The higher you are, the further you can see.

Your weapons can reach further.

It’s harder for enemy weapons to reach you.

This is why hills, then walls, then towers, then balloons and later aircraft have proven so dominant throughout the ages.

Now, that high ground is space.

And anyone who can seize and maintain control of that high ground holds the advantage.

What does that mean?

The global communications network made possible by the satellites sitting high above our heads has long since become a part of our everyday lives, economy and governance.

Each of us uses space in some way, every day.

Mobile phones. ATMs. Digital maps. Stream video. Even the synchronisation of traffic lights.

Chances are, at least part of that hook-up is made via satellite.

But few of us realise it.

Now, they’re the focus of a new military arms race.

The Cold War may be over. But a new era of uncertainty is looming. And there are thousands of nuclear weapons, ready and waiting, around the world.

Will putting interceptors in space deter — or spur — their use?

Will President Trump’s Space Force make the world a safer place? Or help bring it closer to a new nuclear precipice?

It’s a scenario foreseen in the early years of the Cold War. And the prospect of a nuclear warhead accidentally tumbling out of orbit and triggering armageddon sent chills throughout the world.

So the 1967 Outer Space Treaty between Russia and the US banned putting weapons of mass destruction in space. But not other kinds. However, in 1985, the superpowers adopted an informal moratorium against the testing of anti-satellite weapons.

All that went out the window with the new millennium.

ULTIMATE HIGH GROUND

“The world has changed as more and more countries develop a presence in outer space, the possibility of a space battle no longer science fiction,” intones a US Air Force space command advert.

In April 2005, the US Air Force launched an experimental satellite dubbed the XSS11. Precisely what this microsatellite could do was Top Secret. But some speculate it was able to ‘interfere’ with other satellites.

“XSS-11 was officially designed to test technology relevant to on-orbit servicing of satellites — which of course demanded close approach and manoeuvre, and surveillance of satellites,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior analyst in defence strategy and capability Dr Malcolm Davis says. “I think it’s safer to say it was more about space-based space situational awareness than ‘interfering with satellites’.

Then, in 2007, China succeeded in shooting down one of its own dead satellites. Three previous attempts had failed.

It wasn’t the first such test. Nor the last.

Russia has been steadily demonstrating its anti-satellite missiles — as well as similar manoeuverable microsatellites to the XSS-11: are they repair ‘droids’, or robot saboteurs?

Combined, this means China and Russia now have a military presence in outer space.

The implications are enormous.

US dominance of the ‘high ground’ is being challenged.

The US military relies heavily on space. Some 70 per cent of the weapons dropped on Baghdad in 2003 were satellite guided.

The targets were chosen by spy satellites.

The orders were issued via communications satellites.

So, what happens when those satellites are no longer there?

Defence research agencies the world over are racing to determine just that. And they’re scrambling to find alternatives to satellite-based GPS and communications, among other things.

The race to dominate this new high ground is showing no sign of slowing down.

But it is changing direction.

“The Chinese, for example, have moved away from kinetic destruction of satellites with ASATs, and instead embraced co-orbital ASATs which can deliver non-kinetic kill,” Dr Davis says. “The Chinese don’t want to create massive space debris fields that then denies them access to space.”

Now, the United States is considering the option of putting weapons in space to target missiles as they launch from the ground

STAR WARS — THE SEQUEL

In 2018, President Trump issued a National Defence Authorisation Act instructing his military to ‘develop a space-based ballistic missile intercept layer to the ballistic missile defence system’. Then, in January, he announced new plans to develop a network of space-based sensors to detect any missile threat incoming towards the United States. With it, he wants an arsenal of space-based weapons to shoot them down.

“Our goal is simple — to ensure that we can detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States anywhere, any time, any place,” Trump said during his January 17 speech.

It’s not a new idea.

Nor is it simple to achieve.

One of President Trump’s greatest heroes — President Ronald Reagan — initiated the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI, also nicknamed Star Wars) in the early 1980s. This project lapsed with the collapse of the Soviet Union and unexpectedly tricky technical challenges.

Now, the Pentagon has released a report detailing the capabilities it needs to meet President Trump’s demands.

Called the Missile Defense Review, it specifies the new space-based sensors needed to intercept incoming targets — including next-generation hypersonic delivery vehicles.

And then there’s the order to explore space-based interceptors.

“Much has changed since the United States last considered space-based interceptors in a potential architecture, including major improvements in technologies applicable to space-basing and directed energy,” the report says.

But one reality has not changed.

These weapons need to be in low-Earth orbit to be responsive enough to be effective. This gives them a limited field of action. Which means hundreds — if not thousands — of such weapons would need to be put in orbit to provide global coverage.

“It is important to realise that there are no significant technological barriers to developing space-based interceptors,” says International Institute for Strategic Studies Senior Fellow for Missile Defence Michael Elleman. “But this does not mean that these weapons are efficient or cost effective. One expert has calculated that hundreds of interceptors orbiting above the Earth are needed to provide boost-phase defence against a small territory the size of North Korea.”

And these space-based interceptors would themselves be vulnerable to guided missiles.

“ Because the interceptors must orbit at low altitudes of 200km or less when above the anticipated launch location, and because they travel along predictable orbits and can be easily tracked using radars, an adversary capable of developing long-range missiles could almost certainly build a ground-based ASAT weapon.”

But the MDR says it has been given the goal of demonstrating advanced space-based systems, laser-armed unmanned aircraft, and hypersonic defence options, by 2030.

STAR WARS — THE PREQUEL

“What if we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies,” President Ronald Regan said when announcing his Strategic Defence Initiative in March 1983. “It will take us probably decades of effort on many fronts. There’ll be failures and setbacks just as there will be successes and breakthroughs. But isn’t it worth every investment necessary to free the world from the threat of nuclear war?”

It was an idea before its time.

Promotional videos were filled with images of space-based satellites reacting to ballistic missile launches by the USSR, and shooting them down before they reached orbit.

Then, the technology just wasn’t up to the task.

Now, however, it’s getting close.

And there’s a need. Rogue states such as North Korea have been developing their own nuclear warheads and the ballistic missiles necessary to propel them over intercontinental distances.

It’s hard enough to hit a traditional nuclear warhead once it’s been deployed. It’s even harder with the multitude of decoys and other deceptive countermeasures launched with them.

Which is why it’s so important to target ballistic missiles during their slow, vulnerable boost phase.

But this boost phase lasts just three minutes.

“Actually less if the North Koreans could perfect fast-burn boosters like the Russians have done — about 90 seconds,” says Dr Davis.

Combat aircraft, drones and warships would have to be loitering very close to the launch site, fingers on the trigger, to have any chance of shooting one down. It’s a similar story for armed satellites.

But these challenges have not stopped attempts at advancing these technologies.

And there’s a catch: any ability to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles can easily do the same to a satellite.

In 2002, President George W. Bush withdrew the US from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. This prevented the development, testing and deployment of anti-satellite and antimissile systems. With that hurdle out of the way, then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld placed Air Force Space Command under the control of a four-star general to establish US dominance in orbit. And billions of dollars were sunk into research programs.

“It is a lot of the taxpayers’ money,” he said at the time. “On the other hand, the President intends to have ballistic missile defence to protect the population centres of the United States as well as of our friends and allies, and deployed forces.”

But there’s been fallout.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is angry. He accuses the United States of seeking to disrupt the delicate balance of ‘mutually assured destruction’ through its antimissile program.

And he’s used that to justify his own development of similar weapons.

“The strategy, de facto, gives the green light to the prospect of basing missile strike capabilities in space,” a Kremlin Foreign Ministry statement responding to the review said. “The implementation of these ideas will inevitably lead to the start of an arms race in space, which will have the most negative consequences for international security and stability.”

Dr Davis rejects this: “That’s nonsense — but it’s coming from the Kremlin, so its clearly about posturing.”

And China is not beholden to these treaties, anyway.

NEW ORDER

In all military theatres, those who have an advantage seek to deny it to others.

The same applies to space.

“We see space as an area that’s very important as far as advanced, next-level capabilities that will help us stay ahead of the threat,” Pentagon technology chief Mike Griffin said at the MDR announcement. “A space-based layer of sensors is something we are looking at to help give early warning, tracking and discrimination of missiles when they are launched.”

The argument goes: to protect one’s own space systems, one must be capable of destroying an opponent’s.

Space, however, is not as distant as it appears.

Armed satellites will likely need to be in low orbits — and that’s anywhere from 160km to 2000km above the surface. And that’s intimidating.

If the risks are so high, the cost astronomical and the chances of success so low — why bother?

“We’re going to study it, and we’ll see whether or not it’s feasible,” a US Pentagon official said during the MDR media briefing.

That study is due to be completed within six months.

But the weaponisation of space terrifies strategic, tactical — and scientific — thinkers the world over.

Destroying an enemy’s space-based assets will likely result in the destruction of your own.

Every obliterated object will eject clouds of high-velocity debris. And even a speck of paint can do as much damage as a bullet.

These will circle the Earth like 20,000km/h ripples on a pond — hitting other satellites. The wreckage from those satellites will add more ripples … and so on.

Soon, there would be an uncontrollable chain reaction. It’s called the Kessler effect.

Then, nobody would control space.

And such control would be impossible for centuries to come.

“I think all sides understand the futility and risk of creating massive clouds of space debris, and the impact of the Kessler Effect,” Dr Davis says. “I think they will move away from kinetic attacks on satellites and instead develop non-kinetic kill — EW, high power microwave, laser dazzling and disabling and cyber attack — from the ground or co-orbital satellites.”

@JamieSeidelNews