America seeks faster ways to launch military satellites

BY SHOOTING A missile into one of its own satellites in March, India upped the ante. The immediate intention, suggests Jeffrey Caton, a retired American air-force colonel who teaches at the Army War College, was to fire “a shot across the bow” of India’s rival China. The Chinese had, after all, blown up one of their own satellites in 2007, in a similar demonstration of their ability to do such things. India’s test, along with the wider profusion of anti-satellite weapons, has lent credence to the worries of defence chiefs around the world who believe that future conflicts between great powers will stretch into space.

Satellites are too militarily useful to pretend that adversaries will consider them off-limits, says William Roper, the air force’s assistant secretary for technology and acquisitions. America must therefore ready itself for warfare in space. America is, indeed, especially vulnerable. It has more space assets than any other country and relies on them more for its war-fighting capability. Moreover, as John Hyten, the vice-chairman of America’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, eloquently puts it, America’s kit in space consists mainly of large, “exquisite” satellites that make for “big, fat, juicy targets”.