On Thursday, February 15, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Russia is developing space-based attack capability using nuclear weapons.  Putin has been intimating the development of just such a weapon since at least 2007.  Yet it is only recently that U.S. national security officials and lawmakers have grown concerned.

Based on recent news reports, Kirby suspects that this is related to some Russian anti-satellite capability being developed.  Kirby insists that “we are not talking about a weapon that can be used to ... cause physical destruction here on Earth.”  Yet back in the aughts, Kremlin publications commissioned by Vladimir Putin described just such a weapon, conceived specifically to disable and destroy American “smart weapons” and cyber-electronics.

In this article, I will revisit an admittedly fictional account, but one that appears to incorporate a description of orbiting satellite weapons that are actually under development.

Mikhail Yuryev is an author whom Putin often taps to write propaganda.  Yuryev’s book, Tretiya Imperiya (The Third Empire, Saint Petersburg: Konstantin Tublin Publishing House, 2007) is styled as “political fiction,” describing an alternate universe in which Soviet Russia is reborn in the twenty-first century as a world empire under “Vladimir II the Restorer” — a thinly veiled reference to President Vladimir Putin.  Basically, this novel describes Putin’s desired future world, in which he ascends to the throne as “Emperor Gabriel I the Great,” ruler of an autocratic, theocratic world empire, after first defeating the United States and then going on to conquer Europe. 

In Yuryev’s novel, total war between Russia and the United States, called the Twelve-Day War, begins with a distraction campaign that includes the firing of missiles, in which U.S. forces are lured to the Indian Ocean.  It is a trap.  In the novel, ten Russian satellites equipped with powerful GMDV (electromagnetic pulse) generators are secretly in constant orbit, including one over the Bay of Bengal.  It is of deep concern that GMDV bombs are included in this fictional Russian attack, for they apparently exist.

According to Yuri Zaitsev, an academic adviser at the Russian Academy of Engineering Sciences, a group of Russian scientists from Tomsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and Moscow has developed a series of unique, compact electromagnetic radiation generators capable of producing high-energy pulses of thousands of megawatts.  These impulses can be generated as a product of a nuclear explosion with very high frequency in a matter of nanoseconds.  Zaitsev claims that these electromagnetic pulses or EMPs are capable of putting out of action even those electronic control systems that have withstood the initial shockwave, reducing smart weapons to “scrap metal.”  He explains their destructive effects: “They induce voltage changes ranging from 100 volts to 10,000 volts in circuit networks and terminals of radio electronic equipment.  The ensuing massive sparking ... [plus] breakdowns in connectors put the equipment out of action and lead to fires and explosions.”

The United States is said to be the first country to have used EMP generators in combat, in Afghanistan — the typical manner in which the Russians give themselves “permission” to pursue the use of a particular weapon or strategy.

In Yuryev’s account, a coded signal leaves for Moscow.  A second later, Moscow signals the satellite hovering overhead.  The pulse fired from the satellite fries all electronics for tens of thousands of square miles, so that none of the American missiles hits its target.  The obvious question is, how come, in the novel, the Russian weaponry continues to function after the EMPs are generated?  The pulse is, after all, said to “fry all electronics for tens of thousands of square miles.”

The answer may lurk in two innocuous published physics research articles.  A candidate in physics and mathematics at South Ural State University, Aleksey Trukhanov, also a senior research fellow at the SUSU Nanotechnologies Research and Education Center, is studying electrolytic films in order to develop electromagnetic and magnetic shields capable of neutralizing electromagnetic pulses.  He mentions two different articles, both published in the Journal of Alloys and Compounds: “Correlation of the Synthesis Conditions and Microstructure for Bi-Based Electron Shields Production” and a previous article, “Electrochemical Deposition Regimes and Critical Influence of Organic Additives on the Structure of Bi Films.”  Both articles consider the use of Bismuth films in the production of materials capable of being used for protective shields against EMPs.  As of September 2018, the electrolytic production of bismuth films had been optimized, and research was underway on the phase composition and microstructure parameters of these films; higher-density films were observed to be of more practical use. 

Commenting during a press conference on this fictional surprise attack — in the novel, that is — the commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy, Boris Fetisov, declares, “We do not intend to declare war — let the Americans announce it themselves, for the war between us has been going on for more than seventy years already.”  That sentiment is demonstrably Putin’s, for he has never acknowledged Russia’s defeat in the Cold War.  Putin insists that we remain at war; he refuses to concede the Cold War to the West.  As stated in his national ideology of Project Russia (Proyekt Rossiya, Moscow: EKSMO Press, 2006), “Mammon [i.e., the ‘consumerist’ United States] once again stands on the threshold ... [but] a new force will arise again, combining in itself all the good from the Soviet Union and the Empire.  This force will be able to once again repel the enemy — Mammon.”

In Yuryev’s novel, on the very next day, thirty-six Russian Topol missiles of various modifications are launched against targets all over the United States.  Gabriel the Great, AKA Putin, gives the U.S. president seven hours to surrender, which he does.  The first phase of the Russian occupation of America is completed in a week.  A month later, the major powers of Europe surrender without a fight — all except for Germany.  Upon America’s surrender, Germany congratulates Russia on its victory.  By the time the other leaders of NATO are summoned to Moscow to surrender, Germany and Russia are allies.

The launching of the thirty-six Russian Topol missiles against the United States in Yuryev’s novel appears related to Putin’s 2000 doctrine, “Nuclear De-Escalation.”  There exists a 1999 Russian military white paper, released under Putin as secretary of the R.F. Security Council.  According to this study, nuclear de-escalation would entail the use of long-range nuclear weapons in the continental theater, including nuclear strikes by missile forces and artillery, aviation, and the use of nuclear engineering mines.  It is worrisome that the authors proceed to admit, “Nuclear strikes are divided into ‘single,’ ‘group,’ and ‘massive,’ but it is very difficult to draw a clear line between them.”

The advice that follows in the white paper recalls the unprovoked strikes against stateside American naval bases, as envisioned by Mikhail Yuryev occurring during the fictional Twelve-Day War in his novel The Third Empire: “Under certain conditions, de-escalation of hostilities may require single, grouped nuclear strikes against enemy targets located outside the zone of direct hostilities ... frightening the enemy with our willingness to go to mutual destruction [and] testing the strength of their ‘nerve.’ ... [T]he fear of MAD will prevent the enemy from switching to using strategic offensive forces, forcing him to back off.”

Lynn Corum is a translator who studies developments in the press that affect America’s national interests.  She has been researching and writing on Putin’s stated plans since 2009 and is a world expert on Project Russia, the Kremlin’s published state ideology.

Image via Public Domain Pictures.