Warfighting in Space

Dr. Cassandra Steer, senior lecturer at the Australian National University’s College of Law was recently interviewed regarding space as being a new domain for warfare. 

In her comments Dr. Steer stated:

"There is a lack of space literacy among many politicians and military decision makers; they think that declaring space a “warfighting domain” is just a descriptive term and that space is no different from other domains. But as any military space operator or space lawyer will tell you, space is unique as a domain. This is because of its physical characteristics, the dual-use nature of all our technologies in space, and the ways in which we are all dependent on continued access to space. Warfare on land, at sea, in the air, and even in cyber or information domains is something we apparently have to accept as part of our present reality. In space, though, warfare has so far been prevented by an international understanding that restraint is what will keep space stable. But that understanding is waning. And that is a concerning development." (1)

As someone who has been proposing a gateway solution to  human nature in our space activities I am in full agreement with Dr. Steer.

The current U.N. space treaties and agreements are a "Utopian" approach to the issues we will be facing in the near future and they work only if everyone agrees and abides by them. The reality is that human nature and our history indicate that we will approach space with the same desires and ignorance as we have always approached new resources and territories in the past, it's all mine and I will fight you for it.

Our history shows that when money is to be made or new territory to be claimed, the worst in humanity dominates our desires for control of what has suddenly become available to us. Our continuing mistrust of everyone who is not "us"  coupled with our technologically advanced society and vast military strengths could lead to an undesirable and out of control conflict. At the very least we are headed for another arms race.

In 1919 space law attempted to exert sovereign control of the airspace over a country and as of 2020, air sovereignty is the fundamental right of a sovereign state to regulate the use of its airspace and enforce its own aviation law. However, the upper limit of national airspace is not defined by international law and specific guidelines on the definition of airspace have yet to be universally determined.

Our failures to define something as simple as sovereign airspace does not bode well for our future as this failure will ultimately be repeated in a failure to define regional space and associated rules of law. As long as we permit nationalism and business influences to be the guiding principles of our space activities and develop independent "warfighting" forces we will fall back into the arms race / cold war mentality.

Our civilization has already been through that scenario of mutually assured destruction and yet it would seem our leaders have learned nothing from that. 

Our history has shown that colonists throughout human history have arrived, claimed, conquered, subjugated and reaped the benefits of new territories and fought many wars to keep what they have claimed. Attempting to apply that same scenario to space though the development of space forces and weapons and nationalistic space laws, and continuing to mistrust our fellow man will ultimately lead to conflicts greater than any we have known before.

https://filling-space.com/2021/04/23/how-do-we-prevent-conflict-in-space/