Militarisation of space

During the Cold War, the world's two great superpowers—the Soviet Union and the United States of America—spent large proportions of their GDP on developing military technologies.

Spy satellites were, and continue to be, used to monitor the dismantling of military assets in accordance with arms control treaties signed between the two superpowers.

[1] Project Defender attempted to destroy Soviet ICBMs at launch with satellite weapon systems, which orbited over Russia.

In the late 1950s United States Air Force considered detonating an atomic bomb on the Moon to display U.S. superiority to the Soviet Union and the rest of the world (Project A119).

Since the ABM treaty only allowed for construction of a single ABM facility to protect either the nation's capital city or an ICBM field, the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex was constructed near Nekoma, North Dakota to protect the Grand Forks ICBM facility.

One major problem with the Safeguard Program, and past ABM systems, was that the interceptor missiles, though state-of-the-art, required nuclear warheads to destroy incoming ICBMs.

The plan was ridiculed by some as unrealistic and expensive, and Dr. Carol Rosin nicknamed the policy "Star Wars", after the popular science-fiction movie franchise.

[citation needed] Astronomer Carl Sagan pointed out that in order to defeat SDI, the Soviet Union had only to build more missiles, allowing them to overcome the defence by sheer force of numbers.

According to this doctrine, Communist leaders were forced to either shift large portions of their GDP to counter SDI, or else watch as their expensive nuclear stockpiles were rendered obsolete.

[citation needed] The U.S. military has relied on communications, intelligence, navigation, missile warning and weather satellite systems in areas of conflict since the early 1990s, including the Balkans, Southwest Asia and Afghanistan.

As part of the ongoing initiative to transform the U.S. military, on 26 June 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that U.S. Space Command would merge with USSTRATCOM.

[4] Starfish Prime was a nuclear test carried out in 1962 over Johnston Atoll by the United States as part of Operation Fishbowl.

The SALT II treaty (1979) prohibited the deployment of FOBS systems: On May 15, 1987, an Energia rocket flew for the first time.

The payload was a prototype orbital weapons platform Polyus (also known as Polus, Skif-DM or 17F19DM), the final version of which according to some reports could be armed with nuclear space mines and defensive cannon.

It was also equipped with a sensor blinding laser to confuse approaching weapons and could launch test targets to validate the fire control system.

The United States of America was left as the only superpower on Earth with a large concentration of the world's wealth and technological advancement.

Countries such as China, Japan, and India have begun their own space programmes, while the European Union collectively works to create satellite systems to rival those of the United States.

(The word "seems" is used because much of this subject matter is inconclusively verifiable, due to the high level of secrecy that exists among the great powers with regard to the details of space sensing systems.)

The first application is the continuing development of "spy" or reconnaissance satellites which began in the Cold War era, but has progressed significantly since that time.

European concern about the level of control over the GPS network and commercial issues has resulted in the planned Galileo positioning system.

Network-centric warfare relies heavily on the use of high-speed communications, which allows all soldiers and branches of the military to view the battlefield in real-time.

For example, a soldier in the battle zone can access satellite imagery of enemy positions two blocks away, and if necessary e-mail the coordinates to a bomber or weapon platform hovering overhead while the commander, hundreds of miles away, watches as the events unfold on a monitor.

that Soviet officials were concerned that the US Space Shuttle program had such military objectives such as to make a sudden dive into the atmosphere to drop bombs on Moscow.

It is unclear what its military mission is, although speculation ranges from the testing of experimental reconnaissance and spy sensors and how they hold up against radiation and other hazards of orbit.

The Soviet space station Salyut 3 was fitted with a 23mm cannon, which was successfully test fired at target satellites, at ranges from 500 to 3,000 metres (1,600 to 9,800 ft).

As mutually assured destruction (MAD) became the deterrent strategy between the two superpowers in the Cold War, many countries worked together to avoid extending the threat of nuclear weapons to space based launchers.

The treaty was a response to growing concerns over the rapidly increasing power of nuclear weapons as well as damage from radioactive fallout.

On 16 December 2002, US President George W. Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive which outlined a plan to begin deployment of operational ballistic missile defense systems by 2004.

The following day, the US formally requested from the UK and Denmark use of facilities in RAF Fylingdales, England and Thule, Greenland, respectively, as a part of the NMD Program.

The projected cost of the program for the years 2004 to 2009 was 53 billion US dollars, making it the largest single line in The Pentagon's budget.