Over the last few years, the domain of Space Warfare has come to the center stage with Implications that can allow one country to dominate their territory. United States of America has put forward its first step and highlighted the importance of Space Warfare by becoming the first Country to make a special force concerning with “Space Warfare”. Highlighting the concerns such as protecting their national space assets and emphasizing the necessity of such a Space force for peaceful engagement of keeping the space peaceful and secure for every nation on the planet, these tangible actions were justified upon. However, an in-depth analysis refers to the fact that such actions might result in a developing sense of military tactics that might render the opposition useless by keeping a real time, highly accurate close inspection of the opposition’s highly sensitive areas, the “Space Warfare” might become the most lethal weapon in the future.

A look into history suggests that early footprints of Space Warfare were in place even decades ago. United States of America was able to identify the Nuclear Development Secrets of Multiple Nations using Satellites, but they were not only able to pinpoint such sensitive facilities and therefore, implement sanctions on the respective countries. But, in some cases, destroying such sensitive assets by pin-point accuracy to keep those countries from achieving the ever so important arsenals. Such phenomena have only increased and with the ever-growing Space Setup with military satellites in the space that can endure for longer durations and with highly refined accuracy rate, combined with the use to AI to detect enemy’s sensitive equipment are posing the ever so growing threat of Increased Military Presence in Space by every single nation.

But the scale of such domains is not going to be limited to aspects such as Spying and collecting data about such locations. Modern Weapons are especially directed towards Space Warfare where such Laser Weapons, Molten Metal Cannons, Armed Asteroids whom working prospects and causes of destruction can expand multiple folds higher than the Conventional Weapon Attacks. For Example, A Conceptualized Weapons known as “Kinetic Bombardment” which will be developed around the idea of telephone size tungsten rods which could theoretically reach 10 times the speed of sound and they will be able to go hundreds of depths into the surface of the earth which will render any secret hideout, any secret bunker into a useless state. These are some of the possible weapon concepts specializing in space that can play a vastly bigger role in changing the outcome of a conflict.

In acceptance to that, there is mirror aspect that is also growing with the perspective of Space Warfare in focus and that are the “Anti-space Weapons”. Already, a few countries have tested ASATs (Anti-satellite Weapons) to make sure that they are able to effectively neutralize the Satellite scope of warfare by destroying them through their Anti-satellite Weapons and they are also further improving such weapons for the future aim of targeting higher satellites residing in the Higher Earth Orbit (HEO) & Center Earth Orbit (CEO).However, such weapons have a repercussion of their own, and they can result in increasing the space debris (space garbage) to a very critical level that can actually result in damages to the entire planet due to such debris coming back to Earth with very high velocities which could result in damages throughout the planet. Furthermore, larger debris falling into the seas and oceans can result in larger natural disaster such as hurricanes and tsunami which are portraying very dire consequences which could ultimately result in a non-recoverable state of the planet.

Overall, the prospects of Space Warfare as a new domain of war are increasingly inevitable, increasingly developing and increasingly dangerous that might pose the greatest set of weapons that the world has ever witnessed. With such prospects in mind, It is only right to jointly neutralize the use of Weapons in Space Warfare Domain and deem them as dangerous as the phenomenon of Atomic Bomb or Hydrogen Bombs whom lethality was understood after the tragic use of such weapons and it should be made sure that these weapons are maintained in a controlled environment elsewise the participation of every nation in space exploration and development will not be possible and damage on the planet will most likely be, “Inevitable.”

Author: Muhammad Fahad

About Author: He is doing bachelor’s in computer sciences from University of Central Punjab. His areas of interest include AI, Quantum Development, Space & Defense Technology, History & Geopolitics.

Note: The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Pakistan Strategic Forum.

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