Space Force officer shares intelligence on threats to space systems
WASHINGTON – Electronic warfare is a growing threat to U.S. space systems, according to a March 23 unclassified briefing by U.S. Space Force Chief Master Sergeant Ron Lerch, senior enlisted advisor to the Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Intelligence.
During the Satellite 2026 presentation, Lerch discussed technologies designed to disrupt proliferated low-Earth orbit (PLEO) constellations.
A recent Chinese research paper, for example, described a high-power, ground-based microwave to target satellites. "It is difficult to imagine a commercial application for that technology," Lerch said.
Like the United States and India, China and Russia have demonstrated direct-ascent anti-weapons capable of destroying satellites in low-Earth orbit. China also has shown that it could send a direct-ascent weapon to geosynchronous orbit, Lerch said.
While direct-ascent weapons threaten high-value military satellites, "the cost curve is going to be too great if you're using a multimillion dollar direct-ascent capability to go after one satellite in a 1,000-satellite" PLEO constellation, Lerch said. However, a high-power microwave could be used "multiple times to get the degradation you're looking for in a PLEO constellation."
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Because Chinese national agencies and research universities are closely linked, intelligence analysts study academic reports. In 2025, Chinese researchers published papers on jamming PLEO satellite-communications services with drones.
"If there's a specific area where I want to degrade subscribers' ability to access satcom, I'm going throw up a bunch of drones to flood that environment with noise," Lerch said. Then, "it doesn't matter who you subscribe to or how proliferated it is, you're not going to be able to get the data you want."
Lerch also presented an image of a Chinese satellite designed for stealth, adding that stealth is "usually a very military-type capability."
China is the leading U.S. competitor in space because of the scale of its operations. "Russia is trailing behind them" in part because the nation "reprioritized its defense industrial base to reconstitute battlefield capabilities" for wars in Crimea and Ukraine, Lerch said.
At the end of 2025, there were about 1,300 active Chinese spacecraft: 313 communications satellites, seven data-relay satellites, more than 500 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) or remote-sensing satellites, six crewed spacecraft, 130 navigation satellites, 130 test and engineering satellites, 92 scientific and environment-monitoring satellites, 84 weather satellites and 40 satellites with unidentified missions, according to the Space Force.
Meanwhile, Russian organizations operated 343 spacecraft: 83 communications satellites, four counterspace satellites, four data-relay satellites, 104 ISR and remote-sensing satellites, five crewed spacecraft, 28 navigation satellites, seven test and engineering satellites, 48 scientific and environment-monitoring satellites, 20 weather satellites and 30 unidentified spacecraft.
Lerch also discussed the possibility of a nuclear weapon detonated in space, a topic that made headlines in 2024.
"There is information to suggest Russians were pursuing a capability to potentially field a nuclear weapon on orbit," Lerch said. If that type of weapon were detonated, he said, at least one third of all satellites could be impacted immediately.
Depending on how well satellites are designed to withstand radiation, the nuclear weapon's impact "could extend very quickly and the effects of that are indiscriminate," Lerch said.
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