Quote (RedFromWinter @ Oct 27 2022 07:38am)
No clue, maybe a near impossible question to answer at this point especially with recent focus on evacuation of civilians from Kherson region as both sides report they ready ramp up fighting there. Reuters did publish a story on Russian threats to target US/Western commerical satellites, so seems their infrastructure strategy may increase in scope soon. It's not a threat without teeth either, Russia did test a missile system to target satellites in recent years with success.
https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-says-wests-commercial-satellites-could-be-targets-2022-10-27/Its an interesting topic too. All the nations have ostensibly committed themselves to the demilitarization of space, but Russia is accusing the west of effectively using civilian space programs as mercenaries in space, a sort of modern day privateering on the seas. So it becomes an issue of how involved civilians satellites are in active warzones. When they make up the critical communications infrastructure of an opposing army, one that is denied to your own troops but enabled for the enemy, are they legitimate military targets? Are they de facto parties to the conflict? We really have no precedent here, but its clear that 1) The western powers are pushing the envelope on treading on the demilitarization of space and 2) Russia is showing its teeth in response, whether or not they'll actually do anything about it.
For Russia the obvious best case response would be soft power attacks on satellites, knocking their networks out of commission by hacking, without needing to use force to knock them out of the sky. They do clearly possess the capability to do the latter, but it would be a direct escalation