The UK Ministry of Defense has released its space defense strategy, raising
the worrying specter of an “exo-atmospheric nuclear attack.”
However, the document offers some concrete proposals to counter such
threats.
Released on Tuesday, the UK Defense Space Strategy document describes space
as a potential future battlefield, fraught with threats ranging from cyber
attacks and anti-satellite lasers, to Exo-atmospheric Nuclear Attacks.
"Such an attack, possibly launched from a satellite in orbit, would be a
permanent killing event," the report said.
However, the report did not specify the possibility of such an attack,
whether Britain's adversaries came close to such capabilities, or what the
term "permanent assassination event" meant.
Likewise, the report does not describe any way to counter such an event,
other than offering a commitment to understanding, designing and field
technology to protect and defend UK interests in the event of a space-based
war.
Instead it illustrates how Britain plans to invest in space-based
reconnaissance, from investing more than $6.8 billion in the Skynet
surveillance satellite to deepening Britain's involvement in the US-led
Olympic Defender space defense program.
The report comes four months after Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled the
UK's National Space Strategy, which the government says strengthens
Britain's ambition to become the leading provider of small commercial
satellite launches in Europe by 2030.
Johnson has hailed the launch of the strategy as a step towards "galactic
Britain," but his opponents have accused him of a classic bluff to distract
from domestic problems.
Recent reports have described Russia and China as international threats,
citing both countries' testing of anti-satellite missiles in recent years.
Specifically, the report says Russia left a trail of space debris after last
year's tests.
However, similar tests have been carried out by the US as far back as the
1980s and by India in 2019, with no mention in the UK Ministry of Defence
report.
