The US has informed Congress and its allies in Europe about Russian advances on a new, space-based nuclear weapon designed to threaten America’s extensive satellite network, according to current and former officials briefed on the matter.

Such a satellite-killing weapon, if deployed, could destroy civilian communications, surveillance from space and military command-and-control operations by the US and its allies.

At the moment, the US does not have the ability to counter such a weapon and defend its satellites, a former official said.

Officials said that the new intelligence, which they did not describe in detail, raised serious questions about whether Russia was preparing to abandon the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which bans all orbital nuclear weapons. But since Russia does not appear close to deploying the weapon, they said, it is not considered an urgent threat.

The intelligence was made public, in part, in a cryptic announcement on Wednesday by Representative Michael R. Turner, chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

He called on the Biden administration to declassify the information without saying specifically what it was.

ABC News reported that the intelligence had to do with Russian space-based antisatellite nuclear weaponry. Officials said the launch of the antisatellite did not appear imminent, but that there was a limited window of time, which they did not define, to prevent its deployment.

Concerns about placing nuclear weapons in space go back 50 years; it was even a sub-theme of Star Trek episodes in the late 1960s, just as the treaty was coming into effect.

The US experimented with versions of the technology but never deployed them.

Russia has been developing its space-based capabilities for decades.

US military officials have warned that both Russia and China are moving toward greater militarisation of space, as all three superpowers work on ways to blind the others.

A report released last year highlighted Russia’s development of weapons to blind other satellites but noted that Russia had refrained from using the full range of anti-satellite capabilities it had developed.

New York Times News Service