Proponents of space weapons argue that militaries will eventually have to deploy space weapons to protect their commercial space assets in the same way that the British were compelled to deploy the Royal Navy to protect British ships on the high-seas. However, this is a flawed analogy because of the many dissimilarities between outer space and naval trade.
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Nevertheless, damaging or destroying satellites does not seem to have quite the same status as damaging or sinking a nation's ships and killing its crew. Satellites may have owners and operators, but, in contrast to sailors, they do not have mothers. Granted, the destruction of a KH-11 or comparable satellite at a key juncture in a crisis with a major regional power would be taken very seriously by American leaders. Whether this act would inevitability lead to war, however, is far from clear. ( More ... ) 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 28 ]
While ASAT systems have been tested and fielded in the past, US capabilities are currently limited to a US Army developmental program for a kinetickill vehicle launched by a Minuteman missile, and one cannot help but wonder about the readiness of the Russian nonnuclear ASAT system inherited from the Soviet era. Again, one must wonder why this happens to be so. And the most straightforward answer is that orbital assets have yet to acquire the economic import of Spanish treasure galleons. ( More ... ) 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 28 ]
In spite of the intuitive similarities between seafaring and spacefaring, however, there is one fundamental difference between them which makes the sea-space analogy very weak: ships primarily transport goods and people, while spacecraft (with only minor exceptions) are built to collect, relay, or transmit information. This means that space piracy is not a problem, so space navies are not required to suppress it, while "commerce raiding" threats to space systems can be ameliorated by building redundant, distributed systems of satellites; for merchant shipping this is obviously not an option. It also means that whatever threats may be posed by enemy space systems, invasion is very low on the list. ( More ... ) Mueller, Karl P. "Totem and Taboo: Depolarizing the Space Weaponization Debate." Astropolitics. Vol. 1, No. 13 (Summer 2003): 4-28. [ 3 quotes ] [ page 15 ]
These are dubious analogies. Several significant differences exist between freedom of the seas and the military use of space. First, the implicit threat from military activities at sea at the time the traditional law of the sea was laid down is nothing like the potential threat from space if space were to become weaponized. The freedom of the seas concept evolved in the era of 19th century battleships when the difference between the territorial sea and the high seas was real. Warships on the high seas were out of range of land and were thus unable to threaten coastal states unless they came in close. Today's modern nuclear and cruise-missile armed ships and submarines are an anomaly in this regard. They eliminate any protection the territorial seas once provided, leaving all states vulnerable to attack from the high seas. ( More ... ) Tannenwald, Nina. Law Versus Power on the High Frontier: The Case for a Rule-Based Regime for Outer Space. : , Summer 2004. [ 7 quotes ] [ page 33-4 ]
For several reasons, then, the analogy between freedom of the seas and the military use of space is a false one. Transit of space by orbiting weapons is not nearly as "innocent" as transit over the oceans, satellites are not like ships at sea, and the proposed U.S. role in space would be far more overwhelming than the role of Britain during the 19th century. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, in reality, what SPACECOM and its supporters actually want is a version of mare clausum, in which the United States controls space to the full extent of U.S. power. ( More ... ) Tannenwald, Nina. Law Versus Power on the High Frontier: The Case for a Rule-Based Regime for Outer Space. : , Summer 2004. [ 7 quotes ] [ page 38 ]
On the other hand, there are those who argue the converse, specifically, that commerce will drive weapons into space as countries seek to defend their assets. As Franz Gayl argues: "... as with aviation, access and technology will drive forward to exploit any and all warfighting relevance, application, and advantage from space, quite independent of a nation's will to prevent it." However, such prospects hold true only if commercial actors remained as tied to individual nations as they were in the 19th century model of mercantilism. Such conditions are unlikely to govern in space, given the rapidly growing internationalization of space commerce, where companies may use technology from several countries, be based in another, and receive funding or contracts from customers in still other parts of the world. Such factors are likely to mitigate the purported commercial "demand" for defenses. For these reasons, predictions regarding the future of space security based on the experience of other past environments and periods should be viewed with at least some skepticism. Thus far, arguments and predictions about "inevitable" outcomes in space have held up surprisingly poorly. 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 204 ]