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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

In the past the nuclear balance between the US and the USSR helped to prevent war in space. The modern world is more complex and already some 60 countries are active in space. So is a war involving attacks on satellites now becoming more likely ?

Space wars may not involve intergalactic empires or spacecraft zapping each other. If they occur they are likely to be focused on things that matter hugely to all of us - satellites. They are more and more crucial to the way we lead our lives. They help us tell the time or draw money from a bank, or work out where to go using a smartphone or satnav. And for the modern military too, life without satellites would be a nightmare. They are used for targeting weapons, or finding things that need targeting in the first place. They form the US military's "nervous system", according to Singer, used for 80% of its communications. And this includes the communications central to nuclear deterrence.

The satellites designed to secure these communications - and to detect any possible nuclear attack - sit in geostationary orbit high above earth in what was thought until recently to be a kind of sanctuary, safe from any attack. No longer, thanks to a Chinese experiment with a missile in 2013 which reached close to that orbit, some 36,000 km above the Earth. In a rare public statement earlier this year Gen John Hyten of US Space Command expressed his alarm at the implications of these Chinese tests. "I think they'll be able to threaten every orbital regime that we operate in," he told CBS news. "We have to figure out how to defend those satellites. And we're going to."

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35130478 [bbc.com]

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