Space ultimately has become a major theater of strategic competition -- just not the way US president Ronald Reagan envisioned.
AFP/Chandan Khanna
Nevertheless space ultimately has become a major theater of strategic competition -- just not the way Reagan envisioned. Instead of missiles launched from orbit to attack rivals, thousands of satellites are now the focus of sometimes tense dynamics between the United States, Soviet Union successor Russia, and China.
Global security would no longer rest on the principle that neither the United States nor the Soviets could survive a nuclear exchange -- the so-called mutual assured destruction doctrine, he said. Today, with Russia menacing Ukraine with nuclear weapons and China accelerating production of missiles and warheads, MAD remains the main reason nuclear war hasn't broken out.Today, orbiting satellites are crucial tools of war -- and as the electronic backbone of ground-based conflict they are also the primary targets.Now, according to the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, there are 9,312 circling above us.
In addition, China and the United States both have ultra-secret programs of small, reusable, robotic, winged spacecraft which could be armed to damage a rival's satellites.
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