Reuters:
Quietly and without most people noticing, the world’s leading space powers — the United States, China and Russia — have been deploying new and more sophisticated weaponry in space.
Earth’s orbit is looking more and more like the planet’s surface — heavily armed and primed for war. A growing number of “inspection” satellites lurk in orbit, possibly awaiting commands to sneak up on and disable or destroy other satellites. Down on the surface, more and more warships and ground installations pack powerful rockets that, with accurate guidance, could reach into orbit to destroy enemy spacecraft.
A war in orbit could wreck the delicate satellite constellations that the world relies on for navigation, communication, scientific research and military surveillance. Widespread orbital destruction could send humanity through a technological time warp. “You go back to World War Two,” Air Force General John Hyten, in charge of U.S. Space Command, told 60 Minutes. “You go back to the Industrial Age.”
It’s hard to say exactly how many weapons are in orbit. That’s because many spacecraft are “dual use.” They have peaceful functions and potential military applications. With the proverbial flip of a switch, an inspection satellite, ostensibly configured for orbital repair work, could become a robotic assassin capable of taking out other satellites with lasers, explosives or mechanical claws. Until the moment it attacks, however, the assassin spacecraft might appear to be harmless. And its dual use gives its operators political cover. The United States possesses more space weaponry than any other country, yet denies that any of its satellites warrant the term.
When 60 Minutes asked the Air Force secretary whether the United States has weapons in space, Secretary Deborah Lee James answered simply: “No, we do not.”
Still, it’s possible to count at least some of the systems that could disable or destroy other satellites. Some of the surface-based weaponry is far less ambiguous and so easier to tally. Even taking into account the difficulty of accurately counting space weaponry, one thing is clear: The United States is, by far, the world’s most heavily armed space power.
But not for a lack of trying on the part of other countries.
New Cold War in space
Earth’s orbit wasn’t always such a dangerous place. The Soviet Union destroyed a satellite for the last time in an experiment in 1982. The United States tested its last Cold War anti-satellite missile, launched by a vertically flying F-15 fighter, in 1985.
For the next three decades, both countries refrained from deploying weapons in space. The “unofficial moratorium,” as Laura Grego, a space expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, described it, put the brakes on the militarization of space.
Then in 2002, President George W. Bush withdrew the United States from a treaty with Russia prohibiting the development of antiballistic-missile weapons. The move cleared the way for Bush to deploy interceptor missiles that administration officials claimed would protect the United States from nuclear attack by “rogue” states such as North Korea. But withdrawing from the treaty also undermined the consensus on the strictly peaceful use of space.
Five years later, in January 2007, China struck one of its own old satellites with a ground-launched rocket as part of a test of a rudimentary anti-satellite system. This scattered thousands of potentially dangerous pieces of debris across low orbit. Beijing’s anti-satellite test accelerated the militarization of space. The United States, in particular, seized the opportunity to greatly expand its orbital arsenal…
