News NATO plans to build satellite links as backups to undersea cables — recent cable damage incidents shine spotlight on Project HEIST

[bit_user]

Not much commercial shipping in space, so disrupting communication will take a lot more. Is it perfect, of course not it is however a whole other ball game.

According to this, there are 9900 artificial (i.e. human-made & launched) satellites currently orbiting the Earth, excluding space debris.

How Many Satellites are in Space? - NanoAvionics

As of May the 4th, 2024 (be with you), the satellite tracking website "Orbiting Now" lists 9,900 active satellites in various Earth orbits. A deeper dive how many satellites are in Space

nanoavionics.com

More are being launched every day. With the advent of micro-satellites and more countries achieving their own launch capacity, the pace has really picked up.

If you want to talk space debris, this estimate holds there are 128 million pieces, with 900k being larger than 1 cm:

Orbital Debris – Outer Space Institute

outerspaceinstitute.ca

the fact the one ship was Chinese hasn't changed that

Yeah, where a vessel is "flagged" is sort of a formality. What really matters is the crew and who they work for.

As for using anti-satellite weapons. Maybe, however part of the effect of using commercial shipping is there is doubt and confusion because there is many ships. If weapons were to be used that is then something very different.

I'd guess there are ways to weaponize space debris that preserve a level of plausible deniability. Perhaps stealth technology can even be used to sneak it on a collision course, without leaving a trail back to its origin.