On Oct. 27th 2022, a Russian foreign ministry official (Konstantin Vorontsov) threatened “western” commercial space-based assets in an address at the United Nations General Assembly regarding the disarmament of outer space. To be clear, by “western” Mr. Vorontsov is referring to US companies such as SpaceX and Maxar - who are currently providing critical communications infrastructure (SpaceX) and imagery intelligence (Maxar) to Ukrainian forces on the ground in the Donbas Region of Ukraine. These US company’s products are improving Ukrainian forces ability to capture more territory in both the Donetsk [dough-net-sk] and Luhansk [loo-HAN-sk] region (just for clarity, these regions make up the Donbas).
What you need to know is that the Russian military may begin to view the actions of these US companies as directly participating in the war between Ukraine and Russia. Essentially, if SpaceX and Maxar continue to provide services directly being used to give Ukrainian troops advantages in the war, the Russian military will “target” these assets. Which is a “nice” way of saying - “we are going to blow your shit up if you don’t stop helping them”.
With high likelihood, this recent comment at the UNGA can be explained by the Russian military surrendering key strategic territory in both of the regions mentioned above. The Ukrainian military has the “momentum” going into the winter of 2022, while Russian forces are “playing catch-up”. Fundamentally, this makes Putin and the Russia military appear weak.
At the same time, this does not mean that missiles are being prepared to launch at US satellites at any moment. What it does mean is Russian leadership (Vladimir Putin and his close advisors) are trying to show strength in response to their shortcomings in the war. The Russian military does have the capability of destroying satellites using surface deployed KE-ASAT (Anti-Satellite) missiles. Just last year, Russia successfully tested its PL-19 Nudol ASAT missile on an old, soviet era satellite to prove that point.
This situation boils down to two things - the US economy and the military. Both the economy and the US military heavily rely on space-based assets to function. If the Russian military were to target and destroy either privately owned satellites or US military satellites, it could have a catastrophic impact on Americans day-to-day life. Basically, everything that an average American citizen or US business use involves hardware in space. If this hardware in any great number are destroyed it would disrupt banking (private transactions and business transactions), GPS, communications systems (cell phone calls, text messages), internet connectivity and whole a lot more.
Most importantly, if US military satellites were targeted and destroyed it would cripple its command and control ability. This is just a fancy way to say, leaders cannot properly assess situations on the field and communicate effectively for subordinates to carryout their orders. The US military also relies on satellites to scout terrain (weather included) ahead of troop deployments in war. This is not to mention how having downed satellites would effect individual soldiers ability to navigate while in the field.
As a caveat, the effects of having space-based assets destroyed is extremely variable. It depends on what companies or what types of US military satellites are targeted to be able to determine the real world ramifications in the aftermath. Realistically, it seems that SpaceX and Maxar would be the main targets of these threats at this point.
However, this is unprecedented. No one has ever waged a war in space.