Space war: battleships or castles?

[Byeman]

Not when the USAF was talking about Orion-powered battleships.

It was pie in the sky like many other concepts, constellations of manned orbital bombardment stations. There was no real money spent on Orion.

 

[Archibald]

The Outer Space Treaty article 3 and article 4 make two important points
-no weapons of mass destruction on artificial satellites;
-no weapons whatsoever (WMD or not - it doesn't matters) on celestial bodies.

Put otherwise: no nukes in Earth orbit, no weapons at all on the Moon - "peaceful purposes only."

-Defensive weapons may be allowed, for example if a Soviet ASAT was to attack a US spysat. Same for a lunar base, a few defensive weapons just in case. There the OST borrows from the 1959 Antarctic treaty.

-Also suborbital WMDs are not concerned, otherwise ICBMs and SLBMs would have been prohibited by the OST: unthinkable in 1967, unthinkable today - I'm tempted to say unfortunately.

-With FOBS the Soviets flirted with the OST red lines like true hypocrites. When it made a complete orbit it was testing and it had no nuclear warhead, so they did not violated the OST. As for the operational variant, with a nuke, it would not make a complete orbit so - suborbital, back to ICBM - only a little closer from orbital velocity for more range - and thus still allowed by the OST.

 

[Dilandu]

The Outer Space Treaty article 3 and article 4 make two important points
-no weapons of mass destruction on artificial satellites;
-no weapons whatsoever (WMD or not - it doesn't matters) on celestial bodies.

Well, there is a possible way to circumvent a OST in relations to asteroids. If we change the orbit of asteroid - i.e. if we could demonstrate, that we could control it - we could claim it to be a spacecraft, and "salvage" it (after which we could place any kind of non-WMD weaponry on it)

P.S. Also, OST did specify that nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are forbidden for deployment in space. Kinetic weapons or pure fusion weapons would not be subjected.

 

[shin_getter]

How might military force be projected in space across interplanetary distances? This includes direct offence/defence and deterrence.

Space is transparent and stealth is very improbable - a good telescope and an AI will spot a mere glint and track its source and trajectory....

The model of deterrence rather than tactics might be effective - that is, establishing 'castles.'

I agree most imaginations of space is highly parallel water navies, when it doesn't make sense. The notion of "Cruisers" type vessels that travel to various locations make little sense if sensors and communications can cover the distance easily while delta V constraints makes disposable vehicles far faster. For many other missions like sensing, communication and deterrence, long term static positioning is sufficient.

I think "fixed" installations can potentially be decisive in a with-in-solar system context. A high powered laser system is at the same time a attack weapon with ability to propel sails at high speed, a defensive system in applying energy on target and sensor with adaptive optics. Now nothing in space have to be completely static but speed is not very needed for tactical purposes. Something like a stellaser can dominate a system without going anywhere.

I also think the so called "missile carriers" are mostly silly. Self propelled missiles can be placed at suitable attack positions in peace time without a large carrier since there is no medium transition (land-air, sea-air). Basically rockets floating in space, to be ignited when war breaks out.

 

[Archibald]

Well, there is a possible way to circumvent a OST in relations to asteroids. If we change the orbit of asteroid - i.e. if we could demonstrate, that we could control it - we could claim it to be a spacecraft, and "salvage" it (after which we could place any kind of non-WMD weaponry on it)

P.S. Also, OST did specify that nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are forbidden for deployment in space. Kinetic weapons or pure fusion weapons would not be subjected.

And then there was this. I often wondered how did they intended to work their way around the OST. You provided one possible loophole : asteroids. Still that doesn't solve the OST problem for the Moon.

"A Vision of the Future": Military Uses of the Moon and Asteroids (1983)

The story of spaceflight told through missions and programs that did not happen - that is, the great majority of them.

spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA340021.pdf

Would they say that, SDI being defensive in nature, they could use lunar resources for it ? - and thus using the loophole I mentionned - "celestial bodies for peaceful purposes" only - well, except for defense.
That's quite a very tortured interpretation of the OST...

 

[Dilandu]

And then there was this. I often wondered how did they intended to work their way around the OST. You provided one possible loophole : asteroids. Still that doesn't solve the OST problem for the Moon.

Well, the simplest way to circumvent the OST in terms of defensive missiles is to not call them "defensive missiles". Call them "fast-deployed inspector probes". Point is, that inspector probe, capable of closing with other spacecraft and holding position while making short-range observations could easily ram the spacecraft in question also. Any changes from original - inspection - purpose would be purely software.

 

[Dilandu]

Circumventing the OST in terms of WMD is more complex, but not exactly impossible. I could imagine two approaches:

* Deploy the weapons, that did not fit into traditional "weapons of mass destruction" specifications. For example, kinetic weapons of sub-kiloton scale aren't exactly weapon of mass destruction by itself. But if you have, say, a magnetic catapult on Moon that is capable of firing hundreds of them in quick progression against Earth-based target - then you could flatten cities with the rain of artificial meteors, each of them is not exactly "WMD".

* Deploy the weapons under guise of non-weapon purpose. For example, the drive units for nuclear-pulse rockets aren't exactly the "weapons". You could claim that the system that did not have "causing damage" as it main function could not be classified as weaponry, and the fact that your drive units could be boosted to hundreds of kilotons scale and fit into RV's did not meant that they are INTENDED for such purpose.

Of course, it's pretty much toying with definitions and legal borders, but there are possibilities.

 

[Grey Havoc]

And then there was this. I often wondered how did they intended to work their way around the OST.

The Outer Space Treaty was already dying the death at the time. Only the sudden end of the Cold War gave it (a relatively brief all things considered) new lease on life.

 

[Scott Kenny]

The Moon would be a rather arbitrary location to stage strategic weapons, taking any potential international treaty restrictions into account, besides elementary physics considerations. Retaliatory nukes could (at least in my extremely limited understanding, so please, correct me if I'm legally wrong) theoretically be placed in any optimized Earth orbit without running afoul of any potential legal constraints as well as not having to crawl out of the lunar gravity well, but then again, I'm not a lawyer, and any informed feedback is more than welcome.

As mentioned, the Outer Space Treaty pretty much makes that impossible.

The thinking at the time made it so that any attack from the Moon would take 3 days to arrive and so give plenty of warning of attack, while any attack going the other direction to neutralize the Lunar Deterrent equally gave 3 days notice to arrive.

So not only do you have a guaranteed invulnerable deterrent, you have multiple days to confirm accidental launches instead of ~20min.



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I figure that the first big asteroid that could have only been diverted via nuclear pulse will put an end to the no nukes in space clause, if not the entire OST.