According to General Lance Lord of the U.S. Air Force Space Command, the weaponizing of space is afoot. The Air Force has recently deployed an electronic-warfare satellite into Earth’s orbit which is capable of jamming the signals from other satellites.

Disrupting enemy communications isn’t a directly destructive act, but loss of satellite communication has the potential to devastatingly cripple an enemy, so this move will no doubt motivate other countries to deploy their own anti-satellite weapons (with built-in anti-anti-satellite systems). And some of these systems are certain to be destructive rather than just interfering. Not cool.

From the article:

“We watch China,” one official said. “They’ve had 45 successful launches since 1996. They will be a very robust and potent competitor in the future, and we want to make sure we understand who they are and how they’re emerging in this business. They look at us; we look at them.”

Russia also in the past has deployed anti-satellite weapons and is developing anti-satellite jamming weapons.

Gen. Lord dismissed assertions by critics that the Air Force’s plans to use small spacecraft for maintenance could include using the craft as anti-satellite ramming devices.

Aside: The article also mentions the spiffiest military unit name ever… The 76th Space Control Squadron.

Article on Washington Times

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Written by Alan Bellows, posted on 23 September 2005. Alan is the founder, developer, designer, and managing editor of Damn Interesting, and he likes the Oxford comma.