Space Weapons Myths

1. The United States already has satellite killers, why shouldn’t anyone else?

It’s not just the hard-line Russian commentators or the North Korean press that alleges that US military forces are already armed to the teeth for space warfare: the same explicit assumption often appears in the mainstream Western press as well. Sometimes the argument even goes, “Well, there’s no official acknowledgement of them—that proves they exist in secret” (as if the absence of evidence were transformed into evidence of presence).

But since the 1985 air-launch satellite intercept, a project cancelled by Congress (see “Blunt arrows: the limited utility of ASATs”, The Space Review, June 6, 2005), there is no evidence that a new satellite-killer technology has been developed. Laser tests seem focused on interfering with satellite observation equipment, as well as to determine how to develop US countermeasures against other countries using lasers to interfere with US observation satellites. Non-destructive radio spoofing seems to be the limit of the amount of force—short of setting off a nuclear weapon in space, which would be suicidal—the US is currently prepared to use against space objects.

Lots more.