Global Counterspace Capabilities Report
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Background
Space security has become an increasingly salient policy issue. Over the last several years, there has been growing concern from multiple governments over the reliance on vulnerable space capabilities for national security, and the corresponding proliferation of offensive counterspace capabilities that could be used to disrupt, deny, degrade, or destroy space systems. This in turn has led to increased rhetoric from some countries about the need to prepare for future conflicts on Earth to extend into space, and calls from some corners to increase the development of offensive counterspace capabilities and put in place more aggressive policies and postures.
We feel strongly that a more open and public debate on these issues is urgently needed. Space is not the sole domain of militaries and intelligence services. Our global society and economy is increasingly dependent on space capabilities, and a future conflict in space could have massive, long-term negative repercussions that are felt here on Earth. Even testing of these capabilities could have long-lasting negative repercussions for the space environment, and all who operate there. The public should be as aware of the developing threats and risks of different policy options as would be the case for other national security issues in the air, land, and sea domains.
The 2025 Report
The 2025 edition of the report assesses the current and near-term future capabilities for each country, along with their potential military utility. Countries covered in this report are divided up into those who have conducted debris-causing anti-satellite tests (the United States, Russia, China, India) and those who are developing counterspace technologies (Australia, France, Japan, Iran, Israel, North Korea, South Korea, and the United Kingdom). It covers events and activities through February 2025.
Major Updates in 2025:
- The 2025 edition documents the continued development of counterspace capabilities by 12 countries. While we see proliferation of R&D into counterspace capabilities, only non-destructive counterspace capabilities are being used in active military conflicts.
- This report goes into detail on 5 Chinese sats conducting RPOs throughout 2024, as recently discussed by USSF officials; it also documents other proximity operations conducted by the United States (GSSAP, PAN, MENTOR, LDPE-3A) and Russia (Luch and Luch 2).
- The United States now has at least one offensive counterspace system deployed - the CCS - and is believed to have a second one also deployed - the RMT system; these are both jammers. This report also describes a recent shift by the United States in speaking about offensive counterspace/space fires, including the acknowledgement by the United States that it is working on offensive counterspace capabilities that it describes as "low-debris-causing".
- Russia’s GPS jamming is having increasing impacts on civil aviation and non-combatants, while there are now reports of interruptions to Starlink due to Russian jamming. As well, more information is given about Russia’s work on a nuclear ASAT capability, including details on the RPO capabilities of their Luch satellite.
- The China chapter discusses how China views space as a domain of military conflict; its disbanding of the Strategic Space Force and creating the Information Support Force; reports it may have launched an experimental sat to GEO to practice jamming; & details of its proximity ops.
- The 2025 report also includes an updated amount of space debris created by the United States, Russia, China, & India through their counterspace testing: 6851 cataloged pieces of trackable debris from tests, of which 2920 pieces are still around.
Global Counterspace Capabilities © 2025 by Secure World Foundation is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Additional Information
The following links include the core data underlying the counterspace report and/or additional resources to help visualize and understand the report's findings and data.
History of ASAT Testing in Space (Google Sheet)
History of Robotic Rendezvous and Proximity Operations in Space (Google Sheet)
Animations of debris clouds from historical ASAT tests in space (Youtube)
Code used to generate the Gabbard plots (Github)
A selection of media coverage
- Breaking Defense article by Theresa Hitchens:
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/04/counterspace-capabilities-advancing-around-the-globe-secure-world-foundation/ - SpacePolicyOnline article by Marcia Smith:
https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/as-china-space-threat-grows-u-s-space-force-budget-slows/ - SpaceNews article by Andrew Jones:
https://spacenews.com/china-expands-counterspace-capabilities-new-report-finds/ - Payload article:
https://payloadspace.com/secure-world-foundation-catalogs-global-space-military-capabilities/ - SpaceNews article on Russia and China's targeting of SpaceX's Starlink:
https://spacenews.com/russia-china-target-spacexs-starlink-in-escalating-space-electronic-warfare/
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