As a refresher, Washington lit up this week when a member of the House Intelligence Communityto a "national security threat" that had something to do with an orbital nuclear weapon Russia was working on. Officials pushed back moderately on the drama, acknowledging the existence of intelligence about the weapon but saying it was not yet operational.. "It is not an active capability and it has not yet been deployed.
. But they said that the "big fear with any eventual EMP device in orbit it might render large portions of particular orbits unusable" by creating a debris field of derelict satellites that "would then prove dangerous to any new satellites we might try to put up to replace or repair the existing satellites."
It's a terrifying concept. If there's a silver lining, it's that Russia's capability to actually execute such an ambitious plan remain somewhat hazy.