Military operations in the air also offer some insights for future space policy. The first has to do with issues of state sovereignty. Foreign aircraft, while not actually occupying the territory of another nation by flying over it, are seen as violating state sovereignty if the flight is not authorized. When one thinks of the potential intelligence gathering equipment or weapons employed aboard aircraft, it becomes obvious why nations choose to include airspace into their territorial sovereignty. This same concept can surely be applied to space where intelligence gathering assets can look down on any nation and weapons, if employed, could threaten multiple nations. It is equivalent to having an armed or spy aircraft flying over any nation on earth at any time. Intelligence gathering satellites are already in space and were an important asset through the Cold War and remain vital today. Nations have begrudgingly tolerated their existence because they could either do nothing about it or the information the satellites provided served to prevent a broader and devastating conflict. Opponents to weapons in space theorize that intelligence assets in space are 'stabilizing' due to the information they provide while weapons in space are 'overtly threatening and destabilizing.' Weapons in space do present the problem of directly threatening a nation, much as an armed aircraft does, but with little or no way to detect or prevent attack.

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Liller, Dwayne. "America Needs Space." High Frontier Journal. Vol. 2, No. 1 (September 2005): 34-37. [ 3 quotes ] [ page 35 ]