Russia’s Armed Forces are no longer receiving signals from five of the six “Tundra” satellites, a space-based early warning system designed to alert Moscow to missile launches from the United States. Russia still operates ground-based early-warning radars, but those raise alarms later than the space segment.
Pavel Podvig, a leading expert on Russia’s nuclear forces, said the “Tundra” satellites have gone silent, reports the Russian outlet Agentstvo. Novosti.
He pointed to orbital tracking that shows only one of six satellites appears to be operational, while at least four are needed to perform the mission. Even that last satellite raises concerns, he noted, because it failed to conduct a scheduled orbit adjustment.
The Russian outlet published tracking data that, in Podvig’s view, indicate malfunctions across Russia’s military satellites. The first image shows signals from the last working satellite, Kosmos 2552. The craft missed an orbit correction that helps prevent its gradual descent toward Earth, though it’s too early to say it has failed, the researcher said.
The second and third images show signals from Kosmos 2541 and Kosmos 2563, which failed earlier. Both satellites broke down in 2025, and in each case the failure occurred after an orbit adjustment (in March and July, respectively).
“Tundra” (14F142) satellites are part of Russia’s missile attack early-warning network, meant to replace the aging Oko-1 system. Launches began in 2015, with a plan to have 10 satellites in orbit by 2022. Over the past decade, Russia has launched only six, and at least four are required for early warning, the expert said. Four were on orbit in 2020, when Russia announced its Unified Space System “Kupol” had reached the “minimum operational configuration,” capable of tracking potential ballistic and space launches from U.S. territory and other countries’ test ranges. President Vladimir Putin said “Kupol” had alerted Moscow to 190 launches as of 2019.
The outlet added that the space deployments were overseen by Aerospace Forces commander Gen. Sergei Surovikin, who had pledged to field 10 satellites by 2024. Russia still has ground-based early-warning stations, so the loss of “Kupol” is not fatal to missile defense, but the satellites provided precious minutes of earlier detection.
