Militarisation of space

• 1. Introduction

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  Militarisation of space did not begin with science fiction. It began in 1957, when the Soviet Union placed Sputnik 1 in orbit and every military planner on Earth had to reckon with a new fact: the sky above the atmosphere was now a battlefield. The question that followed was not whether nations would put weapons there, but how far they would go.

  What emerged over the following decades was a parallel arms race running quietly alongside the one conducted on the ground. Nuclear bombs detonated above the atmosphere. Satellites designed to blind other satellites. A Soviet space station fitted with a cannon. An American president proposing a missile shield in orbit that his critics immediately nicknamed after a movie franchise. And underpinning all of it, a web of treaties that governments signed, argued over, and in some cases ignored.

  The known deployments of weapons actually stationed in space remain few: the Almaz space-station armament and survival pistols such as the TP-82, carried by cosmonauts for protection against wild animals after off-course landings. But the infrastructure built around those sparse facts is vast. How did a civilian space programme become so thoroughly shaped by military ambition? That is the story this documentary will follow.

• 2. The Bomb Above the Atmosphere

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  Operation Hardtack I, a series of nuclear tests conducted by the United States in 1958, included three shots specifically aimed at the upper atmosphere: YUCCA, ORANGE, and TEAK. YUCCA was detonated on the 28th of April at an altitude of 86,000 feet, with a yield of 1.7 kilotons, and it earned a footnote in history as the first nuclear test delivered by balloon. ORANGE and TEAK followed on the 31st of July and the 11th of August, launched by rocket to altitudes of 252,000 and 141,000 feet respectively, with yields in the megaton range.

  Four years later, the United States pushed higher still. Starfish Prime, part of Operation Fishbowl, detonated a 1.4-megaton bomb at 400 kilometres above Johnston Atoll in 1962, making it the highest-altitude nuclear test ever carried out. The explosion itself was not what alarmed scientists most. What alarmed them was what happened 1,400 kilometres away in Hawaii, where roughly 300 streetlights went dark almost immediately, knocked out by the electromagnetic pulse that radiated from the blast.

  The Soviet Union was conducting parallel research. Their 1962 Nuclear Test 184, detonated at 290 kilometres altitude, damaged a power line stretching 1,000 kilometres across Kazakhstan, a line that had been specifically designed to withstand such disturbances. Within 500 kilometres of the test, all telephone lines were damaged. Scientists came to understand that a nuclear weapon detonated at 400 kilometres generates an electromagnetic pulse with a radius of 2,200 kilometres, large enough to cover the continental United States. Even a device exploded at just 30 kilometres altitude produces a pulse at least 600 kilometres across.

  The Limited Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1963 by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, finally ended this category of experiment. It banned atmospheric and underwater tests, and with those prohibitions gone, so too did the high-altitude nuclear programme.

• 3. Shields and Countermeasures

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  Nike-Zeus, Project Defender, the Sentinel Program, the Safeguard Program: the succession of American anti-ballistic missile efforts reads like a catalogue of near-misses. The Nike-Zeus programme, active in the late 1950s, proposed firing nuclear-tipped missiles into the path of incoming Soviet ICBMs over the North Pole. The appeal was obvious; the problems were severe enough that work pivoted to Project Defender in 1958, which tried instead to destroy Soviet missiles at launch using weapons platforms orbiting directly over Russia. That too proved beyond the technology of the era.

  The Sentinel Program replaced it, using ground-based anti-ballistic missiles to intercept incoming warheads. That eventually became the Safeguard Program, deployed in the mid-1970s. The Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex was built near Nekoma, North Dakota, chosen to protect the Grand Forks ICBM field, because the ABM treaty of 1972 permitted only a single such facility. The facility was operational as an ABM site for less than a year. One component, the Perimeter Acquisition Radar, was still running as of 2005.

  The core problem these programmes never solved was that their interceptor missiles carried nuclear warheads of their own. To stop a nuclear attack, the United States would have had to detonate nuclear weapons over its own territory. Future interceptors, planners hoped, would use conventional hit-to-kill warheads precise enough to destroy an incoming warhead by direct impact.

  In 1983, President Ronald Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, a space-based system intended to protect the United States from strategic nuclear attack. Astronomer Carl Sagan offered a concise critique: the Soviet Union could defeat it simply by building more missiles than the system could intercept. SDI's supporters answered that forcing Communist leaders to spend large portions of their GDP competing with the initiative would hasten the Soviet Union's economic collapse. Dr. Carol Rosin gave the programme its lasting public name, borrowing it from the science-fiction franchise that had opened in cinemas six years earlier: Star Wars.

• 4. Soviet Platforms and Orbital Weapons

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  While the United States debated missile shields, the Soviet Union pursued the problem from a different angle. The R-36ORB, a Soviet ICBM developed in the 1960s, was designed to enter low Earth orbit before de-orbiting toward its target. Its approach route ran over the South Pole, placing it outside the field of orientation of NORAD's early-warning systems, which faced the opposite direction. The system was phased out in January 1983, when the SALT II treaty required its retirement.

  A more ambitious project followed. On the 15th of May 1987, the Energia rocket flew for the first time, carrying as its payload a prototype orbital weapons platform called Polyus, also known as Polus, Skif-DM, and 17F19DM. Reports suggested the final version could be armed with nuclear space mines and defensive cannon. The platform was designed to protect itself against anti-satellite weapons using a recoilless cannon, blind approaching threats with a sensor-jamming laser, and launch test targets to verify its own fire-control systems. The attempt to place Polyus into orbit failed.

  Also notable was the Soviet space station Salyut 3, which was fitted with a 23mm cannon. The weapon was successfully test-fired at target satellites at ranges between 500 and 3,000 metres.

  The Soviet high-altitude nuclear tests also contributed to weapons research. The damage caused by the 1962 test to the Kazakhstan power line was described as comparable to the strongest naturally occurring geomagnetic disturbances on record, giving Soviet military planners a vivid demonstration of what a High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse could do to critical infrastructure over a very wide area.

• 5. Satellites as Military Infrastructure

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  Reconnaissance satellites changed the nature of military intelligence. By the end of the 1960s, both the United States and the Soviet Union were deploying them regularly. The resolution of orbital photography grew sharp enough over time to alarm both sides of the Iron Curtain, and both nations began developing anti-satellite weapons in response. Spy satellites also took on a formal diplomatic role: treaties between the superpowers designated their use for monitoring compliance with arms control agreements, a practice described in those documents as "national technical means of verification".

  After the Cold War, the functions of military satellites expanded. Imagery intelligence, known as IMINT, and signals interception, known as SIGINT, became routine. Early-warning satellites tracked missile launches and located nuclear detonations. This capability was demonstrated during Desert Storm, when the United States used early-warning data to alert Israel to Iraqi SS-1 SCUD missile launches in time to take defensive action. A satellite of the Vela type was also reported to have detected what was believed to be a South African nuclear test in the Indian Ocean in 1978, in what became known as the Vela incident. In 1998, satellites tracked nuclear tests conducted by both India and Pakistan.

  The Global Positioning System, designed and controlled by the United States Department of Defense, eventually became the most widely used piece of military space infrastructure in history. The first satellite of the current Block II constellation entered orbit on the 14th of February 1989. The 52nd GPS satellite since the programme's beginning in 1978 launched on the 6th of November 2004 aboard a Delta II rocket. The constellation requires at least 24 satellites in intermediate circular orbit. Maintaining the system costs approximately 400 million US dollars per year. Military uses include guiding smart bombs and cruise missiles, and the satellites also carry nuclear detonation detectors forming part of the United States Nuclear Detonation Detection System.

  Concern among European governments about American control over GPS produced plans for the Galileo positioning system. Russia operates its own independent network, GLONASS, using 24 satellites arranged in three orbital planes. China's Beidou system provides regional navigation coverage.

• 6. Space Warfare and Anti-Satellite Tests

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  A film produced by the United States military in the early 1960s, called Space and National Security, depicted combat in orbit at a moment when the concept was entirely theoretical. By the mid-1980s, it was no longer theoretical. A US Air Force pilot in an F-15 successfully shot down the P78-1, a communications satellite orbiting at 345 miles, making it one of the first genuine tests of an anti-satellite weapon against a real target in orbit.

  The incidents that followed came decades apart and from different nations. In 2007, China destroyed one of its own obsolete satellites using a missile system. The United States destroyed its malfunctioning satellite USA 193 in 2008. India destroyed a live satellite in 2019. On the 15th of November 2021, the Russian military used a ground-based missile to destroy Kosmos 1408, an old Soviet satellite. As of the time the source was written, no human casualties had resulted from conflict in space, and no ground target had been successfully neutralised from orbit.

  United States Space Command was created in 1985 to coordinate military space operations, with its commander headquartered at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. The command demonstrated its value during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. On the 26th of June 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that Space Command would merge with USSTRATCOM, a consolidation driven partly by a requirement that the total number of Unified Combatant Commands not exceed ten. On the 10th of December 2019, the United States Space Force was established as the world's only independent space force, with 8,600 military personnel and 77 spacecraft. Russia's own Space Forces, established on the 10th of August 1992, had the earlier claim to independence, though the force was dissolved into the Strategic Rocket Forces in July 1997 and revived on the 1st of June 2001 before eventually becoming part of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

• 7. Treaties and the Limits of Agreement

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  The Outer Space Treaty had its origins in the Legal Subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in 1966. Agreement was reached in the UN General Assembly later that year, and the treaty entered into effect on the 10th of October 1967, signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. As of the 1st of January 2005-98 states had ratified it and an additional 27 had signed. The treaty prohibits placing nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in Earth orbit, on the Moon, or on any other celestial body. It does not ban weapons in space generally, only those categories.

  The Moon Treaty, which was signed by some states but not ratified by any space-capable nation, went further, banning all military use of celestial bodies, including weapon testing and military bases. Its lack of ratification by any nation capable of reaching the Moon means its practical effect remains limited.

  In February 2008, China and Russia jointly submitted a draft treaty to the UN, the Treaty on Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space and of the Threat or Use of Force against Outer Space Objects. The United States opposed it, citing concerns about its space assets, despite the draft's explicit inclusion of a state's right to self-defence.

  On the 4th of December 2014, the UN General Assembly passed two resolutions on preventing an arms race in outer space. The first, calling on all states to contribute to the peaceful use of space, passed 178 nations in favour to none against, with two abstentions: Israel and the United States. The second, on preventing the first placement of weapons in space, passed 126 in favour to 4 against, with 46 abstentions. The four nations voting against were Georgia, Israel, Ukraine, and the United States. EU member states abstained. The gap between a 178-0 vote and a 126-4 vote on two resolutions addressing the same underlying question captures something essential about where international agreement on space weapons actually stands.