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The Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee ("IADC") worked with several space agencies to create the most comprehensive and influential guidelines on the subject.57 The guidelines' most pertinent provisions require a participating agency to limit space debris release during normal operations to the extent feasible, to dispose of potential orbital debris after the conclusion of a mission, and to plan missions with the express purpose of minimizing the possibility of orbital collisions.58 Each space agency is therefore responsible for implementing these practices. Recognizing the urgency of the space debris problem, President Barack Obama issued a statement revising United States space policy with specific emphasis on the preservation of the orbital environment in keeping with the spirit of the IADC guidelines as well as previous international agreements.59 Congress has likewise taken initiative and incorporated the principles of the IADC guidelines and the new executive policy into its latest authorizing statute for NASA in 2010, and NASA has in turn incorporated the guidelines into its regulations for the governance of its space activities.60
Unfortunately, existing United States law regarding space debris is not comprehensive with respect to all United States space activities. While the United States has taken appreciable steps toward limiting the country's contribution to the orbital debris problem, the guidelines and agency regulations apply primarily to government activities and are silent, inapplicable, or avoidable as to the space activities of the private sector. Consequently, there is no legally binding regulation on the private sector forcing it to reduce its release of certain debris into orbit.
According to the scientists at NASA and the European Space Agency, mitigation is no longer enough to avoid an inevitable cascade effect.219 This is especially an issue for debris in GEO, since debris in GEO will not deorbit on its own.220 Although no cleanup techniques are functional, there are some ideas about how we might remove debris from orbit. One such idea is Orion, a debris removal program that proposes to use lasers to move objects out of orbit.221 Lasers and sensors would "detect, track, and eliminate debris of various sizes by nudging fragments out of orbit to burn up in the earth's atmosphere."222 Another idea is space tethering223 A space tethering technique would deorbit debris by altering its orbital path by using a tether that would attach to the debris and move it, one piece at a time.224
Although the UN COPUOS mitigation guidelines propose viable options for mitigation, the following suggestions should be considered in a binding agreement. First, reducing the number of total objects on a space mission would decrease the number of items that could potentially be dropped in space or left behind as debris.225 Secondly, payloads should be deorbited at the end of their missions, rather than risk that they will stay in orbit for hundreds or thousands ofyears.226
In 2008, the General Assembly adopted the mitigation measures by resolution.214 The biggest issue, still, is that the mitigation measures are nonbinding and do not require or compel uniform practices by the world's spacefaring nations.215 In effect, the UN COPUOS mitigation measures do nothing to keep the space debris problem from216 worsening. At best, the measures provoke international thought on the topic, encouraging spacefaring nations to adopt different approaches in their national space law and policy.217 In recognizing that the current United Nations approach to space debris is still lacking, the General Assembly directed the UN COPUOS Legal Subcommittee to reconvene its working group in charge of looking at current United Nations treaties as they apply to space debris, and determining whether a new treaty directly addressing space debris is needed.218
The future of spaceflight is in jeopardy unless immediate action to mitigate and clean up space debris is taken. A study by NASA scientists in 2006 predicted that even if all satellite launches ceased after 2005, there would still be three times more debris larger than ten centimeters and ten times more collisions in Earth's orbit in the next 200 years. The situation is certain to be much worse than this, however, as satellite launches have not ceased, and more and more countries are aspiring to implement their own space programs. A 2008 report to the United Nations predicted that the tipping point for space debris in Earth's orbit could potentially occur within the next ten to fifty years. Such a bleak outlook requires immediate attention in order to preserve access to space.
Even more than on these well-known elements of a credible deterrent strategy, the prevention of space conflict may depend on the recognition of mutual vulnerability in space, and the internalization of a sense of shared interest in avoiding worst-case outcomes. While there are obvious similarities to the nuclear sphere, the situation with regard to the space environment is complicated by several factors.
First, the consequences of a kinetic exchange in space are not very well understood, and the proposition that catastrophic damage to orbital infrastructures would be the most likely outcome of such an exchange is not universally accepted. Consequently, the exact degree of vulnerability and the likely ramifications of a military clash remain a matter of debate. While few analysts would deny that unrestrained space warfare would entail serious collateral damage, the ‘crystal ball effect’ that is associated with nuclear weapons is not nearly as clear-cut with regard to space warfare. This raises the possibility that some decision-makers may calculate that the political aftershocks and economic costs of waging war in space will be commensurate with the advantages gained by crossing this threshold. The total absence or very low number of human casualties constitutes another fundamental difference between nuclear and space warfare, and may serve to underline such considerations.
Secondly, the availability of non-kinetic options and the possibility, at least in some scenarios and with some proposed technologies, of achieving kinetic effects while keeping environmental damage to a minimum would lower the initial threshold for attacks against space systems even further. While a space conflict, once joined, may still spiral out of control, resulting in massive damage to civil and well as military infrastructures, initial military steps may not suggest that such an outcome is likely. This would also tend to undermine any shared perceptions of vulnerability.
Finally, future technological developments may increase the actors’ ability to reconstitute the space environment by removing some (though certainly not all) debris, increasing the robustness of space systems, or rendering them more easily replaceable. Such developments would also tend to make kinetic attacks a more palatable option. In addition, some types of debris removal capabilities may also have an inherent dual-use ASAT potential. The introduction of spacebased strike weapons for use against terrestrial targets, which also remains a possibility, would add a further layer of complications.
While the case for mutual vulnerability in space can be overstated, none of the factors cited above change the fundamental fact that the human presence in space is comparatively fragile and will continue to be vulnerable to disruption as a result of military conflict. All of them, however, might make it more difficult to avoid such conflict in the long run. Overall, then, despite some striking similarities, deterrence relationships based on mutual vulnerability are bound to be significantly less robust in space than is the case in the nuclear field.
From a Chinese perspective, space warfare is perceived as a critical element of a ‘counter-intervention’ or peripheral defense strategy designed to deny US military forces access to China’s immediate maritime environment in event of a conflict over Taiwan or other vital Chinese interests. Given the PLA’s sustained investment in this strategy, the creation of such an exclusion zone is now no longer an idle threat, even though serious deficits are thought to persist in areas including joint operations and operational command and control. Chinese planners view US space assets as important enablers of US military superiority, and being both vital and vulnerable, they are seen as highly attractive and, indeed, natural targets for any serious anti-access strategy.
As a result, the PLA is preparing to target US satellites at the outset of a conflict to partially equalize what is still a seriously skewed balance of military power in the Asia-Pacific region. One must assume that PLA planners are aware of the escalatory implications of any such move, but it appears that this has not led them to rule out such a course of action, which could provide substantial advantages once war initiation is perceived as inevitable. It is, however, likely that the PLA would seek to keep the use of kinetic weaponry to an unavoidable minimum, to forestall unnecessary escalation as well as excessive international opprobrium, and perhaps to retain this most extreme option as part of a strategy of intra-war deterrence. This is particularly likely as non-kinetic alternatives including electronic attacks, cyber-attacks, and reversible laser or microwave attacks may be available in many cases. One can also expect that Chinese reluctance to escalate immediately to a kinetic exchange would increase further as the PLA itself becomes more dependent on space-based services as well.
It is much less clear, however, that artificial ‘firebreaks’ instituted and tacitly or explicitly communicated at the outset of a conflict would hold as US and Chinese forces engage in high-intensity, conventional exchanges, suffering grievous losses and progressive disruption of essential services and capabilities. It is also unclear whether space systems employed in support of conventional forces can be distinguished from systems that are entangled in the strategic nuclear deterrent with sufficient clarity to avoid, at a minimum, the impression of a coordinated and sustained attack on the opponent’s nuclear forces. In some cases, including infrared sensors deployed for early warning, which would likely also be employed to locate conventional missile batteries, this would be next to impossible. Overall, even a Chinese strategy of highly selective space warfare could trigger escalation to the nuclear level.
The Russian Federation is also reportedly engaging in a variety of space warfare activities, driven in large part by US insistence on a continental missile defense system, which Moscow perceives as a potential threat to its nuclear deterrent, as well as by Chinese and US ASAT testing. The most recent example of such activities is what may amount to a reactivation of the co-orbital attack programs that constituted the backbone of Soviet space warfare during the Cold War. According to media reports, a satellite launched in May 2014 and known as Cosmos-2499 has been engaging in unusual approach maneuvers that may constitute a series of ASAT-related tests. Russia has also maintained and recently updated the ground-based sensors that used to support its coorbital attack programs. In addition to its traditional focus on co-orbital attack, Russia may be reviving its airlaunched Kontakt system as well as an airborne laser that could be employed to temporarily dazzle, and perhaps even permanently disable, satellites in low Earth orbit. Russia is also a leading manufacturer of GPS jammers, which it has exported to various countries.
The US, meanwhile, is not known to be operating or developing dedicated anti-satellite weapons, which is explained in part by the much lower dependence on space-based services of even the most capable among its potential opponents. The US military does, however, field several types of missile defense interceptors, some of which are inherently dual-use capable, as was successfully demonstrated in Operation Burnt Frost. Its ballistic missile defense (BMD) programs thus provide the US with what is probably the most extensive and most widely distributed ASAT potential among the great powers. However, the reach of this arsenal is currently limited to low Earth orbits. Moreover, while the BMD and antisatellite missions are fundamentally very similar, and satellites are much less operationally demanding targets, substantial technical modifications are nonetheless required to realize the latent ASAT potential of these systems. It is therefore fair to say that the US does not routinely field space weapons as part of its global defense strategy.
As the unrivalled military and economic predominance of the US, which has been the hallmark of the post-Cold War era, begins to wane, geopolitical competition with China in the Asia-Pacific and with Russia in Eurasia is inaugurating a new era of rivalry in an increasingly multipolar global system. Intermittent tensions in the East and South China Seas, which from a US perspective largely amount to confrontations by proxy over the future regional order, and the acute crisis in NATO-Russia relations over Ukraine are but the most visible crystallization points of these growing fault lines in great power relations. As scenarios of conventional or ‘hybrid’ interstate warfare begin to reshape the horizon of military planning, these rivalries are also increasingly finding their expression in outer space. But the strategic conditions under which the next round of militarized interaction in space will take place differ very considerably from those of the Cold War competition, and in ways that indicate a much greater potential for conflict escalation.