In a move that could trigger a perilous space-based arms race, the US on Monday admitted to deploying “on-orbit space control weapons”. While the nature of weapons installed remained classified in the US air force secretary’s announcement, experts warned it could take weapons of mass destruction literally to the next frontier.
The deployment threatens the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by at least 118 countries including India, the US, China and Russia (as part of the erstwhile Soviet Union). It bans WMDs in space and prohibits militarisation of celestial bodies, including building military bases and conducting weapons tests. It, however, does not ban conventional systems or counter-space technologies in low-Earth orbits. But the ‘known unknown’ of the weapons deployed begs the question: how far are we from a nuclear arms race in space?
Several countries have for long been capable of a space arms race. In January 1975, the Soviet Union remotely fired 20 shells from the Salyut-3 space station. China and India have destroyed their own defunct satellites using missiles fired from the ground in 2007 and 2019, respectively. None of this, however, violated the 1967 treaty. China and Russia have also developed space-based capabilities for electronic warfare.
The US deployment is not an overnight decision. In January 2001, the US Space Commission headed by Donald Rumsfeld, then the defence secretary, recommended a space policy to empower the US President with “the option to deploy weapons in space to deter threats to, and, if necessary, defend against attacks on US interests”. The following year, the US’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty allowed it to pursue space-based missile defence. Those early moves culminated in Donald Trump creating the US Space Force in 2019 during his first term as President. So, the US plan to weaponise space has been in the making for at least a quarter century.
Defending mankind from incoming comets, meteors or asteroids using weapons is one thing—a technology tested by the European Space Agency’s 2014 Rosetta mission. But justifying weapons in space by citing threats from unnamed “adversaries” is nothing short of threatening the planet while pursuing narrow national security. Several countries’ move towards commercial mineral extraction in space is also weakening the 1967 treaty’s bar against national appropriation of celestial resources. It’s time to update it keeping mankind’s safety firmly in view.