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Comment by InclinedPlane | Hacker News Reader

Space is already militarized today. It has been for 6 decades. Firstly, every ICBM arsenal on Earth is implicitly militarizing space, all of those missiles will fly through space if and when they are launched on some (hopefully purely hypothetical) future doomsday. Secondly, anti-satellite weaponry has been developed, tested full-up (on orbit), and deployed since the 1950s. By the Soviets, by the US, by the Chinese, and others. The Soviet Almaz manned space stations, for example, were military purposed and armed with a 23mm automatic cannon. Thirdly, modern warfare is highly dependent on space borne assets: communications, intelligence gathering, and global positioning, without such assets warfighters would be significantly diminished in capability.

No direct, on orbit hostilities have occurred, yet, but that's the barest scrap of pretension keeping space from being declared officially militarized.

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There's a difference between militarization and weaponization. As noted, space has been militarized for a long time. There's a crap load of military equipment floating up there. "True" weaponization of space would be putting orbital to surface or orbital-orbitcal weapon systems in orbit. You know, death lasers, nukes, KEMs, sat-killer sats, whatever.

People want to keep the weaponization down for two reasons. The first is more or less idealism. It would sure be nice not to fuck up everyplace we go with our nation-state rivalries. The second is because orbital weapons is just a huge game changer. You put a sat with a bunch of KEMs on an orbit that just happens to pass right over Beijing or Washington, or Moscow? Cost/energy effectiveness aside, the warning time for such a strike would be tiny (far less than sub launched nukes). Does the government just go nuts everytime the sat comes over the horizon?

Yeah, not pretty.

> "True" weaponization of space would be putting orbital to surface or orbital-orbitcal weapon systems in orbit.

Both have been going on for a long time. Russia has satellites in high orbit that carry nukes. Russia's very first step in WWIII, would be to detonate those nukes to create a huge EMP that would fry every unprotected electronic device in North America. It will also severely cripple the communication infrastructure. It will also be the first step because it can some without warning, as it only takes a couple of minutes to take effect. ICBMs will be launched simultaneously or right after the EMP attack. ICMBs can take up to half an hour to an hour to reach their targets.

> Russia has satellites in high orbit that carry nukes.

What? There is a treaty outlawing this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_weapon#Orbital_weaponry

The nature of the weapon is such that when deployed, treaties won't matter much after that. Before that, it is hard to check what each satellite has on-board.

Also, EMP waves are not designed to kill people, so I am not sure what they classification as far as any treaties are concerned.

The level to which our infrastructure is vulnerable to EMP has dramatically increased since the 60s. That means, there is a much larger incentives to deploy such weapons now.

You've been watching too many movies.

I don't think ICBM arsenal is militarizing space just because it will fly trough it. And placing nuclear or any WMD in space is prohibited by Outer Space Treaty.

China and US has shot down their own satellites though.

As it turns out, placing nuclear weapons in space is disadvantageous, aside from the prohibitions of the OST. It significantly limits the targets, in space or on Earth, that weapons are capable of hitting.

As to whether ICBM arsenals are militarizing space, I think you would have a different opinion if we were to change contexts. Airplanes are air craft, boats are sea craft, and ICBMs are space craft. That all these vessels begin and end their travels on land, in port, or on the Earth doesn't change their fundamental natures. If the major powers of the world all had massive navies which they almost always kept in port except for occasional training missions we would not be pretending that the oceans were unmilitarized.

> As it turns out, placing nuclear weapons in space is disadvantageous ... It significantly limits the targets, in space or on Earth, that weapons are capable of hitting.

That is only true if you think of traditional applications. There are other uses of nuclear weapons in space, one of which is to create massive EMP attacks. It will only take a couple of Russian satellites in high orbit over the North American continent to fry most of unprotected electronic devices on it. That type of attack will be very hard to prevent and warn against. It is also very effective as it is very disruptive -- imagine most vehicles, radios, cell phones, planes, power plants, water treatment plants being rendered inoperable. Basically if you see this happening, start heading for the closest nuclear bunker.

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