August 17, 2023
The future of space militarisation?
It may be time to appraise potential military uses of space beyond the common ‘satellite / anti-satellite’ paradigm.
With tensions rising in orbit in recent years, it may not be long before weapons are turned on one another in space itself. Credit: Marko Aliaksandr via Shutterstock.
Rival superpowers have been developing the means to extend their military power into Earth’s orbit almost as soon as the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched on October 4th 1957. Satellites provide invaluable communications, navigation and reconnaissance for military operations, but in turn this incentivises a capability to deny enemy use of the same assets. Anti-satellite weapons or ASATs have been developed since the late 1950s, at first by the Soviet Union and US, but have since been tested by Russia, China and India.
Whilst most programmes eventually settled on various permeations of modified or purpose-built missiles, more ‘exotic’ proposals included laser systems, kinetic interceptors and variations of these pre-positioned in space. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 prohibits placing nuclear weapons and military bases in space and on other celestial bodies, as well as vaguely defined ‘military manoeuvres’ – but there are no limits on conventional weapons. As the establishment of the US Space Force in 2019 shows, the use of this domain is growing fast and beginning to broach technologies and concepts once confined to science fiction. It may be time to appraise potential military uses of space beyond the common “satellite / anti-satellite” paradigm.
Whilst ASATs are an established part of military arsenals, there is also the possibility for weapons placed in space to attack targets on Earth, or intercept missiles that travel through space and high atmosphere. In 1974, the Soviet Union used its Salyut 3 military space station to successfully test-fire a 23mm cannon into deep space whilst disguising the program as purely civilian.
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