The dual-use character of so much space technology and the fact that others are likely to be able to imaginatively combine various technologies, improvise, adapt, and even innovate mean it can not be assumed that other states will always field inferior systems. ( More ... )

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Elhefnawy, Nader. "Four Myths About Space Power." Parameters. (Spring 2003): 124-32. [ 6 quotes ] [ page 126 ]

 

Technological diffusion makes it very unlikely that the United States would be able to monopolize the military use of space for anything more than a short period. ( More ... )

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Jing, Zhong. "Seeking a Better Approach to Space Security." Non Proliferation Review. Vol. 10, No. 2 (Summer 2003): 1-5. [ 1 reference ] [ page 102 ]

 

Just as there is no guarantee that the United States will maintain air, land, and sea superiority if it shifts significant funds to space programs, there is also no guarantee that the United States will emerge the winner in the space weapons race itself. It is entirely possible that another nation could beat the Americans outright or 'leap frog' past American accomplishments late in the race. ( More ... )

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Ziegler, David W. Safe Heavens: Military Strategy and Space Sanctuary Thought. Maxwell AFB, AL: USAF Air University, June 1997. [ 9 quotes ]

 

In this regard it should be stressed there can be no guarantee that the United States will retain its present commanding margin of advantage indefinitely. Consider, after all, how far ahead the Royal Navy was in carrier aviation at the end of World War I. ( More ... )

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Watts, Barry D. The Military Use of Space: A Diagnostic Assessment. Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, February 2001. [ 8 quotes ] [ page 48 ]

 

Even in the absence of a technological breakthrough, Americans have a pattern of fronting the costs of research and development only to find other nations taking our technology and using it to our disadvantage (for example, US development of microelectronics in the 1960s and subsequent Japanese exploitation of that development). Parasitic behavior of corporations and nations in regard to technological advance is well documented, offering upstarts the "advantage of backwardness." Following this pattern, US investments in the research and development of space weapons could lead to the demise of US international prowess. ( More ... )

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Deblois, Bruce M. "Space Sanctuary: A Viable National Strategy." Air & Space Power Journal. XII, No. 4 (Winter 1998). [ 4 quotes ] [ page 50 ]

 

Not only is it possible that foreign know-how might overpower the U.S. in some key technology sector, but American know-how itself might work against the U.S. in a race for space superiority. Dr. Mueller cites nuclear history as an example of this. Today, an early U.S. nuclear monopoly continues to erode with every additional nation that acquires nuclear weapons. It can not be ignored that the growing American vulnerability to such weapons is in part compliments of the U.S. ( More ... )

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Ziegler, David W. Safe Heavens: Military Strategy and Space Sanctuary Thought. Maxwell AFB, AL: USAF Air University, June 1997. [ 9 quotes ] [ page 61 ]

 

Strategic advantage based on technological superiority has in any event often proven ephemeral in the past. Historically, the first use of new strategic technology has simultaneously provided three things: incentive for others to acquire either the same capabilities or an adequate asymmetrical response; a clear demonstration of what is technologically possible, obviating generations of R&D; and a licit (defense-shared or commercial) or illicit (espionage-mediated) source of that technology. Examples over the past half-century or so have included nuclear and thermonuclear weapons,
long-range missiles of all types, and generations of spy satellites ( More ... )

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Baines, Phillip and Robert McDougall. "Military Approaches To Space Vulnerability: Seven Questions." Future Security in Space: Commercial, Military, and Arms Control Trade-Offs. Ed. James Clay Moltz. Monterey, CA: Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2002. [ 4 quotes ] [ page 14 ]

 

Of course, nothing is foreordained. As Pavel Podvig, an expert on Soviet ASAT systems, explains, the Soviets started down the path toward space supremacy more than 40 years ago--only to abandon their efforts after a cost-benefit analysis. Podvig says there is an "institutional inertia" driving many of these programs as the aerospace industry positions itself to gain access to the billions of federal dollars that would be authorized for any space-based system. He'd be surprised if any of the proposed systems "survive the reality-check" of the appropriations process given their enormous price-tags and uncertain potential.

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Goldfarb, Michael. "Space Supremacy." Weekly Standard. November 2, 2006.

 

Similarly, supporters of the deployment of space defenses have often been guilty of engaging in the "fallacy of the last move." In other words, analysts have frequently assumed that deployment of space weapons will create conditions of dominance over all other states, cowing them into submission. But this was unlikely during the Cold War and remains unlikely today. China's ASAT test set out a marker that an expected era of US "space control" was not going to go unchallenged. For this reason, decision makers in any country must factor into any plan to deploy space weapons the knowledge that their actions will be challenged by other states. This factor makes notions of "space dominance" spoken about freely before 2007 highly implausible.

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Moltz, James Clay. "Protecting Safe Access to Space: Lessons from the First 50 Years of Space Security." Space Policy. Vol. 23 (November 2007): 199-205. [ 12 quotes ] [ page 203 ]

 

The longer the United States rebuffs international pressure to restore strategic restraint, the further other countries are likely to go in their efforts to emulate or offset U.S. military space activities, making space a much more expensive and dangerous place to operate than it currently is. The United States could probably sustain its technological lead and budgetary advantage for decades, but the U.S. military space acquisition program appears to have passed the point of diminishing returns, whereas other countries could still make significant advances in their military space capabilities for some fraction of what the United States is spending. The number of satellites needing protection keeps increasing, but offensive and dual-use space technologies are advancing and spreading faster than purely defensive ones are. Thus, if U.S. space dominance is defined in relative rather than absolute terms and likely counterreactions are considered, even the less ambitious form of the SPACECOM vision appears increasingly unattractive.

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Steinbruner, John D. and Nancy Gallagher. Reconsidering the Rules for Space Security. College Park, MD: Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), 2008. [ 17 quotes ] [ page 73 ]

 

Ineffectual pursuit of military space dominance carries high opportunity costs. At the most basic level, the U.S. attitude has hindered efforts to develop strong international rules to minimize space debris, manage space traffic, and allocate orbital slots in GEO. The U.S. attitude has been a major obstacle to the most efficient and equitable approach to space-based navigation services—a single system operated as a global public utility with decision- making control shared among international partners. The U.S. position currently also precludes any realistic strategy for truly transformational uses of space. A system of remote sensing satellites that could provide comprehensive, detailed, and continuous coverage of the Earth could be immensely valuable for information-based strategies to address emerging global security problems, including the possibility of catastrophic climate disruption. Owens and Nye observed a decade ago that the uncontested acquisition of this type of capability required a strategic purpose with widespread legitimacy. Given a better understanding that the number and cost of the necessary satellites are beyond the reach of even the richest individual country and that the global commercial space industry will not spontaneously produce this type of capability any time soon, the only way to achieve a qualitative change in space-based information will be through close and committed cooperation with other space-faring countries.

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Steinbruner, John D. and Nancy Gallagher. Reconsidering the Rules for Space Security. College Park, MD: Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), 2008. [ 17 quotes ] [ page 73 ]

 

It would be unwise for any country to seek space dominance, for quite practical and strategic reasons. There are many ways to attack space assets, and it is easier and cheaper to attack than to defend them, which would likely frustrate any sustained attempt at dominance and leave every country worse off. In trying to maintain dominance, any country would be at the mercy of unpredictably advancing space technologies that could favour another country. In the face of likely resistance to such a provocative and hegemonic posture, any country seeking to dominate in space would constantly be trying to stay ahead technologically to maintain this dominance, demanding large expenditures that would be a growing burden on other national security and economic needs. Such a situation would also be very unstable, especially if another country achieved a technological breakthrough that threatened to upset the previously dominant country’s hegemony. A crisis occurring in this context could provide a compelling incentive to the about-to-be-dethroned country to pre-empt before its space dominance slipped away.

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MacDonald, Bruce W. "Steps to Strategic Security and Stability in Space." Disarmament Forum. No. 4 (Winter 2009): 17-26. [ 8 quotes ] [ page 19 ]

 

Worse, space-based weapons differ in important ways from the dreadnoughts of the early 1900s. First, as we have seen, space-based weapons are not individu- ally robust under attack, nor can they be hidden in port; instead, they are fragile and always exposed to attack. Additionally, in the 1900s a nation needed almost as many expensive dreadnoughts as the enemy fleet had to have a chance of wresting from it control of the sea. In the twenty-first century, high-technology space-based lasers and mirrors may be able to destroy many satellites before the attack is even detected. Even low-technology space mines and global-strike weapons can destroy high-technology satellites and ground facilities if employed first. Finally, because of these less expensive alternatives, American technical and industrial capacity advantages will not ensure the security in space that it would have at sea a century ago. Even if the United States deploys space- based weapons first, its supremacy in space would not be “inevitable.”

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Hardesty, David C. "Space-Based Weapons: Long-Term Strategic Implications and Alternatives." Naval War College Review. Vol. 58, No. 2 (Spring 2005): 45-68. [ 2 quotes ] [ page 57 ]

 

There is, nonetheless, an inevitability-based argument that is more strongly supported by history—that once a nation deploys weapons that provide an ad- vantage, other nations will build similar weapons or find asymmetric ways to avoid their effect. Britain’s introduction of the dreadnought battleship at the be- ginning of the last century, with its combination of heavy guns, armor, and speed, caused in Germany “something close to panic.”38 However, this revolu- tion in warship effectiveness did not forever solidify Britain’s hold on the seas. Only four years later, in 1909, it was the British who were in a panic, over the rapid buildup of dreadnoughts by Germany; the new concept, by making pre- vious ships almost irrelevant, was allowing Germany to overtake British naval power much more quickly than would otherwise have been possible. History is filled with other examples: chemical weapons, atomic bombs, multiple inde- pendently targetable reentry vehicles, etc.; it is difficult to think of a single counterexample, even when the original innovator had the clear capability to maintain a numerical lead.

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Hardesty, David C. "Space-Based Weapons: Long-Term Strategic Implications and Alternatives." Naval War College Review. Vol. 58, No. 2 (Spring 2005): 45-68. [ 2 quotes ] [ page 57 ]