Speaking to the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Frank A. Rose, deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. State Department's bureau of verification, compliance and implementation, said U.S. authorities will now view measures to control arms in space much as it does other arms control agreements.

The U.S. National Space Policy issued June 28 by the administration of President Barack Obama replaces the previous policy issued in 2006. The new policy appears to assign a higher priority to international collaboration, and indicates a willingness to discuss how an arms agreement might apply to systems in space or targeting space-based assets.

Rose confirmed the new policy should be viewed as "a departure from the 2006 policy" because U.S. authorities are now willing to "consider space-related arms control concepts and proposals that meet the criteria of equitability and effective verifiability, and which enhance the security of the United States and its allies. This approach is consistent ... with the verification standards that the United States has applied to other arms control agreements."

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de Selding, Peter B. "U.S. Open to Ideas for Limiting Space Weapons." Space.com. July 14, 2010.

 

Rose said the United States is adopting a more pro-active position in seeking international rules of the road to minimize space debris, and to consult on space situational awareness to prevent collisions in space.

The U.S. maintains the world's most sophisticated space-surveillance network of ground-based sensors but it has been unclear in the past how willing the U.S. Air Force, which operates the system, would be to share the information with the private sector and with other nations.

The satellite collision of an Iridium mobile communications craft with a retired Russian spacecraft in February 2009, creating a new debris field in low Earth orbit, has accelerated talks on collaboration on space surveillance. European government officials say they have noticed a more-open attitude on the part of U.S. government officials in U.S.-European talks about coordinating work on space surveillance, both for debris mitigation and for other purposes.

Europe has begun its own space-surveillance program. While still modest, it has given the United States an added incentive to discuss how a trans-Atlantic cooperative effort might be structured, according to European government officials.

Since late 2009, the U.S. Air Force Joint Space Operations Center, located at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., has increased the number of operational satellites that it watches closely.

The new space policy "commits the United States to collaborate with industry and foreign nations to improve space object data bases," Rose said in his address. "The policy calls for collaboration on the dissemination of orbital tracking information, including predictions of potentially hazardous conjunctions between orbiting objects."

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de Selding, Peter B. "U.S. Open to Ideas for Limiting Space Weapons." Space.com. July 14, 2010.

 

The asteroid impact threat offered a scientifically validated enemy onto which could be projected the fears on which a militaristic culture depends. Far from providing a replacement outlet for weapons technologies, the pro- motion of the asteroid impact threat helped make the idea of war in space more acceptable and helped justify the continued development of space- based weaponry. Arguably, with the Clementine and Deep Impact mis- sions, the asteroid impact threat even facilitated the testing of SDI-style systems. The asteroid impact threat legitimized a way of talking, and think- ing, that was founded on fear of the unknown and the assumption that advanced technology could usher in a safer era. In so doing, it resonated with the politics of fear and the technologies of permanent war that are now at the centre of US defence policy.

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Mellor, Felicity. "Colliding Worlds: Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space." . Vol. 37 (2007): 499. [ 1 reference ]

 

Some national security thinkers are beginning to ask whether reduced reliance on nuclear deterrence, coupled with diminished conventional-force readiness for major warfare -- such as tank battles and fights over control of air space -- inadvertently invite the rise of near-peer challenges to Washington.

Could ratcheting back on both the nuclear and conventional strategies also increase the incentives for would-be nuclear powers to develop their own arsenals?

"To be walking both [postures] back simultaneously is alarming," Christopher Ford, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said in a March 3 interview. "I would have expected that an administration that came to pare back the nuclear aspects of extended deterrence would be committed to a corresponding strengthening of conventional military alliance relationships around the world."

Lewis sees much more potential for nuclear-to-conventional trade-offs, but emphasized that additional groundwork must be laid on an international level.

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Grossman, Elaine M. "Debate Heats Up Over Conventional, Nuclear Deterrence Tradeoffs." Global Security Newswire. March 19, 2010.

 

The anticipated first such weapon, the Air Force Conventional Strike Missile, could slam into a target halfway around the world within an hour of launch. Its high speed and long range -- unprecedented for a conventional munition -- are raising worries about the potential for its hasty use based on inadequate intelligence.

Some also are concerned about the technology's possible application in a disabling strike by Washington against small nuclear forces such as Beijing's, a risk that might trigger dangerous "use or lose" dynamics during a crisis.

"I'm an advocate for having a prompt global strike capability as an additional weapon set," one that could give the president "options in time of crisis today, in which he maybe only has a nuclear option for a timely response," Chilton testified on Tuesday. "But the connective tissue between that [capability] and the one-for-one exchange for a nuclear deterrent, I'm not quite there."

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Grossman, Elaine M. "Debate Heats Up Over Conventional, Nuclear Deterrence Tradeoffs." Global Security Newswire. March 19, 2010.

 

"Memories in New Delhi run deep about how India's relative tardiness in developing strategic offensive systems [nuclear weapons] redounded in its relegation on 'judgment day' [when the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in 1968] to the formal category of non-nuclear weapons state," said Sourabh Gupta, senior research associate at Samuels International Associates in Washington, DC.

"With its early support of the former US president George W Bush's ballistic missile defense program and its current drive to develop anti-ballistic missile/anti-satellite capability, New Delhi is determined not to make the same mistake twice," added Gupta. "If and when globally negotiated restraints are placed on such strategic defensive systems or technologies - perhaps restraints of some sort of ASAT testing/hit-to-kill technologies - India will already have crossed the technical threshold in that regard, and acknowledgement of such status [will be] grand-fathered into any such future agreement."

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Brown, Peter J. "India Targets China's Satellites." Asia Times. January 22, 2010.

 

Currently, the economic and technological superiority of the USA in space is obvious and indisputable. However, if a space arms race is initiated, it will inevitably be joined by other countries, above all China, Russia, India, Brazil, Japan, and later possibly Iran, Pakistan, and others. As a result, the USA, despite its superiority in space, may lose more than all the rest because, in their military and civilian activities, they more than anyone else depend on the security of space vehicles. Historically, this is what happened with nuclear weapons and missile technology, where the USA initially had a monopoly or superiority, but now they see the proliferation of such weapons as the main threat to their own security.

In the long term, the growing threat of an arms race and, even more so, space conflicts, will inevitably lead to the "vertical" and "horizontal" proliferation of missiles and nuclear weapons, and to the irreversible crisis of the whole nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime. Additionally, outer space (which does not have natural borders and natural shelters) through its saturation by weapons, will present a grave threat from the point of view of accidents, incidents, false alarms, and navigational system failures.

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Arbatov, Alexey. Space Weapons: Science Fiction, Real Threats and Arms Control Opportunities. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, May 2009. [ 8 quotes ] [ page 23 ]

 

However, as applied to the aircraft-based systems of the type deployed during the '80s by the USA (F15 SRAMAltair) and the Soviet development of anti-satellite systems based on the MiG31 fighter plane, the verification of bans on their deployment would be extremely difficult due to the dual purpose and massive numbers of such aircraft in operation, as well as the small size of intercepting missiles that may be stored in any airfield's storage facilities. Of course, such satellite systems possess special systems for targeting and navigation, but their banning would interfere in the overall ground-based infrastructure of space complexes, and would therefore be unrealistic. Limitation of quantity of such systems is a more achievable goal, but requires wide transparency and agreement on the functional differences between aircraft and missiles, facilitation of verification measures, agreed locations for anti- satellite systems, as well as the possible acceptance of rights of inspection upon suspicion (with brief notification) of other airforce bases of the parties.

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Arbatov, Alexey. Space Weapons: Science Fiction, Real Threats and Arms Control Opportunities. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, May 2009. [ 8 quotes ] [ page 17 ]

 

As opposed to this historical experience, space weapons will be the most difficult to ban and to limit at their deployment and operational stages, particularly where deployment in space is concerned, as it is in the Draft Space Weapons Treaty of 2008. To identify, through the use of NTMVs, banned satellites with weapons on board among approximately 700 space vehicles that are currently rotating in various orbits, would be exceptionally difficult. It could be even more difficult to prove that they are subject to a Treaty without their inspection in space or their being brought down to Earth (even if the Treaty could determine the technical characteristics of banned systems, and not just where they are based and where their possible targets are located).

This can also apply to future compact satellites used as a means of inspection of space vehicles in all orbits. Such on-site space inspection, as well as bringing vehicles down to Earth, is in many cases not technically possible, as well as being dangerous and, more likely than not, unacceptable for states because of military or commercial secrecy. Additionally, the creation of such systems and means of verification may of itself be interpreted as a type of anti-satellite weapon or combat operation.

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Arbatov, Alexey. Space Weapons: Science Fiction, Real Threats and Arms Control Opportunities. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, May 2009. [ 8 quotes ] [ page 16 ]

 

The banning of combat systems that are based on directed energy transmission, primarily lasers, is particularly complicated. They can be used for striking aircraft, satellites, ballistic missiles and their elements during flight, and also for the detection, probing and identification of ground, underwater and space objects, as well as for targeting other weapon systems and, in future, for the rapid transfer of immense amounts of information, i.e. for communications. Theoretically, effectiveness of lasers may be limited (thereby separating attack systems from ancillary purpose systems) by the ratio of power illumination to the area of the ray's cross-section (joules/steredian), which is an indicator integrating a laser's energy and the area of its mirror reflector.

But to come to an agreement regarding such limitations would be a complex undertaking if we take into account the different types of lasers ("pumping" methods) and the diverse areas through which they may pass (space, atmosphere). For example, a laser that does not have destructive potential in a dense atmosphere may be an effective weapon against satellites in space at long distances, or for striking booster stages of ballistic missiles at a shorter range when they leave the atmosphere, or missile warheads in space at a short distance.

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Arbatov, Alexey. Space Weapons: Science Fiction, Real Threats and Arms Control Opportunities. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, May 2009. [ 8 quotes ] [ page 14 ]

 

Verification on space launching pads before the launch also seems improbable in the foreseeable future because of military and commercial secrecy. By the way, this question was touched upon at the end of the '80s during the USSRUSA negotiations on space weapons, in relation to a ban on orbital ABM systems. It was acknowledged at that time that such verification methods would be overly intrusive and practically impossible to implement for technical reasons (the necessity of opening containers with the payload, and its identification before being installed on a space vehicle). It is possible that in the context of radical disarmament measures and abandonment of military confrontation, such measures of pre-launch inspection could in time become possible for the verification of space disarmament. But at this stage they seem unrealistic, in particular regarding the RFPRC Draft Treaty of 2008. As regards land, air, and sea-based space weapons that are most likely to appear in the foreseeable future (but not addressed by the RFPRC Draft), even here the picture is mixed. The banning or limitation of such systems as were deployed by the Soviet Union in the '7080s (and experimental missiles tested by China against satellites in 2007) would not be difficult if their technical characteristics and locations could be agreed upon, using methods applied by the Treaty on Intermediate and Shorter Range Missiles and START-1.

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Arbatov, Alexey. Space Weapons: Science Fiction, Real Threats and Arms Control Opportunities. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, May 2009. [ 8 quotes ] [ page 16-17 ]

 

First, the threat to space security that is squarely in our sights today is the proliferation of destructive ASAT technologies based on Earth—weaponry that is not restricted by this draft treaty. China, Russia and the United States have all displayed capabilities to use physical force to attack and destroy satellites, and some other spacefaring powers now also consider following suit. In India, in particular, there appears to be a growing debate about whether India needs to develop and test such weaponry—either to keep up with an incipient ASAT arms race or to “beat” the announcement of any treaty so that they will not be stuck in the same “have not” position as they were when the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed. The proliferation of destructive, debris-creating ASATs however is in fact in no one’s interest—as sooner or later, someone would finally fail to resist the temptation to use them. Space debris is already a serious problem, and debris threatens all satellites indiscriminately. It knows no nationality, even during times of war. Unfortunately, last year was the worst year ever for debris creation, with the US Air Force now tracking about 18,000 pieces of debris larger than 5cm in diameter—that is, large enough to do serious damage to satellites. Estimates of smaller debris range from the hundreds of thousands to the millions, and even debris of 1cm in diameter can damage or destroy an operational satellite. As it is, the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space has adopted voluntary guidelines to mitigate the creation of debris because of concern about the ever-more polluted space environment. One of those guidelines is a pledge not to deliberately create debris through the destruction of on-orbit objects. However, that pledge is weakened by both a clause that says if you “must” destroy something on orbit, be sure to do it in a very low orbit where the debris will re-enter the atmosphere—leaving room for ASAT testing in lower orbits. It also includes a waiver for national security. Thus, there remain very few normative or legal obstacles to constrain the development and testing of such ASATs—despite their clear danger to the security of all satellites.

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Hitchens, Theresa. Russian - Chinese Space Weapons Ban Proposal: A Critique. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations - Conference on Disarmament, December 2008. [ 3 quotes ] [ page 154-155 ]

 

At the end of the Cold War, under the conditions of an evolving multipolar system of international relations with intensive globalization and interdependence of the whole world, there was a chance to interrupt the historical process of accelerating arms races and military conflict and their transition to ever higher levels of technological complexity, affecting new areas of human activity. The growing commercial information and scientific value inherent in the use of space, and also its huge facilitating role for military action on Earth (including peacekeeping operations), is moving us in this direction, in order to achieve greater stability and facilitate the process of disarmament. In this sense, the accumulated mass of international legal norms regulating space activity is very important, as well as half a centurys experience of practical negotiations on arms limitation and disarmament, including in the area of strategic missile weapon systems and military activity in space. Insofar as the utilisation of space is concerned, mankind is now poised at an important historical juncture: space will either become a new arena for arms race and military conflict, or will remain an area for peaceful and exclusively ancillary military activity, and thus for promoting international cooperation, strategic stability and disarmament. Important choices in this direction will apparently be made in the next decade and perhaps even in the next few years.

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Arbatov, Alexey. Space Weapons: Science Fiction, Real Threats and Arms Control Opportunities. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, May 2009. [ 8 quotes ] [ page 4 ]

 

In the near term, the U.S. Navy's Conventional Trident Modification proposal is the most cost-effective prompt global strike weapons system that will enable the most risk mitigation leverage for the United States. Given that conventional Trident D-5 SLBMs would occupy only two out of twenty-four launch tubes on the Ohio-class submarines that carry such missiles, U.S. taxpayers will not bear the cost of an entire submarine committed solely to ensuring the survival of CBMs. If CTM were deployed, then military planners should ensure that the submarines launch their missiles from areas of the ocean that would obviate the need to travel over or near nuclear-armed states with missile warning systems to avoid the chance of miscalculation. Because circumstances would not always permit missile flights to remain undetected by nuclear-armed states, the United States should work to implement other mitigation measures.

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Sugden, Bruce M. "Speed Kills: Analyzing the Deployment of Conventional Ballistic Missiles." International Security. Vol. 34, No. 1 (Summer 2009): Vol. 34, No. 1, Pages 113-146. [ 11 quotes ] [ page 145 ]

 

Multilateral Treaty Negotiations less likely to Succeed because of Technical SecrecyThe multilateral nature of the array of countries wishing to participate in the proposed drafting of such a Treaty gives rise to serious doubts. The highly complex technological systems that are involved are military and strategic in nature and are known only to a few states, and questions related to them are of an exceptionally sensitive nature. So any hope for practical negotiations on these problems in a multilateral format based on the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) is hardly justified. A more practical format would involve two or, at most, three parties (RFUSAPRC), and seems more practical, at least at the initial stage.

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Arbatov, Alexey. Space Weapons: Science Fiction, Real Threats and Arms Control Opportunities. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, May 2009. [ 8 quotes ] [ page 10 ]

 

Second, while it may be counterintuitive, it is unclear what is meant by Article III’s “not resort to the threat … of force against outer space objects”. This is because the concept of a “threat”—outside of a direct, declaratory statement of intent to do harm—is really a matter of perception. The current US National Space Policy says that the United States holds the right to “if necessary, deny adversaries the use of space”. Is that a threat? I suppose if one considers oneself as a potential US adversary, yes it is. Is the destruction of the Chinese satellite in 2007, even if it proves to be an isolated case, a threat of force? Arguably, yes—especially considering that such an event can instil fears of development and testing of destructive space capabilities. What about missile defences, or laser tracking stations, that could be tweaked to harm satellites? Are they threatening? Maybe, maybe not. The point is that what one nation might see as legitimately preparing to ensure its “right to self-defence” may be seen as “a threat” by another. How do you mitigate that? It strikes me that even finding an agreed definition of “threat” would be awfully difficult; but failure to define it would run the risk that charges of non-compliance would be a recipe for never-ending international dispute. Even the issue of the “use of force” in this article is not clear. Does the text mean that the use of positioning or communications jammers in wartime would be a prohibited use of force? While the draft treaty language defining “use of force” and “threat of force” seems to include them in its scope, such jamming devices already exist in large numbers and have been used in warfare; does anyone really expect nations in possession of such systems to just hand them over? And while this clause does some good to mitigate against the non-inclusion of terrestrially based ASATs directly, its vagueness leaves a great deal of room for concern about how it would or could be applied.

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Hitchens, Theresa. Russian - Chinese Space Weapons Ban Proposal: A Critique. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations - Conference on Disarmament, December 2008. [ 3 quotes ] [ page 155 ]

 

Third, the issue of classifying what is a weapon and what is not, coupled with the problem of verifying a space object’s status, has long been the central problem for any space weapons treaty proposal. The first question that needs to be asked is the definitional one: how do you parse what is or is not a weapon in outer space? The draft treaty language uses the term “specially produced or converted to eliminate, damage or disrupt” objects in outer space. But the problem is how do you know if a space system was specially produced, or converted, to do this? Would all nations simply be willing to believe each other’s declarations that nothing they intended to put in orbit was a weapon, even it had weapons capability? Because of the dual-use nature of many on-orbit technologies, the ability to define what is and is not a weapon becomes a critical problem. For example, there has been some interest in building vehicles to refuel satellites or tugs to take down space debris. Each of those systems could also do double duty as an ASAT. And how would you verify that a space tug was really only for use in taking down ailing satellites and large debris, and not operational satellites? It is clear that nations could, in the course of negotiations, simply assign weapons status to objects based on a judgment about their capabilities and their intentions and need for the capabilities, but such a process is likely to be unwieldy and extremely politically contentious. This language, however, says nothing at all about a process for classification—something that I believe needs to be redressed. And it may be that the concern about space weapons is so great that nations could accept a treaty without verification, but given the classification problem, I am not certain that would be the best route. While I understand that before any verification discussion takes place, negotiators need to know what it is they are trying to verify—it does seem to me that it would be useful for the draft to perhaps lay out some options that might be pursued regarding verification. I must reiterate that I am not against the idea of a treaty to ban on-orbit weapons—I personally think the introduction of weapons into orbit would be a very bad thing for international stability, especially among the nuclear powers, and would lead to an ASAT arms race that would be even more destabilizing. Indeed, I think that a simple agreement among all nations in which each declared their intention not to put weapons in orbit would be useful as a normsetting, confidence-building device. But I do not think that a treaty that seeks to actually prevent their deployment can be designed without some clarity about what is and what is not a weapon—or at least clarity about how exactly that determination is made—and some measures for verifying non-compliance. The language in this draft, in my own humble opinion, would not prevent deployment, and at the same time would become a vehicle for constant political conflict about compliance. That is not to say solutions cannot be found, as any arms control effort is primarily a question of political will, simply that there needs to be more work to find them.

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Hitchens, Theresa. Russian - Chinese Space Weapons Ban Proposal: A Critique. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations - Conference on Disarmament, December 2008. [ 3 quotes ] [ page 155-156 ]

 

The strongest rationale for expanding the use of CBMs would be defeating sophisticated anti-access and area-denial threats. U.S. aircraft and many standoff missiles designed for stealthy defense penetration are capable of circumventing and defeating the threat, but this capability might grow relatively weaker. Because the primacy of low-observable, stealthy aircraft and standoff missiles over air-defense systems should not be assumed to hold far into the future, it behooves the defense community to conduct a functional net assessment of foreign advances in area-denial technology vis-à-vis U.S. defense penetration capabilities. The findings of this future study could help determine midterm and long-term requirements for PGS weapons systems.

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Sugden, Bruce M. "Speed Kills: Analyzing the Deployment of Conventional Ballistic Missiles." International Security. Vol. 34, No. 1 (Summer 2009): Vol. 34, No. 1, Pages 113-146. [ 11 quotes ] [ page 145 ]

 

Among specialists it is more or less accepted that by "space weapons" or "space arms" (SA) are meant weapons that are created and tested for their strike capability on any targets, and that are used from space objects (that is, objects that have completed at least one full turn in circumterrestrial orbit (other celestial bodies and their orbits are not mentioned so far)), as well as weapons that are created and tested for their attack capability on space objects (that is, objects that have completed at least one full turn in circumterrestrial orbit).

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Arbatov, Alexey. Space Weapons: Science Fiction, Real Threats and Arms Control Opportunities. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, May 2009. [ 8 quotes ] [ page 10 ]

 

For potential opponents with limited resources, the enormous costs associated with developing and maintaining an air force may cause some of them to concede control of the sky. Yet others may choose to focus on relatively inexpensive—compared to the cost of fourth-or fifth-generation fighters—ground-based defenses, as well as such “old-fashioned” methods of thwarting airpower as dispersal, camouflage, and concrete. In addition, as conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Gaza have illustrated, an enemy can turn to asymmetric techniques to thwart airpower, or it can respond with its own version of an air offensive. In addition to firing more than 4,000 rockets, Hezbollah fought back against the Israelis in 2006 by launching three Mirsad-1 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that carried 50-kilogram bombs, plus it fired C-802 Noor cruise missiles against an Israeli ship. Less expensive technology also has a great deal of attraction for those who might wage hybrid wars, and such “proven” methods of attack as improvised explosive devices (IED) and suicide bombers will likely continue.

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Clodfelter, Mark. "Back from the Future: The Impact of Change on Airpower in the Decades Ahead." Strategic Studies Quarterly. Vol. 3, No. 3 (Fall 2009): 104-122. [ 3 quotes ] [ page 109 ]

 

Yet even with the continued modernization of weaponry by both the Chinese and Russians, to include plans for their own fifth-generation fighters, the prospect of direct conflict in the years ahead between the United States and allies against either the Chinese or Russians is remote. Besides the obvious threat of nuclear escalation, other factors limit the chances for conventional combat. The Chinese own almost 15 percent of America’s $10 trillion national debt and have continued to purchase US treasury bonds during the current market downturn. The ties that forged the economic powerhouse dubbed “Chimerica” by Niall Ferguson are unlikely to loosen in the years ahead; the combination of China’s demographic imbalance, environmental degradation, and political corruption decreases prospects that its manufacturing sector will shift its focus from exporting consumer goods to America. In short, the Chinese would probably not wish to sabotage their own financial health by conventional combat with the United States. The Russians, despite their bluster, would probably not wish to engage in a war that could pit them against all of NATO and threaten their oil and natural gas sales to many of the alliance nations, particularly those in Western Europe.

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Clodfelter, Mark. "Back from the Future: The Impact of Change on Airpower in the Decades Ahead." Strategic Studies Quarterly. Vol. 3, No. 3 (Fall 2009): 104-122. [ 3 quotes ] [ page 113 ]

 

While an air-to-air showdown between either China or Russia and the United States is unlikely, such a confrontation could well occur in space or cyberspace. In 2000, a Chinese military strategist referred to America’s dependence on space assets and information technology as “soft ribs and strategic weaknesses,” and the Chinese have responded with extensive efforts in those arenas. They revealed an ability to “paint” American satellites with ground-based lasers in August 2006. In early 2007, the Chinese demonstrated an effective antisatellite capability by firing a ground-based medium-range ballistic missile that hit one of their aging weather satellites. That capability is a direct threat to American satellites monitoring daily activities such as financial transactions, power grids, and telephone communications, as well as those providing GPS data to smart munitions. A significant loss of satellites would have a profound impact on America’s ability to provide air support to Taiwan should war with China occur there. Still, for the Chinese to risk war with the United States over the sovereignty of Taiwan—much less over downed satellites—runs counter to logic that the Chinese have displayed in a nonviolent march towards regional hegemony. A more plausible way for them to check America’s military might is to attack through cyberspace—a means that is difficult to pinpoint with absolute certainty—as they demonstrated by hacking Pentagon computers in June 2007. The Russians may have followed suit in November 2008 in a cyber attack that affected computer networks within US Central Command as well as the Pentagon. More attacks are likely.

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Clodfelter, Mark. "Back from the Future: The Impact of Change on Airpower in the Decades Ahead." Strategic Studies Quarterly. Vol. 3, No. 3 (Fall 2009): 104-122. [ 3 quotes ] [ page 114 ]

 

The 2006 US policy also reserves the right to deny adversaries “the use of space capabilities hostile to US national interests.” But attacking others’ space capabilities invites attacks on one’s own space capabilities. Since evolving technology guarantees that more nations will depend even more on space assets in the future and that these vital assets are also likely to face greater threats, current US space policy faces an inherent contradiction and instability. Failure to address this contradiction will allow instabilities to grow over time, as technology and growing space dependence will make space assets ever more desirable military targets.

There is an inherent risk of strategic instability when relatively modest defence efforts can create disproportionate danger to a potential adversary, as with space offence. The technical challenge and cost for nations that already have advanced space capabilities to develop credible anti-satellite and other offensive counter-space capabilities are not unreasonable for the potential military benefits such capabilities would provide. And if a country perceived that space conflict was inevitable, a disabling first strike against an adversary’s space assets would be far preferable to, and easier to execute than, retaliating against the space assets of the side that struck first. This is the essence of crisis instability, when pre-empting pays far greater benefits than retaliating. We don’t know what would happen in a crisis, but the potential for space instability seems high and likely to grow. Sadly, this growing instability problem is largely overlooked in discussions of space security policy. This must change, and wise space policy, and diplomatic initiatives, must take these new strategic space realities into account.

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MacDonald, Bruce W. "Steps to Strategic Security and Stability in Space." Disarmament Forum. No. 4 (Winter 2009): 17-26. [ 8 quotes ] [ page 18 ]

 

Even a modest space war, involving the destruction of 30 satellites, could increase the level of space debris by almost a factor of four, if each destroyed satellite produced the same level of debris as the Chinese satellite event of 2007. A larger conflict, involving the destruction of 100 satellites, would quickly increase space debris by over 1250%, and that does not include Kessler Syndrome effects, which would increase the debris level still further. We could make the most useful orbits in space useless to future generations. The inability to use space-based assets could threaten international security in other ways, as states would be unable to use their satellites to verify arms control agreements (for example the Russian Federation and the United States’ verification of Strategic Arms Reduction agreements).

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MacDonald, Bruce W. "Steps to Strategic Security and Stability in Space." Disarmament Forum. No. 4 (Winter 2009): 17-26. [ 8 quotes ] [ page 21 ]

 

It would be unwise for any country to seek space dominance, for quite practical and strategic reasons. There are many ways to attack space assets, and it is easier and cheaper to attack than to defend them, which would likely frustrate any sustained attempt at dominance and leave every country worse off. In trying to maintain dominance, any country would be at the mercy of unpredictably advancing space technologies that could favour another country. In the face of likely resistance to such a provocative and hegemonic posture, any country seeking to dominate in space would constantly be trying to stay ahead technologically to maintain this dominance, demanding large expenditures that would be a growing burden on other national security and economic needs. Such a situation would also be very unstable, especially if another country achieved a technological breakthrough that threatened to upset the previously dominant country’s hegemony. A crisis occurring in this context could provide a compelling incentive to the about-to-be-dethroned country to pre-empt before its space dominance slipped away.

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MacDonald, Bruce W. "Steps to Strategic Security and Stability in Space." Disarmament Forum. No. 4 (Winter 2009): 17-26. [ 8 quotes ] [ page 19 ]