Strategic Logic of Space Power is Inevitable, Even if only to Combat Extraterrestrial Space Threats
The strategic logic is altogether inexorable. With respect to politics, technology, tactics, costs, and organization, just about everything pertaining to space warfare is eminently debatable. What is not debatable is a strategic logic that requires an irreversible trend towards military space exploitation to trigger programs to try to deny effectiveness to that exploitation. We are utterly unimpressed by (largely) accurate caveats that point to the contemporary high costs of access to orbit, the slowness of orbital transfer, and the distinctive political-ethical-(quasi)-legal regime that renders outer space different as the last "wide common" of mankind. Space power and space warfare are coming. The only issues are how and when. This uncompromising prediction could be upset only in the unlikely circumstance that a truly political peace broke out and was sustained, on Earth. Even in that improbable event, still one might be anxious about the kind of futures signaled in the scenarios of the movies Independence Day and Starship Troopers. Far-fetched, even comic such movies may well be, but they can act as a reminder that we may be at peace with ourselves. But would the universe be at peace with us?
Gray, Colin S. "Space Power and the Revolution in Military Affairs: A Glass Half Full?." Air & Space Power Journal. XIII, No. 3 (Fall 1999). [ 2 quotes ]