Right now, miles above your head, there are fleets of robotic, weaponized satellites poised to do battle as the world’s superpowers await the opening salvo in a very real cosmic chess match.
This might sound like science fiction. It’s not.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has enjoyed a quarter century of dominance in satellite technology. This advanced web of GPS satellites has given the U.S. military a great advantage on the battlefield. But thanks to robust military investments by Russia and China over the past few decades, this has all changed. Now, a single missile launch could wipe out a satellite and disable the GPS that the U.S. relies on for missile guidance, military operations, and more — so what was once America’s great edge is now a potentially catastrophic vulnerability.
The U.S. is now on the defense, preparing to protect its assets in orbit against a new fleet of high-tech satellites unlike anything the world has ever seen before. This doesn’t bode well for the future, because as history has continuously shown, any technology with potential military applications can (and usually will) spawn an arms race.
This is exactly where we find ourselves today, as the world’s superpowers march in lockstep toward yet another prospective nuclear doomsday.
A new cold war
As one could imagine, the ability to shoot a satellite — traveling at thousands of miles per hour — out of orbit is no easy task. It’s essentially the equivalent of trying to hit a speeding bullet with another speeding bullet from hundreds of miles away.
But as futuristic as this anti-satellite (ASAT) technology may seem, this isn’t a new strategy by any stretch of the imagination. This was very much the next step in the Cold War before the U.S.S.R. dissolved in 1991, with both the U.S. and the Soviet Union testing an array of offensive and defense ASAT systems. Let’s not forget about Reagan’s very real “Star Wars” program.