Updated on June 18, 2018, at 2:00 p.m.:
On June 18, President Donald Trump officially directed the Pentagon to create a "space force," a sixth U.S. military service branch, according to The Hill. Critics says Monday's announcement distracts from other issues the administration is facing like immigration, the Flint water crisis, and Hurricane Maria recovery in Puerto Rico.
Experts previously told Teen Vogue why space conflict could be a focus of increased attention in the future.
Previously...
Experts say a Cold War–style space arms race could be on the horizon. A new report by Politico found the Pentagon is now spending billions more to enhance its military space program, including defenses against weapons designed to knock out satellites — weapons that are being developed by Russia and China. The investment comes after President Donald Trump suggested instituting a “space force,” and it’s not the first time U.S. officials have used concerns about space warfare to funnel money into defense spending.
“We are now approaching a point where Star Wars is not just a movie,” Steve Isakowitz, CEO of the Aerospace Corporation, a government-funded think tank, told Politico. Comparisons of space-age military concerns to the hit film franchise are not new, as Star Wars was famously the nickname of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a program former president Ronald Reagan advocated for in the 1980s.
“During the past decade and a half, the Soviets have built up a massive arsenal of new strategic nuclear weapons — weapons that can strike directly at the United States,” Reagan said in his 1983 address to the nation.
SDI was envisioned as a missile defense system designed to protect the U.S. from nuclear attack during times of heightened tension with the Soviet Union. It was part of Reagan’s push to bolster the military's budget, which had taken a hit following the Vietnam War, but the program was short-lived.
“SDI never got beyond the research state,” John M. Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University, who was the founder and director of the university's Space Policy Institute, told Teen Vogue. “There was no deployment. There was very limited testing.”
Now a new round of concerns about space-based conflict has arisen. Instead of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) attacks, some are now concerned about the vulnerabilities of communications and GPS satellites in space, which are relied on by militaries. The U.S. and Russia took part in testing anti-satellite weapons during the Cold War, but reliance on satellite technology has increased as technology has advanced. In 2007, China performed its first anti-satellite missile test when it shot down one of its own weather satellites. The strike concerned and stunned experts, who saw the display of force as a sign that China could attack U.S. satellites with its sophisticated technology.
“The U.S. has been much more concerned with the things other countries are doing in space that could be a threat to the U.S.,” Brian Weeden, the director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation, told Teen Vogue.
Trump has floated his own idea for a space defense initiative in the form of what he called a “space force." In a March 13 speech, he said that his "new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war-fighting domain just like the land, air, and sea. We may even have a space force — develop another one — space force. We have the Air Force; we’ll have the space force.” He said the space force could serve as its own military branch.
A 2017 congressional proposal put forth a similar idea, arguing that the new military branch would replace the Air Force’s Space Command, which houses the space military operations for the U.S. and has 36,000 employees. The House vote was successful, The Atlantic reported, but military leaders were critical of the idea.
The renewed concerns of a 21st century space arms race have experts chiming on the potential for conflict in orbit.
“The U.S. has become, over the years, totally dependent on its space capabilities to be able to fight and win wars,” Logsdon said. “And those who want to attack the U.S. will want to attack those capabilities.”
The Secure World Foundation, a private group working toward the peaceful use of space held a conference in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law titled “The Weaponization of Outer Space: Ethical and Legal Boundaries.” At the conference, which ran from April 5 to April 7, experts voiced their concerns over what the group is calling a “discernible shift in international rhetoric toward more offensive capabilities in space.”
The shift in rhetoric, along with a lack of transparency around countries building up arms in space, has led experts like Cassandra Steer, the acting executive director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, to tell Politico that the U.S. is on the verge of "a cyclical escalation”; she says some foresee “a conceivable return to a Cold War–type arms race.”
Some experts, like Joan S. Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, question why more money is not being spent on diplomacy along with defense technology.
“I absolutely think the U.S. should stay ahead in tech development, but it should exhibit strategic restraint when it comes to putting these things in operation,” Johnson-Freese, the author of Space Warfare in the 21st Century: Arming the Heavens, told Teen Vogue. “We need to be spending as much time on diplomacy as on finding ways to prevent conflict in space.”
In 2008, Russia and China proposed a “Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects,” but it was voted down by the United Nations' U.S. delegation, which saw it as “a diplomatic ploy by the two nations to gain a military advantage,” according to Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Ploy or not, the 2008 attempt wasn't the first time nations have put forward a treaty to protect space. In 1967, the U.S. along with the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union signed the so-called Outer Space Treaty, which prohibited nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in space and forbid the use of celestial bodies for military purposes.
In recent years, international officials have been working to develop other treaties to prevent the arms race from advancing in space. Some say that as the U.S. continues to build up its space technology, it is only increasing tensions with other nations and turning space into the Wild West without politically enforceable rules.
“It’s a real policy issue of how far we go down the path of preparing for conflict in space,” Logsdon said. Despite international efforts to stop space from becoming a war zone, some experts believe that the militarization of space is practically inevitable. But war is never inevitable as long as there are people dedicated to peace.
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