Space Assurance or Space Weapons?

Michael Krepon

The United States has an important choice to make on whether to pursue space assurance or space weapons. Space weapons are defined here as devices designed and flight-tested to disrupt, impair, or destroy objects in or from space. Flight-testing and deployment of these weapons would surely prompt low-cost, low-tech countermeasures in the form of space mines and other anti-satellite (ASAT) devices. A situation in which satellites orbiting the earth are interspersed with objects designed to destroy or disable them is inherently destabilizing, given the vulnerability of satellites and the ease with which they could be harmed. Potential adversaries in space would be faced with the dilemma of shooting first or risking the loss of critical satellites. The quest to secure dominion over space could therefore elevate into the heavens the hair-trigger postures that plagued U.S. and Soviet officials during the Cold War. The use of space weapons would be an historic first, and could have catalytic effects in space as well as on the ground. Satellites now provide essential operational support, communications, early warning, and intelligence functions to the U.S. government and military. These assets would be placed at risk if other states develop and deploy space weaponry. Space warfare would therefore complicate, rather than reinforce, U.S. military operations. Consequently, if space were weaponized, U.S. armed forces would likely suffer greater casualties and the conduct of war would become less precise and more punishing for noncombatants as well as combatants. Michael Krepon is Founding President of the Henry L. Stimson Center and author of Cooperative Threat Reduction, Missile Defense and the Nuclear Future (New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and Space Assurance or Space Dominance? The Case Against Weaponizing Space (Washington, D.C.: The Henry L. Stimson Center, 2003).

Michael Krepon is Founding President of the Henry L. Stimson Center and author of Cooperative Threat Reduction, Missile Defense and the Nuclear Future (New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and Space Assurance or Space Dominance? The Case Against Weaponizing Space (Washington, D.C.: The Henry L. Stimson Center, 2003).