Space Weapons Space War

With the recent influx of spaceflight and satellite launches, the region of outer space has become saturated with vital technology used for communication and surveillance and the functioning of business and government. But what would happen if these capabilities were disrupted or even destroyed? How would we react if faced with a full-scale blackout of satellite communications? What can and has happened following the destruction of a satellite? In the short term, the aftermath would send thousands of fragments orbiting Earth as space debris. In the longer term, the ramifications of such an event on Earth and in space would be alarming, to say the least. This book takes a look at such crippling scenarios and how countries around the world might respond in their wake. It describes the aggressive actions that nations could take and the technologies that could be leveraged to gain power and control over assets, as well as to initiate war in the theater of outer space. The ways that a country's vital capabilities could be disarmed in such a setting are investigated. In addition, the book discusses our past and present political climate, including which countries currently have these abilities and who the aggressive players already are. Finally, it addresses promising research and space technology that could be used to protect us from those interested in destroying the world's vital systems.

Weapons in Space examines how the United States is forcing forward—in violation of international treaties—to militarize space. Based on excerpts from U.S. government documents, award-winning investigative journalist Karl Grossman outlines the U.S. military's space doctrine, its similarity with the original Stars Wars scheme of Ronald Reagan and Edward Teller, and the space-based lasers, hypervelocity guns, and particle beams it plans to deploy in its mission to "dominate" earth. Grossman shows the intimate link between the militarization and the nuclearization of space, and follows the flow of billions of U.S. tax dollars to the corporations that research and develop weapons for space. His book explains the Outer Space Treaty and gives a history of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear power in Space: what it is doing, what it plans to do—and what the reader can do to challenge U.S. plans to turn the heavens into a war zone.

This book examines the recent shift in US space policy and the forces that continually draw the US back into a space-technology security dilemma. The dual-use nature of the vast majority of space technology, meaning of value to both civilian and military communities and being unable to differentiate offensive from defensive intent of military hardware, makes space an area particularly ripe for a security dilemma. In contrast to previous administrations, the Obama Administration has pursued a less militaristic space policy, instead employing a strategic restraint approach that stressed multilateral diplomacy to space challenges. The latter required international solutions and the United States, subsequently, even voiced support for an International Code of Conduct for Space. That policy held until the Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) test in 2013, which demonstrated expanded Chinese capabilities. This volume explores the issues arising from evolving space capabilities across the world and the security challenges this poses. It subsequently discusses the complexity of the space environment and argues that all tools of national power must be used, with some degree of balance, toward addressing space challenges and achieving space goals. This book will be of much interest to students of space policy, defence studies, foreign policy, security studies and IR.

This overview aims to inform the public discussion of space-based weapons by examining their characteristics, potential attributes, limitations, legality, and utility. The authors do not argue for or against space weapons, nor do they estimate the potential costs and performance of specific programs, but instead sort through the realities and myths surrounding space weapons in order to ensure that debates and discussions are based on fact.

Describes the reality of today's military space technology, growing military role of Soviet and U.S. space shuttles, spy satellites and anti-satellite weapons and manned space stations.

Considering the probability that alien beings exist elsewhere in the galaxy, an astronomer describes the weapons and stratagems with which future space wars may be fought and identifies potential danger spots within our own galaxy