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No evidence of a significant space threat
 
As noted, there are scattered reports of Chinese interest in ASAT technologies, but evidence of actual progress is scant. The Russian Federation, like the United States, has explored ASAT technology since the beginning of the Cold War, but there is little reason to believe that Moscow has changed its policy against deploying such weapons (the Russian Federation has had a unilateral ban on ASAT testing for some time), especially given the current cash-starved state of the Russian space programme. No other country has shown visible signs of interest (although obviously any space-faring nation, such as India or Pakistan, has latent capability). "[C]laims of adversarial space weapons are simply unfounded. Military futures studies often cite predictions of foreign space-based particle beams and other such technologies, but in reality they merely provide paranoid justification for U.S. space programs. ... The overwhelming evidence suggest that, unprovoked, the rest of the world is simply not interested in space weaponization at this time", states former Air Force Lt. Col. Bruce M. DeBlois in a 1998 study. Similarly, a 1998 RAND study found that no "nation possesses an operational ASAT capability that poses a significant threat to U.S. national security space systems�. This has not changed in the past four years, despite rapid improvements in enabling technologies" especially for ground-based ASATs and computer-based disruption. Again, while these sorts of technologies are increasingly available, development of working ground-based ASAT systems would not be all that simple or all that cheap. Ballistic missiles are hard to operate and maintain, and they are easy for potential adversaries to keep an eye on. Hacking is more of a worry, but satellite networks (especially American military networks) are equipped with computer protections (and those are upgraded on a regular basis).

Hitchens, Theresa. "Monsters and Shadows: Left Unchecked, American Fears Regarding Threats to Space Assets Will Drive Weaponization." Disarmament Forum. No. 1 (2003): 15-33. [ 5 quotes ] [ page 23-24 ]

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