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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 ]

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Strategic Technological Advantage Empirically Short-Lived
 
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 ... )
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 ]
Deployment of Space Weapons will be Destabilizing because it will Expose Vulnerabilities
 
Deployment of space weapons is also likely to generate the sort of situation that fosters tension and risks poor decisionmaking. First deployment may face other states with unacceptable new vulnerabilities, resulting in unpredictable reactions. The Cuban Missile Crisis, it may be remembered, was itself the result of weapons deployment creating new and unexpected vulnerabilities. ( More ... )
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 15 ]
Verification of a Space Arms Control Agreement is Technologically Feasible
 
Space-based weapons as thus defined are not the only threat to space assets (as noted earlier), but a ban on such weapons represents a useful place to start and a fairly straightforward expansion from the current prohibitions in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Considerable work has also been done on the issue of verification of such a ban, including the Canadian PAXSAT study in the mid-1980s, leading to the conclusion that the technical means for such verification existed ? given the necessary political will. The passage of time since then has only reinforced this observation; recent developments in space surveillance and situational awareness linked to non-weapons missions in space have already greatly enhanced the means available to distinguish a weapon from an otherwise benign space object. ( More ... )
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 16 ]
Definition of a space-based weapon
 
One option within the range of possibilities in this regard is a convention to ban space-based weapons - defined as damage causing mechanisms (not associated elements such as sensors or command and control) actually based in space (not just transiting, like missiles or space planes). ( More ... )
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 16 ]