TrendSpace arms race a step closer

The arms race in space is about the begin — well, not exactly “begin,” but given a major push. Until now, space was used for placing surveillance and communication assets (satellites) or as a corridor for attack on targets on Earth (ballistic missile). No weapon systems were placed in space, however, and space assets were not targeted. The United States looked, with different degrees of interest over the years, into antisatellite (ASAT) warfare, and the physicist Edward Teller advocated using weapons in space as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), better known as Star Wars, launched by President Ronald Reagan in March 1983: Teller believed that laser beams offered the best means of destroying Soviet missiles before they reached the United States, and he proposed a system based on a laser generator placed on top of a missile, and with the laser beam generated by a small nuclear explosion. This particular idea went nowhere, among other things because the very nuclear explosion which would have triggered the laser would likely have destroyed or disabled U.S. satellites in the vicinity (and in space, “vicinity” is measured in thousands of miles).

Time moves on, and now the United States is worried about China’s growing ASAT capabilities. In response, the U.S. Air Force intends to field the first system explicitly designed to help counter anti-satellite missiles and other threats, a goal which has become more urgent since China’s satellite shootdown in 2007. Aviation Week’s Amy Butler writes that the Pentagon is worried about multiple satellites used by the U.S. military to “blink off,” indicating a hostile — possibly kinetic ASAT — campaign against U.S. space assets, says USAF Lt. Gen. Michael Hamel, the director of Space and Missiles Systems Center in Los Angeles, which oversees procurement of Air Force space assets. Even worse is for the Pentagon not to be able to determine the source of the interruption or be able to avoid it. The 2001 Space Commission dubbed this scenario a Pearl Harbor in space.

All of the Pentagon’s war plans are heavily reliant on satellite services, and the economies of the U.S. and its allies also depend on space-based services such as GPS and communications for smooth operation. The Pentagon hopes by 2011 that a new system will provide timely threat warning data, allowing commanders to move a satellite out of an incoming missile’s path. Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) is