BERLIN — Germany’s top military space commander said he cannot rule out that Russia is working on technology to place a nuclear warhead in space, warning that such a move could cripple satellite services and make parts of orbit unusable for decades.
“At the very top end of escalation, there is the suspicion that Russia may be working on technology to place a nuclear explosive device in orbit,” Major General Michael Traut, commander of the Bundeswehr Space Command, said in an interview with POLITICO at the ILA Berlin air show.
Asked whether he considered that realistic, Traut said: “I cannot rule it out.”
A nuclear detonation in space would not look like a conventional strike on Earth. But its effects could be devastating for modern societies and militaries that rely on satellites for communications, navigation, banking, transport, weather forecasting and military targeting.
“If something similar to Starfish Prime happened today,” Traut said, referring to a 1962 U.S. high-altitude nuclear test, “up to one-third of all satellites in low-Earth orbit” could stop functioning over the following weeks and months.
That, he warned, would worsen the problem of space debris and increase the risk of cascading collisions — the so-called Kessler effect. “It is even conceivable,” he said, “that certain orbital altitudes would no longer be usable for decades.”
The warning comes as Berlin is moving to turn space into a central pillar of its defense policy. Germany’s new space security strategy says the Bundeswehr must be able not only to protect German and allied access to space, but also to restrict an adversary’s ability to use it.
Traut said the threats in space have “massively developed” in recent years, from GPS jamming and lasers to physical attacks on satellites. At the lower end, he said, electromagnetic disruption and laser interference are already a daily reality. “The best example is GPS jamming in the Baltic region,” he said, adding that it affects civilian aviation and maritime traffic.
Germany’s response, he argued, cannot be reserved.
“You don’t go into the arena only with a shield,” Traut said. “A functioning deterrent always has an active, offensive component.”
He stressed that “offensive does not mean aggressive,” but he said Germany must be able to seize the initiative in a conflict. That includes acting against an adversary’s space systems — not necessarily in orbit, but across the wider infrastructure that makes satellites work, from ground stations to jammers.
Germany, he said, will acquire non-kinetic systems including jammers and lasers, as well as inspection satellites and, over the longer term, spaceplanes to protect German satellites, inspect adversary systems and potentially act against them.
Berlin is also planning a sovereign military satellite communications constellation under SATCOMBw 4, designed to meet the Bundeswehr’s growing demand for secure connectivity.
Traut said the system should not be seen as a rival to the EU’s IRIS² secure connectivity constellation. “We do not see IRIS² as competition, but as a complementary addition,” he said, adding that Germany’s own constellation would also take pressure off the EU system and leave more bandwidth for others.
Germany also wants partners to be able to use the future network. The aim, Traut said, is to bring “as many European partners as possible into the boat,” especially countries that cannot or do not want to build their own satellite constellation.