Space Weaponization – 4 Week



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2007 ASAT Test



China’s ASATS can target our satellites at all altitudes

Forden 07 (Geoffrey, "After China's Test: Time For a Limited Ban on Anti-Satellite Weapons." Arms Control Today. Vol. 37, No. 3, April 2007, http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2007_04/Forden)

Contrary to some analysts' assertions, China would then likely have an ASAT system capable of threatening all U.S. space assets, not just those in low-Earth orbit. China has already mastered the techniques of placing satellites in medium and higher orbits: first placing the satellite and its booster's third stage into low-Earth orbit, then using the third stage to boost the satellite into a highly elliptical transfer orbit, and finally using the satellite's onboard engine to place it in a higher-altitude circular orbit. An ASAT attack against a navigational satellite or higher communications satellites would almost certainly involve the first two steps. At higher altitudes, moreover, the final attack is easier because at these altitudes satellites need to move less quickly to stay in orbit because of the Earth's weakening gravitational field. Likewise, an ASAT weapon does not need to approach its target satellite with as great a closing speed (information graphic available in the print edition). Thus, an attack on a geostationary satellite would be considerably less stressing for an ASAT weapon's tracking, guidance, and control systems than the scenario already successfully tested by China's ASAT system.

***Inevitability




Yes Inevitable



Weaponization of space is inevitable – technological advancement and rivalry

Huntley et al. 10 – Senior Lecturer at Naval Postgraduate School Director, Simons Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Research at Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, Associate Professor at Hiroshima Peace Research Institute, Hiroshima City University; Director, Global Peace and Security Program at Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, (Wade L. Huntley, Joseph G. Bock, and Miranda Weingartner “Planning the Unplannable: Scenarios on the future of space,” February 2010, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026596460900126X) MH
Behind these concerns, however, has been a consistent presumption that the increasing militarization of space and the ever-present potential for space-related combat are an inevitable result of natural historical progression. For example, the US Space Command's widely-circulated 1998 “Vision for 2020” anticipated that space would eventually “evolve into a separate and equal medium of warfare” and outlined requisite US preparations for that inevitability.9 The subsequent and more notorious report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, chaired by soon-to-be US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, viewed the eventual extension of warfare into space a “virtual certainty”, famously warning of an impending “Space Pearl Harbor”, and recommended that the USA “vigorously pursue” full-scale capabilities for space weapons deployment. The Obama administration seems set to take US space policy in different directions, but reflecting convergent concerns. As a candidate, the future president explicitly opposed “the stationing of weapons in space and the development of anti-satellite weapons” but simultaneously recognized the need “to protect [US] assets in space” and supported programs “to make US systems more robust and less vulnerable.”11 Shortly after his inauguration, President Obama reaffirmed this position by declaring his intention to seek a ban on space weapons; but White House policy emphasized barring weapons that could interfere with US satellites, thereby linking the policy directly to securing US space-based capabilities.12 The new directions of the present administration encourage long-standing advocates of more multilateral approaches to space security challenges. However, these directions are ambivalent on the deeper presumption of the inevitability of space-based conflict, if not weaponization. Recent interest among US military strategists in the prerequisites for establishing and maintaining “space deterrence”13 reflect continuity in this vein of thinking. Notably, many supporters of establishing treaty-based control of future military-related space activities share the judgment that technological advancement is creating genuine security implications rendering existing space regulation increasingly insufficient, and encouraging the expectation that, absent stronger controls, weaponization may indeed be inevitable. Here also, China's ASAT-testing satellite shoot-down has been taken as a demonstration of these conclusions.16 Whereas space nationalists and space globalists differ markedly on prescriptions, the underlying diagnoses of contemporary forces and prospects are more convergent. The “realism” of the appeal among lesser-powered states of treaty-based regime solutions to space weaponization concerns underscores the observation, noted above, that “great” and “lesser” powers share a similar diagnosis of the underlying space security condition: namely, that inevitable technological advancement combined with the anarchic rivalry of states will, in the absence of restraint, lead ineluctably to the weaponization of space. These outlooks vary less on the nature of the political forces driving current circumstances than on the possibility and desirability of containing those forces. Hence, the alternative to weaponization is sometimes presented as the preservation of space as a peaceful “sanctuary”, holding at bay the terrestrial pressures that would otherwise invade the pristine space environment.19 Among other things, such visions can explore how alternative futures in space are intimately linked to terrestrial conditions. As the human presence in space develops into an integral aspect of global life, it will increasingly reflect the prevailing conditions of global life. Anticipation of space weaponization premises continued earthly insecurity and conflict, while ambitions for growing commercial and exploratory development of space presume increasing international integration and collaboration. A future in which space becomes a domain of conflict and arms race competition may be irreconcilable with visions for increasing peaceful human presence embodied in today's growing commercial and exploratory activities. Choices among alternative futures for the human presence in space may depend upon choices among alternative futures for life on Earth as well.
Space weaponization inevitable – human nature

Smith 1 – researcher at the School of Advanced Air Power Studies

M.V. SMITH, TEN PROPOSITIONS REGARdING SPACEPOWER, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/saas/smith.pdf



At the turn of the twenty-first century, we do not have experience fighting wars in, from, and through space, in the classic sense. Therefore, many people view military space activities as merely an avenue to support the information needs of terrestrial forces. While this is certainly important, spacepower is much more than support, as the propositions point out. While the propositions are rooted in space experience to date, it is proper to use analogies to other forms of power to predict, within reason, certain ways spacepower is likely to evolve. The case in point is the last proposition, that the weaponization of space is inevitable. Support for this proposition comes from the historical evidence that shows that humans have always weaponized the different media. Therefore, it is reasonable to predict that weaponizing space will also occur.
Space weapons are inevitable – too many countries are in space

Myers 8 – reporter for the New York Times (March 9, 2008, Steven Lee Myers “Look Out Below. The Arms Race in Space May Be On,” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/weekinreview/09myers.html)
It doesn’t take much imagination to realize how badly war in space could unfold. An enemy — say, China in a confrontation over Taiwan, or Iran staring down America over the Iranian nuclear program — could knock out the American satellite system in a barrage of antisatellite weapons, instantly paralyzing American troops, planes and ships around the world. Space itself could be polluted for decades to come, rendered unusable. The global economic system would probably collapse, along with air travel and communications. Your cellphone wouldn’t work. Nor would your A.T.M. and that dashboard navigational gizmo you got for Christmas. And preventing an accidental nuclear exchange could become much more difficult. “The fallout, if you will, could be tremendous,” said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington. The consequences of war in space are in fact so cataclysmic that arms control advocates like Mr. Kimball would like simply to prohibit the use of weapons beyond the earth’s atmosphere. But it may already be too late for that. In the weeks since an American rocket slammed into an out-of-control satellite over the Pacific Ocean, officials and experts have made it clear that the United States, for better or worse, is already committed to having the capacity to wage war in space. And that, it seems likely, will prompt others to keep pace. What makes people want to ban war in space is exactly what keeps the Pentagon’s war planners busy preparing for it: The United States has become so dependent on space that it has become the country’s Achilles’ heel. “Our adversaries understand our dependence upon space-based capabilities,” Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, commander of the United States Strategic Command, wrote in Congressional testimony on Feb. 27, “and we must be ready to detect, track, characterize, attribute, predict and respond to any threat to our space infrastructure.” Whatever Pentagon assurances there have been to the contrary, the destruction of a satellite more than 130 miles above the Pacific Ocean a week earlier, on Feb. 20, was an extraordinary display of what General Chilton had in mind — a capacity that the Pentagon under President Bush has tenaciously sought to protect and enlarge. Is war in space inevitable? The idea or such a war has been around since Sputnik, but for most of the cold war it remained safely within the realm of science fiction and the carefully proscribed American-Soviet arms race. That is changing. A dozen countries now can reach space with satellites — and, therefore, with weapons. China strutted its stuff in January 2007 by shooting down one of its own weather satellites 530 miles above the planet. “The first era of the space age was one of experimentation and discovery,” a Congressional commission reported just before President Bush took office in 2001. “We are now on the threshold of a new era of the space age, devoted to mastering operations in space.” One of the authors of that report was Mr. Bush’s first defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and the policy it recommended became a tenet of American policy: The United States should develop “new military capabilities for operation to, from, in and through space.”



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