Militarisation

Militarisation of space

History

This for a long time was the realm of Science Fiction(SciFi)

The Militarization of Space. Do We Really Need a Space Force?

Since then the militarisation of space has been an active concern since the practical demonstration of the German Vengeance 2 rocket(V2) system used in the Second world war against London, England in 1944/5.

After the end of World War 2 the United Nations(UN) was set up to replace the failed 'League of Nations'

The UN Outer Space Treaty (27 January 1967 enforced 10 October 1967)

This treaty main thrust was to just ban 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'(WMD) in Earth orbit, installing them on the Moon or any other celestial body, or otherwise stationing them in outer space and also the testing of such WMD of any kind.

The Main countries that have actively militarised space have been Russia, USA and China.

Europe and Israel also depend strongly on passive space assets such as GPS and spy satellites both in Low Earth Orbit(LEO) and in Geostationary Orbit(GSO)

Current space militarisation

USA, Russia and China have tested satellite kill capability.

Countries using space satellites are the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, China People's Republic of China, India and Israel.

On 18th June 2018 President Donald Trump signed a document to create a sixth arm of the US military called the 'Space Force'

Developments in space warfare

Use of drones using GPS and space based comunication

Hypersonic suborbital strike by missiles

Point to Point rockets systems

War in space

The main concern of space faring nations is their current dependence on military satellites and space planes, particularly the GPS and communication satellites.

Future Space Wars

If war in space was to take place likely targets will be satellites, the big danger here is space debris if a satellite is destroyed in space crashing into any other satellites in the same orbit, this would be particularly devastating to all the Geosynchronous satellites (known as the 'Kessler syndrome') , weather alternative systems that are less vulnerable as those in LEO or GEO is being examined.

Also the other major space war may be over celestial resources as they are becoming more plausible in the near term, this will be political superiority as well as actual resource ownership.

Use of the Moon

The Moon Treaty of 1979 was proposed after the Outer Space Treaty, but failed to be ratified by any major space-faring nation. Thus the 1967 UN treaty explicitly forbids any government to claim a celestial resource such as the Moon is in force, but has been circumnavigated by applying it to private institutions/companies.

This has partially led to a race towards moon and asteroid resource acquirement particularly with the recent advent of cheaper access to space.

This is conjecture:

The Chinese in particular see our Moon as a stepping stone to its plan to dominate human space development and this may be one reason the USA 'Space Force' is being enacted.

Fun videos on our understanding and misconceptions of Space wars

The Physics of Space Battles

The Truth about Space War

Space Warfare