Five months after the Chinese proved they could destroy a satellite in orbit, U.S. lawmakers are responding with a surge in spending on Pentagon space programs aimed at protecting U.S. satellites. The boost in spending benefits the Operationally Responsive Space program and efforts to modernize the U.S. space surveillance network.
The Defense Department's fiscal 2008 budget request includes just more than $1 billion in programs that could support the development of anti-satellite and space-based weapons capabilities, according to a new analysis from the Center for Defense Information (CDI).
Robert G. Joseph, the U.S. Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the State Department, defends the new U.S. National Space Policy against its critics, arguing that the U.S. has an obligation to defend its space assets and space arms control has empirically proven unworkable.
For a U.S. military increasingly dependent on sophisticated satellites for communicating, gathering intelligence and guiding missiles, the possibility that those space-based systems could come under attack has become a growing worry -- and the perceived need to defend them ever more urgent. And that, in turn, is reviving fears in some quarters that humanity's conflicts could soon spread beyond Earth's boundaries.
The Bush administration asserted on Wednesday its right to use force against hostile nations or terror groups that use military measures to deny U.S. access to space for peaceful purposes.
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A senior U.S. State Department official said Dec. 13 that the United States opposes a ban on weapons in space, citing the threat of nations acquiring ways to attack U.S. space systems.
The administration’s new national space policy, which does not rule out the deployment of weapons in space, is a counterpoint to international efforts to restrict or prohibit such weapons. Nader Elhefnawy examines whether that policy may actually be counterproductive to broader national interests.
New alarms are sounding over signs that China may be developing space weapons, reinforcing suspicions that the People's Liberation Army is increasingly interested in the final frontier as a theater of war.
The new national space policy released last month generated a considerable response, but not necessarily a lot of informed insight. Dwayne Day thoroughly studies the policy, its significance, and its implications.
Much of the media attention that the new space policy did receive focused on assertions that it opens the door for the US to deploy space weapons. James Oberg pierces some of the hype surrounding this issue, from claims that the US is actively developing space weapons to efforts to negotiate treaties to ban them.