Russia is building a new ground-based laser facility for interfering with satellites orbiting overhead, according to a recent report in The Space Review. The basic idea would be to dazzle the optical sensors of other nations’ spy satellites by flooding them with laser light.
Laser technology has evolved to the point where this type of anti-satellite defense is plausible, though there is limited evidence of any nation successfully testing such a laser.
If the Russian government is able to build the laser, it would be capable of shielding a large part of the country from the view of satellites with optical sensors. The technology also sets the stage for the more ominous possibility of laser weapons that can permanently disable satellites.
The Russian laser
The reputed new Russian laser facility is called Kalina. It is intended to dazzle, and therefore temporarily blind, the optical sensors of satellites that are collecting intelligence overhead. As with the U.S. LAIRCM, dazzling involves saturating the sensors with enough light to prevent them from functioning. Achieving this goal requires accurately delivering a sufficient amount of light into the satellite sensor. This is no easy feat given the very large distances involved and the fact that the laser beam must first pass through the Earth’s atmosphere.
Accurately pointing lasers over large distances into space is not new. For example, NASA’s Apollo 15 mission in 1971 placed meter-sized reflectors on the Moon that are targeted by lasers on Earth to provide positioning information. Delivering enough photons over large distances comes down to the laser power level and its optical system.
Kalina reportedly operates in a pulsed mode in the infrared and produces about 1,000 joules per square centimeter. By comparison, a pulsed laser used for retinal surgery is only about 1/10,000th as powerful. Kalina delivers a large fraction of the photons it generates across the large distances where satellites orbit overhead. It is able to do this because lasers form highly collimated beams, meaning the photons travel in parallel so the beam doesn’t spread out. Kalina focuses its beam using a telescope that has a diameter of several meters.
Spy satellites using optical sensors tend to operate in low-Earth orbit with an altitude of a few hundred kilometers. It generally takes these satellites a few minutes to pass over any specific point on the Earth’s surface. This requires Kalina to be able to operate continuously for that long while maintaining permanent track on the optical sensor. These functions are carried out by the telescope system.
Based on the reported details of the telescope, Kalina would be able to target an overhead satellite for hundreds of miles of its path. This would make it possible to shield a very large area – on the order of 40,000 square miles (roughly 100,000 square kilometers) – from intelligence gathering by optical sensors on satellites. Forty thousand square miles is roughly the area of the state of Kentucky.
Russia claims that in 2019 it fielded a less capable truck-mounted laser dazzling system called Peresvet. However, there is no confirmation that it has been used successfully.
Laser power levels are likely to continue to increase, making it possible to go beyond the temporary effect of dazzling to permanently damaging the imaging hardware of sensors. While laser technology development is heading in that direction, there are important policy considerations associated with using lasers in this way.
Impact to Ukraine
The question is if Russia’s technology is advanced enough to deploy and disrupt the intelligence reports for Ukraine? Even if it does have the technology, Russia might not use it to prevent directly attacking NATO.
Based on the enormous success that NATO Satellite intelligence is having in Ukraine, it is safe to say that Russia is not resorting to this technology. Another consideration is that like all other Russian weapons that have failed miserably in Ukraine, this technology might have been impacted by Russia’s corruption and might not work as well as Putin hopes.
All said and done, this seems to be vaporware atleast for the war in Ukraine
