch in February 2017. And just as lightly defended access to deep-water ports or natural resources was a source of war in the past, leaders and strategists worry that AmericaвЂ™s vulnerable satellite network is an invitation to conflict in our times. depend on satellites overhead.Д«ut for all the ways that civilians and the military rely on it, AmericaвЂ™s network of roughly 1,000 satellites is virtually unprotected.

Many of the around 650,000 calls made to 911 every day in the U.S. Weather satellites were transmitting information for nightly forecasts. Streetlamps timed to global positioning system (GPS) spacecraft were turning on across the country, and businesses were relying on GPS to time-stamp credit-card purchases.

Even as the Cosmos 2543 was launching its projectile, Air Force satellites were performing a host of civilian tasks back home in the U.S. Whatever the Russian craftsвЂ™ mission-and Moscow says it is purely peaceful-RaymondвЂ™s not wrong that Americans have come to rely on satellites in ways they hardly begin to appreciate. вЂњRussia is developing on-orbit capabilities that seek to exploit our reliance on space-based systems,вЂќ Raymond says. military in 72 years, MoscowвЂ™s вЂњnesting dollвЂќ satellites, as the military has labeled the Cosmos triplets, represent a threat not just to one really expensive piece of American spy hardware but to the basic functioning of modern America itself. To Raymond and supporters of Space Force, which is the first new branch of the U.S.

Space force flag unveiled