THE POINT OF UNILATERALISM

Headlines Over the Horizon: Analysts at the RAND Corporation lay out ten international-security developments that aren't getting the attention they deserve (The Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2003)

Anti-Satellite Attack (Karl P. Mueller & Elwyn D. Harris)

Within the next five years not only Russia and China but also Pakistan, North Korea, and even Iran may acquire the ability to carry out a nuclear attack against satellites. Launching such an attack would be much simpler technically than launching a nuclear attack against a distant city; only a primitive nuclear program and basic missile technology are required. And as the importance of satellites grows, so will the destructive potential of such an attack, adding a significant new dimension to the politics of preventing nuclear war.

An anti-satellite attack could be mounted in a variety of ways, but a high-altitude nuclear detonation would create by far the most extensive effects. It would destroy satellites near the detonation point, of course; but, more significant, it would also expand and intensify the power of the Van Allen radiation belts, clouds of high-energy particles that encircle Earth. Satellites passing through the region after a nuclear attack--among them hundreds of low-orbiting communications, weather, imaging, and scientific satellites, including the International Space Station and the Hubble space
telescope--would be subjected to greatly increased levels of radiation, against which civil and commercial systems are not protected. (The satellites of the Global Positioning System are not nuclear-hardened either--but they operate in higher, less vulnerable orbits.) Such radiation would progressively degrade the satellites' solar panels and onboard electronic systems, and within months, or even weeks, after a nuclear explosion every satellite orbiting at the affected altitudes--aside from a few military systems that are protected against nuclear attack--could be disabled. It would take many months for the excess radiation trapped in the Van Allen belts to dissipate.

A nuclear anti-satellite attack would do the most harm to the United States, which owns most of the more than 250 satellites that might be affected, and which depends more than any other country on space systems. Such an attack would substantially damage the U.S. and world economies (replacing the ruined satellites could cost tens of billions of dollars, in addition to the costs of losing their services) and would seriously inconvenience the U.S. military, which relies heavily on civil and commercial satellites for functions such as communications and weather forecasting. Although no nation is likely to attack satellites as a short-term military strategy (the full effects would take too long to accumulate), someone might well consider using the tactic as a deterrent, as a coercive threat, or to strike a painful blow against the United States and its allies without the difficulties or obvious risks of attacking a target on American soil.

Isn't the best use to which we could put our military/geopolitical superiority the complete dominance of space and the removal of everyone's nuclear weapons but our own? Posted by Orrin Judd at July 2, 2003 11:11 PM