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Arms Control in Outer Space: History and Prospects

The PPWT’s defects are thus simultaneously structural,
insoluble, and apparently intentional. That draft treaty is
therefore not “arms control” worthy of the name, and the
world deserves better. Nor, for all of these reasons, are its
defects ones that can effectively be addressed within the
terms of reference this disingenuous gamesmanship sets
for itself. If we are to have some kind of negotiated and
agreed approaches to reducing risk and managing
competitive tensions in the space domain, therefore, we
will need to look elsewhere.

C. Rapidly-Evolving Space Threats

Making matters worse, and the hypocrisy of the PPWT
all the more impressive, both Russia and China are
presently leading the world in weaponizing the space
domain — including, in Russia’s case, even through the
actual placement in outer space of satellites that fire
projectiles: that is, things that appear to be weapons. As |
summarized things in remarks at CSIS in April:

“The world has known about the PRC ASAT threat
since 2007, when Beijing tested a ground-based missile
that destroyed a satellite, in a test that produced an
appalling amount of orbital debris that even to this da’
—almost 13 years later — still threatens all countries’
low-earth orbital constellations. What is less well
known is that since that infamously irresponsible 2007
test, the PRC's program has matured into an
operational ground-based ASAT missile capability for
destroying satellites in low-earth orbit. The PRC is also
likely pursuing additional ground-based ASAT
weapons capable of destroying satellites in
geosynchronous orbit, where many important
capabilities such as U.S. nuclear command and control
and missile warning satellites reside. It is clear that
Beijing conceives of outer space as a critical
warfighting domain, and that it expects to escalate in
this arena very quickly in wartime. Military and
strategic thinkers in the PRC now openly talk and write
about their intentions to move against U.S. satellites

early in any future conflict.

Volume |, Number 12 | July 24, 2020

And, if anything, Russia’s behavior has been even
worse.

“In 2027 ... a Russian Air Force commander said that
Moscow is developing new missiles with which to
destroy satellites, and the Ministry of Defense
admitted it is working on ‘a mobile attack anti-satellite
system.’ Vladimir Putin himself announced in March
2018 that Russia was developing a mobile anti-satellite
laser system, and the Ministry of Defense (MoD) has
since confirmed that its Space Troops have indeed now
received a mobile laser of this sort.”

rec

Despite his diplomats’ ostentatious enthusiasm for
efforts such as PPWT, Putin has declared space weapons to
be “acceptable in the political and military respect,” and in
April 2020, Russia carried out a flight test of its direct-
ascent ASAT missile. On July 3, furthermore, Colonel
General Sergei Surovikin, the commander of Russia’s
Aerospace Forces, admitted that their S-soo “Prometey”
missile defense systems can serve as a ground-launched
ASAT. He told the Russian Defense Ministry's Krasnaya
Zvezda newspaper that “[t]he S-500 can be classified as the
first generation of space defense systems, since in the
future it will be able to destroy low-orbit satellites and

space weapons.”

Most amazing, however, is that Russia seems already
to have placed weapons in space — a step which, would be a
clear violation of the draft treaty Moscow has itself been
promoting,” not to mention outrageously at odds with
Russia’s own efforts to promote a U.N. resolution on “No
First Placement of Arms in Outer Space.” As | have
outlined it elsewhere, but which essentially anyone can
verify by checking orbital tracks available on Space-
Track.org,

“{iln October 2017, the Russian Ministry of Defense
deployed a space object, Cosmos 2519, that officials
claimed was a ‘space apparatus inspector.’ The
behavior of Cosmos 2519, however, was notabh
unusual, and inconsistent with anything seen before
for on-orbit inspection or space situational awareness —
and inconsistent, in fact, with any sort of device except

? The most recent draft of the PPWT defines “weapon in outer space” to mean “any outer space object or component thereof which has been
produced or converted to destroy, damage or disrupt the normal functioning of objects in outer space, on the Earth’s surface or in its
atmosphere, or to eliminate human beings or components of the biosphere which are important to human existence, or to inflict damage
on them by using any principles of physics.” A device is considered to have been “placed in outer space,” moreover, “if it orbits the Earth at
least once, or follows a section of such an orbit before leaving that orbit, or is permanently located in outer space or on any celestial bodies

other than the Earth.”


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Arms Control in Outer Space: History and Prospects

build better means of communication and crisis or incident
management, to develop and implement transparency and
confidence-building measures, and to set common
understandings of what constitutes safe and responsible
behavior in this domain.

The second part of the U.S. challenge to our would-be
space adversaries is therefore an invitation: an invitation to
join us in taking such steps, both to prevent our
competition from spiraling out of control and to improve
humanity's ability — in a time of exciting technological
change and rapid space sector innovation — to take
advantage of the space domain for the betterment of all.
Responsible space actors operate with openness,
transparency, and predictability to maintain the benefits of
space for all humanity, and we call upon you would-be
adversaries to become such responsible space actors. We
should be working together, not at cross purposes, to
develop and promote common standards, best practices,
and responsible behaviors for space activities, and to
improve collection, sharing, and use of information on
space objects. And we should be collaborating to develop
voluntary non-binding international norms of responsible
State behavior that complement and reinforce the existing
international legal regime.

So let me also say to Russia and the PRC: if you are
indeed serious about “preventing an arms race in outer
space,” we challenge you to show this seriousness. To do
that, you will need to change course and stop trying to
create a space arms race by continuing to develop your
myriad counterspace weapons systems, and to stop
avoiding constructive risk-mitigation engagement in the
space domain through the use of smoke-and-mirrors
diplomatic gamesmanship of the PPWT and “No First
Placement of Weapons in Outer Space” variety. And we
challenge you to work with us on finding new and better
answers to the security challenges of the space domain.

IV. Conclusion and Way Forward

To find such answers, we should start by building on
what we have today. The United States already has
bilateral engagements with the PRC on certain space issues
through our Civil Space Dialogue and Spaceflight Safety
Experts’ Exchange. In the security arena, the U.S.-China
Space Security Exchange (SSE), which grew out of the
broader Defense and Security Dialogue, has, at the time of
writing, already met three times.

Volume |, Number 12 | July 24, 2020

The last attempt to hold U.S.-Russian space talks fell
apart after Russia invaded and occupied Crimea, a part of
the sovereign territory of its neighbor, Ukraine, but when |
met with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov
in our Strategic Security Dialogue (SSD) in January 2020,
we agreed to restart this space dialogue. That dialogue is
now on track to occur in late July 2020. These two fora for
space security engagement with our major space
competitors, therefore, provide important opportunities to
develop and advance a genuinely constructive agenda.

So here, then, are three ideas that could be part of that
agenda:

1. To begin with, it seems clear that in this era of
heightened competitive tensions and risks of a new
space arms race, the United States and its allies,
Russia, and the PRC need appropriate channels of
communication through which space operators can
talk to their counterparts from time to time, as
needed, in order to address questions or incidents of
concern and thereby help reduce risks from
misperception, escalation, and conflict arising from
operations in the space domain. Both existing
channels and new channels should be examined to
understand which are most appropriate to the task.

2. Second, it is clear that more can and should be done in
ensuring timely notification of planned spacecraft and
other launches. As noted, Russia does much of this
already through the HCOC, and Russia and the PRC
already have a bilateral launch-notification agreement
between themselves. To fill the obvious gaps this
creates, Beijing should subscribe to the HCOC, or
perhaps we could also consider developing a bilateral
notification process with China. Something more,
however, is needed. (We may also be able to do more
to share information and notifications on uncontrolled
high-risk re-entry events from orbit, and the April 2018
reentry of the PRC's Tiangong-1 space station makes
clear that more transparency in this regard is sorely
needed, too.)

3. Third, all three countries, joined by other responsible
spacefaring nations, should work together to “develop
improved mutual understanding and start to set
expectations for all parties about what responsible
behavior looks like in outer space — as well as about
what it doesn’t.” The stakes are too high, and the
trends too disturbing, for the countries of the world
not to step up to articulate behavioral norms for outer



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space arena, and on what objects they had placed in space
and their general function. It also called for the
improvement of norms of behavior related to space flight
safety and risk reduction, suggested that countries should
notify others of in-flight maneuvers that could result in risk
to others, and generally urged “[t]imely and routine
consultations through bilateral and multilateral diplomatic
exchanges and other government-to-government
mechanisms, including bilateral, military-to-military,

scientific[,] and other channels.”

This is sensible advice, and indeed many such things
are already done, at least by responsible spacefaring
powers such as the United States. Pre-launch notifications
of ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles occur
routinely among subscribing States under the Haque Code
of Conduct Against Ballistic Missile Proliferation (HCOC),
for example. Also, there is an increasing amount of global
data-sharing about space situational awareness, hazard
notifications are common practice, and many countries
have publicized their space policies. A United Nations
register of space objects has also been kept for many years,
pursuant to the 1974 Registration Convention, and
extensive international cooperation has developed for
orbital debris mitigation and spaceflight safety information
exchanges, including through the Inter-Agency Space

Volume |, Number 12 | July 24, 2020

understandings of appropriate behavior and to build
practices that support predictability and stability, reducing
the chances of misunderstanding and inadvertent
escalation. Some of these practices, or things inspired by
them, might be useful in helping mitigate space security
risks, suggesting that this history could perhaps today be
“mined” for potential analogous application in the space
domain.

Some prior approaches even resulted in express
agreements, such as the Agreement on Measures to
Reduce the Risk of Outbreak of Nuclear War signed
between the United States and the USSR in 1971. Under
that agreement, each Party undertook, among other
things, to notify the other in the event of “detection by
missile warning systems of unidentified objects, or in the
event of signs of interferences with these systems or with
related communications facilities” that might create a risk
of outbreak of a nuclear war. They also agreed to give
advance notice of planned missile launches in the case that
any such launches extend beyond the national territory of
the launching Party and in the direction of the other Party.

Other potentially space-relevant agreements include
the 1988 Agreement on Notification of Launches of
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and Submarine-launched

Debris Coordination Committee, the Consultative
Committee for Space Data Systems, and the United
Nations’ COPUOS. There is also constructive thinking
underway in both government and the private sector about
how to improve commonly-understood best practices in
areas such as satellite collision avoidance, cooperative on-
orbit rendezvous and servicing operations, and utilization
of space resources.

Nevertheless, there is more that could be done,
particularly with regard to TCBMs and practices and
understandings specifically related to the security
challenges that countries increasingly face in the space
domain. With so many diplomats having been preoccupied
by disingenuous distractions such as the PPWT, too little
progress has been made in closing the gap between what
could be done in the development of security-related space
norms and TCBMs and what has been done, even while
Russian and PRC weaponization in the space domain has
proceeded apace. We must do better, both globally and
between the world’s major potential space adversaries.

In this respect, it is worth remembering that outside or
on the margins of the space arena, there is a long history of
efforts between great power competitors to develop

Ballistic Missiles, under which the United States and the
Soviet Union (now Russia) must provide notification of the
planned date, launch area, and area of impact for any
launch of a strategic ballistic missile, as well as the
geographic coordinates of the planned impact area for
reentry vehicles. The Prevention of Dangerous Military
Activities Agreement signed by Washington and Moscow in
1989 also articulates common understandings of such
things as the appropriate use of laser devices in peacetime
so as to avoid “harm to personnel or damage to equipment
of the armed forces of the other Party,” and calls upon the
Parties to establish and maintain communications (and
even a Joint Military Commission) to discuss
implementation. Bilateral U.S.-Soviet/Russian arms
control agreements, moreover — beginning with the first
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) and continuing
through to New START today — have frequently included
provisions in which, for the purpose of ensuring verification
of compliance with the treaty’s terms, the Parties
undertake not to interfere with so-called “national
technical means” of verification, which in practice means
that each side is prohibited from impeding the other side's
use of satellite-based reconnaissance.



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Arms Control in Outer Space: History and Prospects

an ASAT weapon. Once in orbit, Cosmos 2519
deployed a sub-satellite, Cosmos 2521, that displayed
the ability to maneuver around another satellite in
space. So far, | quess, you could argue that this was
consistent with the declared purpose of being a ‘space
apparatus inspector.’ But what happened next is the
disturbing part: the sub-satellite Cosmos 2523 itself
launched an additional object into space, Cosmos 252’
=at the high relative speed of about 250 kilometers per
hour, straight off into space. Not to put too fine a
point on it, but Cosmos 2521 demonstrated the ability to
position itself near another satellite and fire a projectile.

“Having demonstrated this capability in October 2017 ~
and done so in what counts as being ‘in public’ in space
.. ~ Russia has followed up this activity with some
additionally provocative satellite movements. ... [Tlwo
other Russian MoD satellites, Cosmos 2542 and 2543,
were deployed [in] November and December [2019]
and have actively maneuvered near a U.S. Government
satellite in low earth orbit. After launch, the Cosmos
2542 satellite demonstrated similar capabilities as
Cosmos 2519. Since the Russian military had already
demonstrated its ability to fire a projectile from one
satellite in space just over two years before, Russia’s
irresponsible movements are clearly hugel

provocative.”

According to General Raymond, moreover, the Russians
recently used Cosmos 2543 to conduct an on-orbit weapons
test, thus providing “further evidence of Russia's continuing
efforts to develop and test space-based systems.”

The country that claims to want to ban the placement
of weapons in space therefore seems already to have
placed weapons there — and now to be using dangerous
maneuvers in orbit, by satellites that have demonstrated
their ability to fire projectiles at other satellites, as a tool of
threat and intimidation. A humorist might point out that
this creates a golden opportunity for the Kremlin’s “no first
placement of arms in outer space” diplomacy, since now
that Russia has itself become the first to do so, there’s no
reason the rest of the world couldn't sign up to that pledge
with complete equanimity even while moving ahead with
their own space weaponry. We should demand more from
space diplomacy, however, than sour punch lines.

The disingenuous effrontery of Moscow's “space arms
control” propaganda is thus today on full display, and now
that Russia has itself broken whatever 40-year-old taboo
there may have been upon placing weapons in orbit, the

Volume |, Number 12 | July 24, 2020

stage now seems set for a dangerous new arms race in an
arena troublingly unsuited to traditional arms control. As it
stands, no one who fails to condemn Russia’s actions in
space can claim to be at all serious about preventing an
orbital arms race.

Il. Transparency and Confidence, and Space
Norms

But what can be done to reduce threats to space
access and risks to stability in this domain? As it turns out,
if one is willing to put aside unworkable weapon-
prohibitory dreams — and of course with the caveat that
negotiated arrangements are not to be valued for their own
sake but rather on the basis of how they contribute to
security and stability goals — one might be able to do quite
a bit.

Experts have been debating possibilities for
transparency and confidence-building measures (TCBMs) in
outer space for many years. Such diplomatic discussions
go back at least to 1990, and in 1993 a group of
governmental experts (GGE) sponsored by the U.N.
Secretary General produced an extensive report on the
topic. They concluded that TCBMs were possible in the
space domain, and that they could helpfully complement
other efforts to create and maintain confidence between
States:

“Transparency could help allay suspicion and thus
remove some of the factors constraining international
cooperation. Causes of concerns about space
capabilities may also need to be addressed b
measures of arms control and disarmament, as well as
adjustments of transfers of technology, without
inhibiting the potential growth and development of
peaceful space capabilities. ... The Group recommends
that the concepts and proposals on ‘rules of the road,’
as possible components of confidence-building
measures in outer space, should be kept under review.
Factors such as manoeuverability of spacecraft,
potential conflicting orbits and predictability of close
approaches should be taken into consideration.”

More recently, a U.N. General Assembly resolution in
2010 established another GGE to look at such issues, which
submitted its own report, adopted by consensus in July
2013. Among other things, it recommended that countries
do more to publicize and share information on their
national space policies, on developmental and operational
space systems, on each country’s principles and goals in the



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suggested, perhaps we could consider whether it
would be beneficial to establish a norm that it is
irresponsible to conduct on-orbit experiments such as
the ones Russia did recently in close proximity to
another country’s satellites without prior
consultations. That sort of behavior is easy to detect.
The establishment of such a norm, coupled with the
fact that this sort of orbital ‘pattern of life’ is
increasingly easy to detect and assess, would enable
the international community to develop a response —

Volume |, Number 12 | July 24, 2020

into a warfighting domain, but you should know that — as
we made clear in the 2017 National Security Strategy — the
United States considers unfettered access to and freedom
to operate in space to be a vital national interest. Any
harmful interference with or attack upon critical
components of our space architecture that directly affects
this vital U.S. interest will be met with a deliberate
response at a time, place, manner, and domain of our
choosing. As we signaled in the 2018 Nuclear Posture
Review, moreover, any harmful interference with or attack

and perhaps we could thereby help deter such
irresponsible behavior.”

Such precedents make clear that there are important
steps that can indeed be taken in the space arena to
improve stability and predictability, reduce the risk of
accident or miscalculation, improve mutual understanding
and build at least some degree of confidence, and help set
baseline understandings of responsible behavior. Thinking
along these lines — that is, drawing upon the rich legacy of
precedents for analogous applicability in the space domain
—is likely to be more constructive than simply having the
diplomatic community continue to spin its collective
wheels struggling unproductively with the empty Sino-
Russian gamesmanship of PPWT.

Ill. U.S. Space Policy — and a Twofold Challenge

And so, let this paper in effect issue a twofold
challenge to those in Russia and the PRC who seem to
consider themselves the United States’ space adversaries,
who are busily expanding their arsenals of counterspace
weaponry, and who for so long have engaged in diplomatic
stunts to distract everyone from what they are actually
doing. Part of this challenge is what one might describe as
a “negative” one, but the other is a “positive” challenge.

A. Defense and Deterrence in Space

First, the negative challenge. We strongly urge our
would-be space adversaries to reconsider their current
course of action in developing more and more
counterspace weapons, and to eschew or abandon
weapons that could be placed in orbit. We are quite well
aware of what you are doing, and | can promise you that
catalyzing a full-scale space arms race with the United
States is not in your interest.

To those would-be adversaries, | say that the United
States understands full well that you have turned space

upon critical components of the space architectures that
are integral to our strategic command and control systems
and early warning and attack assessment capabilities could
lead to significant escalation — and might be deemed a
“significant non-nuclear strategic attack” within the
meaning of the United States’ nuclear weapons declaratory
policy. We take deterrence in all domains, including space,
very seriously.

Moreover, let me make clear to these would-be
adversaries that the United States is committed to
maintaining such a robust deterrence posture for as long as
we need to — and that we are devoting significant resources
and attention to the space competition that your
destabilizing space weapon buildups are doing so much to
catalyze. The PRC has an operational space command
within its Strategic Support Force, and Russia has had a
Space Troops (Kosmicheskie Voyska) branch within its
Aerospace Forces since 2015. The United States now also
has organized a purpose-specific United States Space
Force, we have reestablished the U.S. Space Command, we
have revived the National Space Council for the first time in
nearly a quarter century, and we are hard at work to ensure
our country’s ability to meet and to overcome any
challenges you may present us in outer space.

Allin all, therefore, we say clearly to our space
competitors: We do not seek and we do not want an arms
race in outer space, but if you force us into one, the United
States is determined not to be outrun. That is the
“negative” aspect of the challenge we offer, and | hope you
take it very seriously indeed.

B. An Invitation to Space Security Progress

On the “positive” side of the ledger, however, the
above discussion has made it clear that despite the
inherent problems of bringing effective “arms control” into
the outer space arena, there is a great deal we can do
together. There remain important opportunities to reduce
risks and manage security-related competition in space, to


Arms Control and International Security Papers
Volume | | Number 12
July 24, 2020

Arms Control in Outer
Space: History and
Prospects

by Christopher A. Ford

The Arms Control and International Security Papers are produced by the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control
and International Security in order to make U.S. State Department policy analysis available in an electronically-accessible
format compatible with “social distancing” during the COVID-19 crisis.



Arms Control and International Security Papers
Arms Control in Outer Space: History and Prospects

space. Effective arms control of the traditional sort is
likely to remain out of reach in space for the
foreseeable future, but there is still much we can do in
specifying how responsible spacefarers should behave,
and in calling out those who do not do so. Shame on
anyone who does not take this chance to move
forward.

The United States’ agenda for space is thus somewhat
complex in its details, but it is surpassingly simple in
concept: as the Outer Space Treaty made clear more than
half a century ago, outer space must be free for exploration
and use by all. Implementing this vision in a time of
growing threats to space access and space systems will be
challenging, but it is by no means impossible. Indeed,

Arms Control and International Security Papers

Volume |, Number 12 | July 24, 2020

there are important steps forward that lie within our
collective grasp, and no creditable or even intelligible
reason not to take them.

So to Russia and the PRC, we say: abandon your
dreams of counterspace warfighting, and your unverifiable,
ineffective, and disingenuous arms control proposals, and
join with the United States in a new space security initiative
-a new effort both to build improved transparency and
confidence-building measures in space, and to articulate
voluntary, non-legally binding norms of responsible State
behavior making clear that space is not a lawless realm and
that responsible behavior is expected of all serious
spacefaring nations. We look forward to sitting down with
you to discuss how we can achieve these important ends.

The Arms Control and International Security Papers are produced by the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control
and International Security in order to make U.S. State Department policy analysis available in an electronically-accessible
format compatible with “social distancing” during the COVID-a9 crisis.



Arms Control and International Security Papers
Arms Control in Outer Space: History and Prospects

Long-established practice between the Cold War
superpowers under the Incidents at Sea Agreement of 1972
(INCSEA) also provides a potentially space-useful
precedent by articulating mutual understandings about
how the two parties’ naval forces should behave in their
particular operating domain in order to avoid collisions,
reduce risk to civilian sea traffic, maintain safe operating
distances and practices when maneuvering near each
other, provide notification of exercises or operations that
would be seen as particularly dangerous to the other side,
and avoid certain types of provocative simulated attacks at
sea. INCSEA has not prevented all such problems, of
course, and Russia still engages in some very unsafe and
provocative behaviors. That said, the agreement has been
an important source of (relative) stability and predictably at
sea for decades, and provides a baseline against which each
side can evaluate the other's behavior. (At a minimum,
U.S. and Russian naval forces are trained to understand the
differences between norms in peacetime and in war.) U.S.
and Russian naval leaders still hold annual meetings on
INCSEA implementation and naval risk reduction.

As noted earlier, space and missile launch notifications
are also routinely provided pursuant to the HCOC between
most countries of the world. Rather conspicuously and
ominously, the PRC has hitherto not subscribed to the
HCOC. Nevertheless, Beijing and Moscow have their own
separate bilateral launch notification agreement — thus
illustrating both that Russia and the PRC understand the
risk that a surprise missile launch might be mistaken for an
attack, and that there would seem to be nothing
intrinsically problematic in Chinese eyes about giving pre-
launch notifications.

With regard to communications, the senior most
leaders in Washington and Moscow have had the ability to
talk directly to each other in a crisis via “hotline’-type
arrangements since 1963, and since 1987 have also been
able to conduct treaty data exchanges and other
communications through their Nuclear Risk Reduction
Centers. There is as yet little or no direct operator-to-
operator communications linkage or practice in the space
arena — though U.S. and Russian military leaders and
tactical forces do have direct communications linkages for
certain matters of operational deconfliction and crisis
management in other domains such as in the air and at sea
- but this, too, may be an area worth exploring for space
application.

As | have argued elsewhere, moreover, there is also
surely much we can learn in the space arena from the

Volume |, Number 12 | July 24, 2020

excellent work of multiple cyber GGEs in articulating
common understandings of voluntary, nonbinding norms
of responsible State behavior during peacetime in
cyberspace:

“Lam convinced ... that it remains possible to develop
better and better normative expectations in outer space
—Jjust as we have been making progress on doing in the
even faster-moving arena of cyberspace during the last
few U.N.-sponsored cyberspace Groups of
Governmental Experts (GGEs). U.S. diplomats are
looking, in other words, to work constructively with
their counterparts in other spacefaring nations to
develop approaches to outer space norms that will
help improve predictability and collective ‘best

practices’ in the space domain.

“There is nothing untoward about trying to develop
normative expectations in outer space. ... We clearly
need to do more to develop non-legally-binding
international norms of responsible behavior that are
complementary to the existing legal regime — both
through ‘bottom-up’ best practices developed
cooperatively with other the full range of established
and emerging space actors, and through ‘top-down’
voluntary, non-legally binding TCBMs. And we need to
do this in the security arena, in order to cope with the
challenges presented by Russian and Chinese space

weaponry.

“... Why not, for instance, start where the cyberspace
GGEs did, in acknowledging that there's nothing
special about outer space that would make it an arena
of warfare different from any other with regard to the
applicability of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) —
and that, therefore, traditional IHL principles of
humanity, necessity, proportionality, and distinction
between combatants and non-combatants apply in
outer space? Is it possible also for the space domain to
follow the Cyber GGEs in articulating a nonbinding
norm against peacetime attacks upon critical civilian
infrastructure that is largely owned and operated by
the private sector? And what about those Russian
satellites that appear to be capable of firing projectiles
but yet maneuver up alongside of other countries’
satellites? Is it possible to articulate a standard for
what constitutes responsible — and thus, impliedh
irresponsible — behavior in proximity operations?

“Such questions deserve sustained attention. As
General Raymond, the Chief of Space Operations has



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Arms Control in Outer Space: History and Prospects

satellites,” subsequently realized that such a “ban”
approach was a fool's errand.

Moreover, even if one could define the problem, no
intelligible scheme for verifying such a prohibition has ever
been devised, as Russia and China, the primary drafters of
such misbegotten initiatives as the “Treaty on the
Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space,
the Threat of Use of Force against Outer Space Objects”
(PPWT), have themselves admitted at the Conference on
Disarmament. Systematic international close-in inspection
of devices in orbit — presumably aimed at discerning
weapon-like capabilities, to the extent that these could
somehow be distinguished from other capabilities - seems
quite unfeasible even for the thousands of space objects
that currently orbit the globe, let alone for the many
thousands more that are being readied in this effervescent
era of rapidly-advancing space innovations. (Such close
inspections might also increase operational risk if not
conducted by the most skilled of operators, for it is very
difficult to do such operations, and undertaking them —
especially without notice — could increase
misunderstandings regarding a country’s intentions.
Recent Russian close-proximity maneuvers, for instance,
may have resulted in a collision creating potentially

dangerous space debris.)

Nor has any serious verification regime ever been
proposed for terrestrially-based anti-satellite (ASAT)
weaponry, which can take greatly varying forms — including
direct-ascent missiles that are not morphologically
different from other sorts of long-range missiles that
transit space altitudes, as well as directed-energy or radio-
frequency emitters largely indistinguishable from those
that sophisticated modern militaries might possess for a
range of evolving terrestrial applications. For the
elementary reasons of velocity and physical fragility
described above, every country on the planet with a space
launch capability, moreover, has a degree of inherent space
kill capability. How could one possibly verify “non-
weaponization” across this domain? Even setting aside its
apparently insoluble definitional conundra, therefore,
effective and verifiable “arms control in space” currently
seems entirely unavailable.

B. Disingenuous Proposals

Serious observers of the space domain recognize these
problems, but this has not stopped some countries — most
prominently Russia and the PRC - from trying to take
advantage of others’ ignorance, credulity, or wishful

Volume |, Number 12 | July 24, 2020

thinking in order to advance disingenuous and potentially
even dangerous “arms control” proposals. Exhuming a
treaty proposal first advanced by Soviet President Yuri
Andropov in 1983, Moscow and Beijing first began efforts
to promote the idea of a treaty on “prevention of an arms
race in outer space” (PAROS) as early as 2002, and by 2008
they had begun touting a full-fledged draft treaty text. A
revision of this treaty was proffered in 2014, the current
version styling itself the PPWT.

Russia and the PRC even managed to persuade enough
countries to support the idea that the U.N. General
Assembly established a group of governmental experts
(GGE) in 2017 to explore the parameters of a legally-
binding instrument on preventing an arms race in space,
including a prohibition of the placement of weapons in
space. Resolutions along such lines also commonly pop up
in the U.N. First Committee. (Interestingly, and perhaps
tellingly, although Russia touts its unilateral commitment
not to be the “first” to place weapons in space — about the
special absurdity of which | will have more to say below —
Moscow's ally in these space arms control efforts, the PRC,
has refused to make such a commitment.)

None of these efforts, however, do anything
meaningful to solve the problems described above, which
are intrinsic to any attempt to apply traditional weapon-
prohibitory “arms control” in the space domain. They
neither provide a workable definition of a “space weapon”
nor do they even attempt to provide a way to verify their
purported prohibition thereof.

By no coincidence, furthermore, none of these efforts
even attempt to address the problem of terrestrially-based
ASAT capabilities that — as this paper will describe further
below — both Moscow and Beijing today possess.
Proponents of the draft PPWT claim that it would ban the
threat or use of force against space objects of other parties
and the placement of weapons in space itself, but nothing
in the draft treaty would prevent Russia and the PRC from
continuing to build up their already worrisome arsenals of
counterspace weaponry deployed here on Earth. In effect,
the Sino-Russian “space arms control” campaign thus
amounts to little more than an effort to prohibit the sort of
space-based conventional weapons they fear the United
States might deploy at some point in the future, while still
allowing Moscow and Beijing to continue with their own
terrestrially-based anti-satellite missiles, lasers, jammers,
and other such devices.


Arms Control and International Security Papers
Arms Control in Outer Space: History and Prospects

after conducting one flight test in 1988, it is not clear that
Moscow's approach to such issues has changed much.

In the four decades since U.S.-Soviet ASAT talks broke
down, the use of space and the dependence of terrestrial
society upon space-facilitated communication and other
innovations has expanded. The problems of intensifying
great power competition have also increased, after a brief
post-Cold War lull, and threats to the free exploration and
use of outer space have become ever more acute. Today,
we are all vastly more dependent upon space than ever,
even as threats to space activities are maturing at an
alarming rate.

As a result of such problems, diplomats at the U.N.
Conference on Disarmament, for instance, have been
talking - albeit often more at each other than with each
other — about “prevention of an arms race in outer space”
since the early 1980s, with little to show for their efforts so
far. For present-day diplomats struggling with these issues
and seeking a genuinely constructive path forward, it is
important to understand why so many of those past efforts
have proven to be a dead end, for without such
understanding it will be needlessly difficult to take
advantage of the real opportunities for progress that
nonetheless remain.

I. Failures of “Arms Control in Space”

To date, efforts to apply traditional, rule-prohibitive
“arms control” measures in outer space have repeatedly
run aground because the outer space domain is simply, by
its nature, inappropriate for such mechanisms. This isn’t
anyone's fault, exactly — though the modern authoritarian
powers of the Russian Federation and the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) have tried to take advantage of
those who don’t understand the problem, in both cases
discreditably — but it is a reality that present-day diplomats
need to accept and learn to work with.

A. Insoluble Problems

The fundamental difficulty, if one is trying to limit or
ban “weapons in space” in the way that traditional arms
control tries to address other dangerous tools, is that it is
all but impossible to come up with a good definition of a
“space weapon.” Try as one might, there seems to be no
way to avoid being damagingly over-inclusive (i.e., leading
to the prohibition of technologies essential to peaceful
civilian and scientific uses of space), dangerously under-

Volume |, Number 12 | July 24, 2020

inclusive (i-e., failing to cover entire categories of anti-
space weaponry), or both.

As | have been warning for more than a decade, this
difficulty stems in large part from the dual-use nature of
space technology, since essentially anything that can
maneuver in space at all can function quite effectively as a
“space weapon.” Even the merest “fender bender”
between delicate technological objects moving at orbital
velocities is enough to cause debilitating (or catastrophic)
damage, and if an object has the ability to move through
space, let alone actively to maneuver in that domain, it has
the inherent potential to smash an adversary space object
into smithereens. Nor does a “weapon” even have to make
physical contact, since even radio transmitters or other
energy emitters can function as counterspace weapons by
jamming or manipulating control signals, or damaging
sensors or other equipment in ways which can disable or
destroy space objects.

These definitional challenges are only worsening, with
the advent of sophisticated new technologies for on-orbit
satellite maintenance and repair. After all, the same sorts
of capabilities that might allow one satellite to do things
such as replace a depleted fuel reservoir on another
satellite could just as easily be used to damage an object, or
perhaps even capture it for subsequent exploitation. (One
might perhaps analogize this problem to that of the human
hand itself, which with its dexterous digits and opposable
thumb is marvelously good at using tools for human
betterment, yet also quite good at scratching and poking,
and makes a very effective fist. How would one define and
prohibit possession of a “hand weapon,” or its
“deployment” at the end of a human arm?) This problem
has been recognized for years, including by a group of
governmental experts commissioned by the U.N. Secretary
General, who reported in 1993 that

“the application of space technologies is ambivalent in
nature and that dual-purpose aspects of sensitive
technologies should not be defined as harmful per se.
It is the way in which they are utilized that determines

whether they are harmful or not.”

The dual-use character of so much space-related
technology thus makes “space weapons” very resistant to
the kind of straightforwardly prohibitive treatment that
comes as a reflex to large parts of the arms control
community. Even the Obama Administration, for example,
which came to office pledging to pursue “a worldwide ban
on weapons that interfere with military and commercial



Arms Control and International Security Papers
Arms Control in Outer Space: History and Prospects

Volume |, Number 12 | July 24, 2020

Arms Control in Outer Space: History and

Prospects

by Christopher A. Ford?

In this AC/S Paper, Assistant Secretary Ford discusses longstanding efforts to
find effective forms of arms control in outer space and the reasons such efforts
have failed in the modern era, before exploring what prospects there yet may
be for international efforts to reduce risk, increase transparency and
predictability, and head off the dangers of an outer space arms race — even as
both the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are

rushing to weaponize the space domain.

Diplomats have been struggling with what to do about
security issues in outer space for many years. To be sure, in
1959, the United Nations General Assembly established a
Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS),
and in 1963, it adopted a series of legal principles to govern
the exploration and use of outer space. The Outer Space
Treaty, furthermore, entered into force in 1967, setting
forth important rules such as that outer space shall be free
for exploration and use by all, that it is not subject to
national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, that States
Party may not station weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
in space, and that States shall use the Moon or other
celestial bodies exclusively for peaceful purposes.

Yet despite the Treaty’s significance in setting a global
baseline for space conduct, the Outer Space Treaty had
little to say about the risks and challenges that would be
presented as States extended their terrestrial rivalries and
arms competitions into the space domain in ways that
didn’t involve WMD. Similarly, the Partial Test Ban Treaty
imposed a prohibition upon nuclear explosions in space in
1963, but very little of what might be termed “arms

control” was developed to address non-WMD challenges.
(Nor has that Treaty been signed by China.)

History records one major attempt by the United
States in the late 1970s to negotiate an agreement on anti-
satellite (ASAT) weapons. In November 1977, President
Jimmy Carter wrote Soviet General Secretary Leonid
Brezhnev that Soviet anti-satellite (ASAT) testing in space
had become “of increasing concern to us.” Carter warned
that a Soviet co-orbital ASAT was “a seriously destabilizing
development which we have voluntarily foregone, although
we have the technical capability to build [such] systems.”
However, bilateral negotiations in 1978 and 1979 with the
USSR on ASAT arms control were hampered not only by
technical definitions of anti-satellite capabilities, but also
Moscow's insistence that the U.S. space shuttle program be

subject to any ASAT agreement.

In a foreshadowing of present-day Russian hypocrisies,
history also records that the Soviet Union was developing
its own space shuttle in a secret program even while it was
negotiating to impose restrictions on the U.S. space
shuttle. Although that Soviet program was abandoned

2 Dr. Ford serves as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, and is additionally performing the duties of
the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security. He previously served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director
for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Counterproliferation on the U.S. National Security Council staff.