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<title>Spacedebate.org: New Evidence</title>
<description>Latest evidence added to the database on Spacedebate.org</description>
<link>http://www.spacedebate.org/</link>

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	<title>Over 60 Tests of Anti-Satellite Weapons have been Conducted but no Actual Combat Use</title>
	<description><![CDATA[In assessing the future evolution of ASAT activities, observers must be cognizant of the multiple steps in the weapons development cycle. Typically, a new weapon (for space applications or any other) must survive a series of crucibles, variously denominated as: research, development, testing, manufacturing, deployment, use, and retirement.84 Each stage poses its own challenges, but for present purposes, this article focuses on two critical components: testing (especially flight testing or evaluation in outer space) and use in combat.

The current "box score" of these two types of ASAT activities reveals (with some uncertainty, due to incomplete declassification of this sensitive history, and doubt about how to categorize particular actions) approximately 60 genuine ASAT tests in space, conducted by three countries; barely half a dozen of those events occurred within the past two decades. Regarding use in combat or crisis, the score is zero – despite numerous profound provocations during the half century since the Space Age began, no country has ever employed (or, so far as the public record indicates, even threatened to employ) any type of ASAT weaponry in hostilities against an enemy.
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Koplow, David. "ASAT-isfaction: Customary International Law and the Regulation of Anti-Satellite Weapons." Michigan Journal of International Law. Vol. 30 (2009).	]]></description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:15:00 -0700</pubDate>	<link>http://www.spacedebate.org/evidence/4121</link>
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	<title>Experience with Landmine Treaty shows Customary International Law could be a Path towards Space Arms Control</title>
	<description><![CDATA[Such a strategy might also be adapted for achieving new restraints on other types of weapons, too. Both anti-personnel land mines and cluster munitions have drawn robust international criticism on humanitarian grounds – their distressing tendency to afflict civilians and other non-combatants long after the soldiers have marched away and the war has terminated sits uncomfortably against the LoAC standards of discrimination, proportionality, and necessity. In each area, new treaties have begun the laborious task of ridding the world of the scourge of unintended civilian casualties, but in each area, the major weapons possessing states have generally refrained from adhering. CIL may therefore offer an alternative, complementary approach: stigmatize the weapons as globally unacceptable, even for countries that eschew the formal treaty obligations. A new treaty on "explosive remnants of war" may also point the way, perhaps one day driving the world community to unite against all manner of weapons – land mines, cluster bombs, and ASAT-generated debris – that linger too long, affect too many civilians, and jeopardize civil society's ability to access and enjoy important places and resources.
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Koplow, David. "ASAT-isfaction: Customary International Law and the Regulation of Anti-Satellite Weapons." Michigan Journal of International Law. Vol. 30 (2009).	]]></description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:15:00 -0700</pubDate>	<link>http://www.spacedebate.org/evidence/4122</link>
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	<title>Customary International Law allows Less-Powerful Countries to Play Role in Space Arms Control</title>
	<description><![CDATA[This is also a leading instance of how the apparently less-powerful countries can, with strategic deliberation, exert a greater influence over the planet's major states – or, at least, how they do not have to wait for them in order to push for the progressive development of law. While a recalcitrant United States can effectively block any effort to articulate a formal ASAT treaty in the Conference on Disarmament, it cannot similarly squelch other countries' foreign ministries from asserting contrary views into the public domain – views that can cascade into a new CIL rule. It is hard to imagine a space-related treaty moving very far forward without the participation of the leading spacefaring countries, but it is at least conceivable that the public dialogue can proceed more rapidly than some of those states might wish.
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Koplow, David. "ASAT-isfaction: Customary International Law and the Regulation of Anti-Satellite Weapons." Michigan Journal of International Law. Vol. 30 (2009).	]]></description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:15:00 -0700</pubDate>	<link>http://www.spacedebate.org/evidence/4123</link>
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	<title>Space Debris is Clear and Present Danger for Space Activities</title>
	<description><![CDATA[[KREPON] There’s a climate change analogy here, if you will, with respect to space debris. Three worst man-made debris-causing events have occurred in the last three years. And more can come. You recall that people had to scramble out of the international space station into an escape module last month to avoid a five-inch piece of debris from a 1993 GPS launch. And this is not going to be an isolated incident. Manned space operations in low Earth orbit are in jeopardy now, not just U.S. operations, not just the shuttle, not just the international space station. The Chinese manned space operations will also be jeopardized for a long time to come because of the debris population up there. Debris does not recognize U.S. preeminence in space. Debris represents a clear and present danger to all space operations now in low Earth orbit.
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Krepon, Michael, Pavel Podvig <i>et al</i>. "The Space Nuclear Nexus." 2009 Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 07, 2009.	]]></description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:00:00 -0700</pubDate>	<link>http://www.spacedebate.org/evidence/4117</link>
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	<title>Russians and Chinese Committed to Complete Ban on All Space Weapons, not Interested in Incrementalism</title>
	<description><![CDATA[[BRUCE MACDONALD] The Russian and Chinese proposal about a ban on all space weapons, when you read it I see a few potential loopholes. But that’s not what concerns me the most about it. There is a huge verification issue associated with it. But that’s all right. I mean it’s good to get the dialogue going; that’s one thing we absolutely need to do is to get a dialogue going.

But what I ask of my Chinese colleagues about how we should address the verification issues, the response tends to be something like, well, there’s some grudging reluctant admittance that, yeah, there are some big verification issues. And then in a way that I guess maybe we in the United States should feel complimented by, they’d say, you guys are so good about space things, you’ll figure it out.

I would that that were true. So I wanted to follow up, Michael in particular, on your comment, and ask the panel-members. My sense is in the nuclear era we had to crawl before we walked and walk before we even run a little bit. Look how long – Jim Goodby and others points out that half a century and more in nuclear testing area.

When I suggested the idea to some of some even baby steps in the space area, a response I’ve gotten from some people in Russia and China – and they have their talking points like U.S. government officials have theirs too – but the response is, no, no, no, we have to go for the equivalent of general and complete disarmament.

So I guess my question is: How feasible is it, realistic is it, and I hope it is feasible and realistic, to suggest these more, lesser, early-to-intermediate steps, Michael such as exactly you’ve pointed out, the idea of codes of conduct, that sort of thing? And in particular what I believe is absolutely excellent idea of a ban on tests of kinetic energy, ASATs, or as one person in the Air Force even suggested to me, why not broaden it a little bit more and ban all actions that end up creating debris from low Earth orbit on up?
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Krepon, Michael, Pavel Podvig <i>et al</i>. "The Space Nuclear Nexus." 2009 Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 07, 2009.	]]></description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:00:00 -0700</pubDate>	<link>http://www.spacedebate.org/evidence/4118</link>
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	<title>Growing Use of Space will Inevitably Lead to Desire to Protect It</title>
	<description><![CDATA[As countries increasingly exploit and prosper from outer space for military and civilian purposes, it should come as no surprise that their rivals and potential enemies increasingly ponder mechanisms to deny and defeat those applications in time of conflict. Indeed, the more that countries invest in satellites, the more they become dependent upon them, and the greater the payoff for a hostile force that can disrupt their functions – and the greater the risk that an initial ASAT attack would trigger retaliation, cascading into general war. As the United States and others put more and more eggs into the basket of outer space, we all become nervously vulnerable to hostile efforts that would challenge the growing reliance.
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Koplow, David. "ASAT-isfaction: Customary International Law and the Regulation of Anti-Satellite Weapons." Michigan Journal of International Law. Vol. 30 (2009).	]]></description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:00:00 -0700</pubDate>	<link>http://www.spacedebate.org/evidence/4120</link>
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	<title>A Ban on ASAT Testing could Feasibly be Accepted because it would Address Russian and Chinese Concerns</title>
	<description><![CDATA[[ALEXIS ARBATOV] We have to take into account asymmetric interests of states with respect to space weapons. In particular Russia and China – Chinese, I don’t know whether my Chinese colleagues would agree with that or not – Russia and China perceive anti-satellite weapons as potential asymmetric counter to American space-based systems which support new conventional warfare, in particular precision-guided systems which are used so efficiently and which are viewed with concern by both Russia and China, and also potential ballistic missile defense deployed in space.

Anti-satellite systems are asymmetric response that China and Russia may put forward against it. So I think that any agreement, if it is confined only to ASAT weapons will not be acceptable either to Russia or to China. We have to use the practice of SALT and start negotiations where asymmetric concerns were balanced against each other. So to make a long story short, the proposal is that the first agreement should be very practical, quite limited, but very useful and important. And it will be banning destructive tests against satellites and destructive tests from space-based platforms against ballistic missiles and their elements of the trajectory of flight.

That will cover both American concern about its space assets and Russian and Chinese concern about American space support systems and potential American ballistic missile defense. We cannot ban those systems because they are so numerous and they overlap so much with each other and with other systems. But we can ban testing, and that would slow down and maybe eventually stop this dangerous development of arms race in space and against space.
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Krepon, Michael, Pavel Podvig <i>et al</i>. "The Space Nuclear Nexus." 2009 Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 07, 2009.	]]></description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:00:00 -0700</pubDate>	<link>http://www.spacedebate.org/evidence/4119</link>
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	<title>Russia does not have Infrastructure or Interest to Pursue Space Weapons</title>
	<description><![CDATA[[PAVEL PODVIG] It would be actually be fairly difficult to do that in practical terms. In terms of actual programs and developments, things are not very good for either space weapons or ASAT in Russia because most of the industrial and organizational infrastructure that supported those programs has been scattered around, and we don’t have either the military service dedicated to this kind of thing but also Russia does not have a unified ministry in the defense industry that would carry enough weight to lobby for this kind of a program.

Besides, looking from the other direction, Russia, the discussion about ASAT and space, military uses of space, is actually influenced by the fact that Russia doesn’t really have a lot of space assets to protect. The integration of military satellites into the actual military operations is actually not very good.

Again, on a positive note, access to space is basically controlled largely by the space forces, by Roscosmos, the civilian agency, to a certain extent the rocket forces, and none of those institutions actually has great interest or any real investment in any kind of an ASAT capability or any weapon-in-space developments.
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Krepon, Michael, Pavel Podvig <i>et al</i>. "The Space Nuclear Nexus." 2009 Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 07, 2009.	]]></description>
	<pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:45:00 -0700</pubDate>	<link>http://www.spacedebate.org/evidence/4116</link>
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	<title>Iran has Studied the Possibility of Launching an EMP Attack on U.S. Homeland</title>
	<description><![CDATA[Rather than exploding the nuclear warhead in space, the Iranians could conceivably forgo space and fly an ICBM over the United States before detonating the warhead. The aforementioned EMP Commission examined the consequences of a high-altitude, terrestrial EMP attack over the continental U.S. In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, EMP Commission Chairman William Graham said such an explosion would cause "unprecedented cascading failures of major infrastructures." Systemic failures in interdependent infrastructure sectors (e.g., transportation, emergency services, finance and banking, and water delivery) might become "mutually reinforcing until at some point the degradation of infrastructure could have irreversible effects on the country's ability to support its population." Chairman Graham also discussed the Iranian EMP threat in his testimony before Congress: "Iran has also tested high-altitude explosions of the Shahab-III, a test mode consistent with EMP attack, and described the tests as successful. Iranian military writings explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States. While the Commission does not know the intention of Iran in conducting these activities, we are disturbed by the capability that emerges when we connect the dots."
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George C. Marshall Institute. "Persia in Space: Implications for U.S. National Security." . February 1, 2009.	]]></description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2009 13:15:00 -0700</pubDate>	<link>http://www.spacedebate.org/evidence/4099</link>
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	<title>Iran could use the Safir-2 Missile to Develop a Kinetic-Kill ASAT</title>
	<description><![CDATA[Iran could utilize its space-launch capability in other ways besides building long-range ballistic missiles to threaten the U.S. and its friends and allies. Tehran might mimic the Chinese and develop an anti-satellite (ASAT) capability. The ASAT presents a challenge to the American military's "Achilles heel: its space based assets and their related ground installations." On January 11, 2007, the Chinese military destroyed an aging weather satellite in LEO using an MRBM. The ballistic missile's "kill vehicle" collided with the satellite at an altitude of 864 kilometers. The Chinese realize both the importance and vulnerability of American military space assets. One People's Liberation Army (PLA) analyst concluded U.S. military space assets constitute its "soft ribs" and "for countries that can never win a war with the United States by using the method of tanks and planes, attacking the U.S. space system may be an irresistible and most tempting choice." Iran may take the necessary steps, including developing a kinetic kill vehicle, to build up an ASAT program (perhaps, with Chinese assistance).
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George C. Marshall Institute. "Persia in Space: Implications for U.S. National Security." . February 1, 2009.	]]></description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2009 13:00:00 -0700</pubDate>	<link>http://www.spacedebate.org/evidence/4097</link>
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