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Navigating Space Security Challenges: Legal, Military & Ethical Perspectives

Discover expert insights on complexities of space security, impacts on global relations & legal frameworks at the UCSC Symposium. Learn more about military activities, weaponization issues, and the need for updated legal regulations. Join the discussion on balancing national interests with global cooperation.

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Navigating Space Security Challenges: Legal, Military & Ethical Perspectives

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  1. Union of Concerned Scientists40th Anniversary Symposium Panel on Missile Defense and Space Security John Steinbruner University of Maryland October 31, 2009

  2. Basic Situation • Space utilization is in a process of gradual and lengthy transformation • From the original purpose of supporting military confrontation • To much broader social and economic functions • Commercial communication and navigation • Earth observation for environmental management. • Prevailing legal, financial and institutional arrangements are incompletely adapted to the ultimately necessary expansion of purpose.

  3. Notable Problems • Inherent tension between the principle of equitable utilization and the impulse for competitive national advantage. • Global commons concept necessitated by the physics of orbital dynamics, • Has generally been interpreted to allow military support activities but not weaponization.

  4. The distinction between legitimate military support and objectionable weaponization • Has not been completely specified in legal terms • OST does not explicitly prohibit conventional weapons or acts of interference. • Has been sharply contested in apparently authoritative US policy documents • Stated aspiration to dominate space for national military advantage • And deny similar effort by any other country.

  5. US missile defense aspirations conflict with the global aspiration to prevent space weaponization. • Any test or deployment of a space based system would be a direct contradiction. • All strategic range ballistic missile interceptors in any basing mode confer ASAT capability.

  6. Reasonable Expectations • Increasing importance of broad space support services will eventually induce more complete legal specification: • Prohibition of acts of interference as distinct from capacity for interference. • Defined limits on military support functions. • Equitable sharing of information of common interest.

  7. Contrary impulse for dominance or decisive competitive advantage not feasible for any country. • Not legitimate in global judgment • Not achievable at realistic cost.

  8. Immediate Imperative • Initiate formal negotiations to update the legal regime. • Requires a reversal of US policy • But one that better reflects fundamental US interest.

  9. Practical Observation • US BMD program is more a political than a strategic project. • Space based component is not remotely realistic but the idea is politically entrenched. • Difficulty of disciplining that aspiration is arguably the primary impediment to development of the space regime.

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