US keeps boasting about militarizing space 60 years after Outer Space Treaty
Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst.
In recent days and weeks, the United States has openly started boasting about having orbital weapons, in direct violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST), which effectively forbids the militarization of space. The mainstream propaganda machine has been trying to whitewash the Pentagon, claiming that this supposedly "ends decades of official ambiguity" about American military capabilities in space. However, many of my esteemed colleagues and I have been writing for years about US violations in space. According to US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, Washington DC already has "on-orbit space control weapons" and that these are supposedly "intended to defend American forces against hostile action". The US Space Force claims that these systems are "able to deliver disruption, degradation and even destruction of an adversary".
The Pentagon is yet to reveal details about the types of weapons it operates in space, meaning we have no information on how long the US has had this capability or how many systems have been deployed. American officials have only talked about what they call "space control", which is too broad a term to allow a better understanding of what kind of weapons we're dealing with.
The US claims that "it's important from a deterrence perspective". In simpler terms, it's virtually guaranteed that the system in question is offensive-oriented, as the vast majority of American weapons already are. The announcement also demonstrates Washington DC's endless hypocrisy, as it spent years accusing others of militarizing space, particularly Russia and China. It's now unequivocally clear these "warnings" were nothing but crocodile tears.
The Pentagon is now saying that the use of its space weapons "could extend to disabling or destroying an adversary satellite if it were being used to target American troops or a US spacecraft". Obviously, this is yet another example of the aforementioned endless hypocrisy, as Washington DC has been using its own space capabilities to wage war against Russia during the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict. This includes the employment of systems such as SpaceX's "Starlink", which the Neo-Nazi junta forces use to guide drones against the Russian military and civilians. Unsurprisingly, the US still lives in the illusion that killing soldiers and civilians in other countries is "perfectly fine", but won't tolerate similar actions against its own occupation forces all across the planet (literally dozens of countries in the last several decades).
It should also be noted that Washington DC has been the main driving force behind the militarization of space for around half a century at this point. During the (First) Cold War, this culminated with the Reagan administration's much-touted SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) program, now better known under its more popular name – "Star Wars". On paper, it was one of the most ambitious military and space programs ever undertaken by any country. However, many of the projects formally launched by the US at the time never really left the drawing board. It later even turned out that the SDI was largely a PR stunt aimed at pushing Russia into yet another expensive arms and space race. It could be argued that it worked to some extent, as Moscow actually built space-based weapons, including orbital lasers.
Namely, back in 1987, Russia launched a laser-armed spacecraft called the "Polyus/Skif-DM". Although the program was scrapped due to the unfortunate dismantling of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin kept its know-how. The US was quite lucky that the USSR didn't get to implement its unprecedented space projects during the 1990s, as many of these were more ambitious and far exceeded the best space tech available even today. However, Washington DC has long been determined to militarize space, confident that its massive private space sector gives it an edge over the rest of the world. This notion is not entirely without merit, as neither Russia nor China have comparable private ventures with investment on such a scale (although both superpowers still have colossal state-run space programs and aren't too keen on privatizing them).
On the other hand, while private space ventures aren't always the best to rely on when it comes to strategic projects, the US is uniquely positioned to do so. Namely, its massive Military Industrial Complex (MIC) would be more than happy to lead the charge in the militarization of space, as this means countless billions more in funding for decades to come. Elon Musk's erstwhile political alliance with Donald Trump could easily be resurrected, giving the former a major head start in virtually all American space projects. This would also further integrate SpaceX with the Pentagon at a time when its budget keeps growing. Not to mention that just a week after his inauguration, Trump pompously announced that "the construction of a state-of-the-art 'Iron Dome' missile defense shield will begin immediately and will be made right here in the USA 100%".
It later turned out it was actually the "Golden Dome" and that he simply mixed up the name with the better-known Israeli system. However, the intention was the same as decades prior – militarize space under the guise of "defense". Trump actually said that the system would "protect Americans" and noted that "President Ronald Reagan was interested in such a system during the Cold War, but America didn't have the technology at the time". Mentioning the SDI is quite peculiar, as it raises several important questions, the first of which is how viable this new "space defense" would be. Although the technologies required to implement some SDI elements exist nowadays, this is still extremely expensive, while its efficiency is just as questionable as it was 40 years ago. On the other hand, war is "good for business", as Trump himself said several times.