Space warfare
Space warfare is combat in which one or more belligerents are situated in outer space. The scope of space warfare therefore includes ground-to-space warfare, such as attacking satellites from the Earth; space-to-space warfare, such as satellites attacking satellites; and space-to-ground warfare, such as satellites attacking Earth-based targets. Space warfare in fiction is thus sub-genre and theme of science fiction, where it is portrayed with a range of realism and plausibility. In the real world, international treaties are in place that attempt to regulate conflicts in space and limit the installation of space weapon systems, especially nuclear weapons.
"Space combat" redirects here. For the video game, see Space Combat. For the video game genre, see Space combat simulator. For other related uses, see Spacewar.
On October 31, 2023, during the 2023 Israel-Hamas War, Israel's Arrow 2 system intercepted a ballistic missile launched from Yemen by Houthi rebels; this successful interception occurred outside of Earth's atmosphere thus making it the first recorded practical instance of space warfare during an active conflict.[1][2] On April 14, 2024, Iran launched more than 120 ballistic missiles at Israel, making it the first large-scale incident in which space weapon was used.[3]
From 1985 to 2002, there was a United States Space Command, which in 2002 merged with the United States Strategic Command, leaving the United States Space Force (formerly Air Force Space Command until 2019) as the primary American military space force. The Russian Space Force, established on August 10, 1992, which became an independent section of the Russian Armed Forces on June 1, 2001, was replaced by the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces starting December 1, 2011, but was reestablished as a component of the Russian Aerospace Forces on August 1, 2015. In 2019, India conducted a test of the ASAT missile; this made out the fourth country with that capability. In April of the same year, the Indian Armed Forces established the Defence Space Agency.
History[edit]
1950s[edit]
During the early Cold War, a survivable reconnaissance asset was considered highly valuable. In a time before satellites, this meant building an aircraft that could fly higher or faster, or both, compared to any interceptor that would try to bring it down. Notably, the United States would introduce the U-2 spy plane in 1956. It was thought, at the time of its introduction, that the plane’s service ceiling of 24,000 metres (80,000 ft) would render it immune to Soviet aircraft, missiles, and radar. That was the case until the 1960 U-2 incident, where a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defense Forces’ S-75 Dvina (SA-2 Guideline) surface-to-air missile while conducting photographic aerial reconnaissance deep inside Soviet territory.
Three years before the incident, in 1957, a modified R-7 rocket carried the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, into an orbit hundreds of kilometers above sea level, notably beyond the reach of any existing weapons system. While Sputnik 1 held no military value, only transmitting radio signals back to Earth for three weeks, its launch sparked the beginning of the Space Race. This spurred the United States to hasten and re-emphasize its space programs, culminating in the Explorer program, which launched the first American satellite into orbit in 1958. In tandem with the effort to achieve superior spaceflight capability over the other, the United States and the Soviet Union began to develop space warfare capabilities.
1960s[edit]
Early efforts to conduct space warfare were directed at space-to-space warfare, as ground-to-space systems were considered to be too slow and too isolated by Earth's atmosphere and gravity to be effective at the time. The history of active space warfare development goes back to the 1960s when the Soviet Union began the Almaz project, a project designed to give them the ability to do on-orbit inspections of satellites and destroy them if needed. Similar planning in the United States took the form of the Blue Gemini project, which consisted of modified Gemini capsules that would be able to deploy weapons and perform surveillance.
One early test of electronic space warfare, the so-called Starfish Prime test, took place in 1962 when the United States exploded a ground-launched nuclear weapon in space to test the effects of an electromagnetic pulse. The result was a deactivation of many then-orbiting satellites, both American and Soviet. The deleterious and unfocused effects of the EMP test led to the banning of nuclear weapons in space in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. (See high-altitude nuclear explosion.)
In the early 1960s, the U.S. military produced a film called Space and National Security which depicted space warfare.[4]
Related to specific countries and facilities: