When you hear the phrase “space war,” it is easy to conjure images that could have come from a Star Wars movie: dogfights in space, motherships blasting into warp speed, planet-killing lasers and astronauts with ray guns. It is also just as easy to then dismiss the whole thing as nonsense.
That is why last month’s call by US President Donald Trump for a US “space force,” which he helpfully explained was similar to the air force but for err ... space, was met with a tired eye-roll from most. However, there is truth behind his words. While the Star Wars-esque scenario for what a space war would look like is indeed far-fetched, there is one thing that all the experts agree on.
“It is absolutely inevitable that we will see conflict move into space,” said Michael Schmitt, professor of public international law and a space war expert at University of Exeter in the UK.
Illustration: Mountain people
Space has been eyed up as a military asset almost since the beginning of the space race. During the Cold War, Russia and the US imagined many kinds of space weapon. One in particular was called the Rods from God, or the kinetic bombardment weapon. It was a kind of unmanned space bomber that carried tungsten rods to drop on unsuspecting enemies.
As they fell from orbit, the rods gathered so much speed that they delivered the explosive power of a nuclear bomb, but without the radioactive fallout.
However, such systems are hideously expensive, probably outlawed by international treaties and the satellites that carry them are easy targets to shoot down.
What has prompted this latest interest in space war is that the means by which one country can attack another in space have changed dramatically.
These days, a frontline space war soldier is most likely to be a state-sponsored hacker sitting at a computer terminal sending rogue commands to confuse or shut down an enemy’s satellites.
“I am convinced beyond a scintilla of doubt. It’s going to happen,” Schmitt said.
Space war is inevitable because today’s modern militaries use space for everything, from spy satellites to a soldier on a mountaintop using satellite navigation to figure out exactly where he or she is.
“The reliance upon space is truly extraordinary in contemporary conflict,” Schmitt said.
In any war, one side would seek to deprive the other of their ability to function. In this day and age, that means attacking satellites.
The Russians in May 2014 launched a mysterious satellite that was seen to be maneuvering in orbit. Some thought it was the Russians testing a future space weapon, because such orbital gymnastics are exactly what would be expected from an attack satellite designed to approach another and put it out of operation. Indeed, the Russians have a history of testing such spacecraft.
“The original but larger Russian maneuverable military satellite, Polyot, dates to 1963,” said Brian Harvey, a space analyst and author of The Rebirth of the Russian Space Program.
However, it is not just the Russians.
“The real experts in developing small, maneuverable satellites that change orbits and make multiple interceptions are the Chinese in their Shijian series,” Harvey said.
The Chinese have demonstrated other military space options, too. In 2007, they destroyed one of their own weather satellites using a missile launched from Earth. The FY-1C satellite was at an altitude of 865km and was hit by the missile travelling at 8km per second. The satellite disintegrated into an estimated 150,000 pieces of space debris.
Yet, Schmitt thinks that any conflict in space is unlikely to start with such brutal measures.
“The immediate form would be cyberattacks, either against the satellites or the ground stations that control them. It depends on the nature of the conflict whether you go beyond that,” he said.
Although treaties already exist that say countries can’t put military installations on the moon or weapons of mass destruction into orbit, there is a decidedly gray area.
“Many things can be used for peaceful and military purposes,” European Space Agency (ESA) director-general Jan Worner said.
The Russian and Chinese maneuvering satellites can be taken as an example.
Although Harvey said that these particular tests are probably for military purposes, the ability to rendezvous in space is also an essential technique for China to master to achieve its ambition of bringing back moon rock samples to Earth.
Worner grapples with such duality on a daily basis. The ESA is mandated to pursue only peaceful space exploration and utilization. As part of that, it is developing ways of removing old spacecraft and pieces of space debris from orbit.
However, critics have pointed out that if a piece of technology can track down and grapple a dead satellite out of orbit, it can do the same with a live one — thus becoming a potential weapon.
It is through the creation of space debris that any conflict in orbit would have decidedly earthbound consequences for all humankind.
“Space is different from 50 years ago. Then, it was a race between superpowers; today, it is everything. We all rely on space each and every day,” Worner said.
When we wake up in the morning and look at the weather forecast, when we use satellite navigation to get somewhere that we have never been before, when we listen to the radio or make a mobile phone call, when we buy things online, the chances are that these signals are mediated by satellites in some way.
The debris cloud created by blowing up satellites can easily collide with other satellites, destroying them and triggering a chain reaction that could swiftly surround the Earth with belts of debris. Orbits would become so unnavigable that our access to space would be completely blocked, and the satellites that we rely on could be smashed to smithereens. This nightmare scenario is known as the Kessler Syndrome.
Schmitt is also working to clarify the law. He is part of an international consortium of law, military and space experts who are putting together The Woomera Manual on the International Law of Military Space Operations.
It is an international project that is being sponsored by the University of Exeter, the US’ University of Nebraska, and Australia’s University of Adelaide and University of New South Wales. There are also supporting establishments such as China’ s Xiamen University and the US Naval War College.
“We’re trying to get ahead of the curve. We want to start thinking through the rules of the game before we start playing the game,” Schmitt said. “We did not do that for [cyberwar]. It got ahead of the lawyers and we have been playing catch up ever since.”
However, are rules really that useful in war? Surely, each combatant simply wants to win.
“I’m not naive,” Schmitt said. “You need to be realistic about what the enemy are likely to do, but compliance with the law is a force multiplier. There is a natural inclination to believe that if you play by the rules and the opponent doesn’t, then the opponent has an advantage. But in fact, you have an advantage because if you comply with the law, your coalition is going to stay intact.”
He explains that in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, when the US started to torture prisoners and hold them at so-called “black sites,” even close allies stopped cooperating and refused to share intelligence.
“Although it is counterintuitive, compliance with the law will give you an advantage. I think the same is true in space,” Schmitt said.
Last year, under Schmitt’s direction, the Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare was finally published. The Dutch government now conducts the Hague Process, where it sends teams around the world to teach governments this cyberlaw.
“I would hope that we do this in the space context, so it is not just a book on the shelf,” Schmitt said.
Stuart Clark writes the Guardian’s “Across the Universe” blog.
Where do we go from here? The tools of a future conflict
Missiles
The US, Russia and China have all demonstrated their capability of launching missiles from Earth to intercept and destroy satellites.
The US began a research program to shoot down spacecraft almost as soon as the Russians in 1957 launched the first satellite, Sputnik 1.
Russia also began to think about taking out enemy satellites. In the early 1960s, they tested a system called Istrebitel Sputnik (fighter satellite). It was designed to approach its target and then explode, destroying both satellites.
In the aftermath of the 2007 Chinese anti-satellite test, the US launched its own missile, destroying a failed spy satellite that was gradually falling back to Earth. However, such destructions can cause dangerous clouds of space debris, which endanger other satellites indiscriminately.
Directed energy weapons
In the 1970s, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California worked on Project Excalibur, which aimed to detonate a nuclear weapon in space. Lasers would then focus the resulting X-rays on to as many as 50 incoming missiles at a time to destroy them as they arced through space toward the US and its allies.
However, the project collapsed from lack of progress and funding.
The primary use of lasers is to dazzle spy satellites and stop them from gathering information. China and Iran are reported to have done this to US satellites and it is likely that the West does the same in return.
However, if the laser lingers on the satellite cameras for too long, it could permanently blind the satellite rather than just temporarily dazzle it. The legality of actually damaging a satellite in this way is another gray area.
Hacking satellites
This is probably where the first strike in a space war would take place. There have been a number of satellite hacks reported over the years, including to NASA climate satellites in 2007 and 2008, but no permanent damage was reported.
In a conflict, commands to fire thrusters could set the spacecraft spinning helplessly or move them into useless orbits. A purposely written piece of malicious software in 2009 commanded Iranian nuclear centrifuges to spin too fast, damaging them beyond repair. The same could happen with satellites. Even now, hackers could be working to place artificially intelligent software routines, or logic bombs, inside spacecraft control systems. These could be activated when a certain signal is received or an onboard condition is met.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is looking at safeguarding its satellites by developing quantum encryption techniques for future missions.
Attack satellites
Think of this as the brute force approach. One satellite simply goes up to another, hits it and knocks it out of orbit.
This could damage the attacker as well, so a more sophisticated version is a spacecraft equipped with mechanical arms that grapple the target, pulling off solar panels or instruments.
In other words, it is robots fighting in space.
If that sounds a bit too much like science fiction, think again, University of Exeter professor of public international law Michael Schmitt said.
“I don’t think that it’s science fiction at all. A lot of these programs are highly classified, but people in the [military] business are talking about those kinds of operations,” Schmitt said.
Lieutenant General Robert Ashley Jr, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified before the US Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington on March 6, saying that Russia and China were developing weapons for use in a space war that included such satellites.
It is a sure bet that the US is developing them, too.
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