The satellite battle takes place 40 years after Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars.

New battle for satellites Set in the stratosphere, 40 years after United States President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) surprised the world with his Star Wars project, with which he sought to bring nuclear competition into space.

Reagan’s March 23, 1983 Statement on the Space Race Started USA surpassing the Soviet Union in the Cold War was of little consequence.

But lately, space has become the epicenter of a competition different from what Reagan envisioned. Instead of rockets launched from orbit to attack rivals, thousands satellites are now at the center of a sometimes tense dynamic between USARussia and China.

YESUnited States there seems to be no clear advantage: China in particular is demonstrating the ability to compete and even outperform its rival.

Hope

Official name of the program Ronald Reagan it was the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

But it quickly became known as Star Wars, after a sci-fi movie about ships fighting in space with futuristic weaponry.

that’s where USA should dominate, according to Reagan.

“I have made a decision that brings new hope to our children in the 21st century,” he said, recalling the 1977 film Star Wars: A New Hope.

Global security will no longer be based on the principle that USA he also noted that the Soviets could not survive a nuclear exchange: the so-called Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine.

Instead of, USA it will manufacture space weapons to instantly destroy any Soviet nuclear missile launched against its territory.

Despite the fact that billions of dollars were invested in SDI to develop space laser or beam weapons, the idea could not be realized due to the lack of technology that would allow it to be done.

satellite war

A decade later, Star Wars was gone, replaced by a more traditional nuclear deterrence program: ground-based missile defense.

Even today, with Russia threatening Ukraine with nuclear weapons and China accelerating the production of missiles and atomic warheads, the MAD doctrine remains the main reason a nuclear war has not erupted.

Today satellites in orbit are the most important means of warfare, and as the electronic backbone of ground conflicts, they are also prime targets.

In 1983 satellites they were large and very expensive: there were only about 360 of them in orbit.

According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, 9,312 people are currently flying overhead.

According to Euroconsult, about 2,700 such devices were put into orbit last year.

Many of them are small, cheap, and serve civilian communications, research, and business.

But hundreds, if not thousands, are used for military and intelligence purposes.

Some run as mini-networks satellites to alert the launch of ballistic missiles.

space stalkers

But they are not only used for surveillance missions.

Washington, Moscow and Beijing have developed “space stalkers”: satellites who may physically interfere with others.

According to Brian Chow, an independent space policy analyst, with robotic arms and claws, “they can chase an adversary’s satellite and move it or bend the antenna” to render it useless.

The experts say satellites in development there will be a weapon capable of shooting at opponents or blowing them up with explosive charges.

In addition, both China and the United States have top-secret programs to build small, reusable, robotic and winged aerospace vehicles that can be equipped to do harm. satellites rivals.

Meanwhile, the superpowers have the ability – which they regularly use – to jam satellite signals, which they do both from the ground and from space.

The three countries have also demonstrated that they can launch missiles from the ground capable of destroying satellites in orbit.

Pentagon says China has ground-based laser stations that can interfere, if not disable satellites. Presumably the US and Russia have or are developing similar capabilities.

The Outer Space Nuclear Weapons Treaty of 1967, signed by most countries, prohibited the launching of nuclear weapons into orbit.

But there are a few limits to space competition.

In April, Vice President USAKamala Harris said her country will halt testing of ground-based anti-satellite missiles in the hope that Russia and China will do the same due to the large amount of space debris that remains in Earth orbit after these tests.

“Without clear rules, we face unnecessary risk in space,” he said.

(According to AFP)

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Fernando Carvallo selects information and shares his vision of national and international news. subscribe to our mailing list