The legal mandate of a US space force

When President Trump announced his intention to create a space force, a legal debate took place on the rationale for such a force. (credit: NASA / Bill Ingalls)

by Mike Lorrey
Monday, October 1, 2018

Since President Trump announced that he would form the US Space Force, the validity, possibility, and even common sense of his proposal have been the subject of much debate. Existing military services deny the need, while hindering the use of the US space, to provide services only to existing combat forces on the ground, in the air and at sea, while Ignoring the growing space industry and the work of some, such as SpaceX, on Mars settle.

It reminds me of the 1920s and 1930s, when US air power was fully controlled by the navy and the military. Most of their air power was in the form of airships, which they used as advanced observers of artillery and anti-submarine warfare. They had a few old World War I bombers and many war and post-war biplanes that served as "pursuit" planes (the previous term for fighter planes because their main work was not to fight but to pursue balloons, airships, and bombers to shoot them.) Their typical speed ranged from 120 kilometers per hour to twice as much, but not much more.

The Navy loved biplanes because they could easily be launched from catapults mounted on battleships to serve as advanced observers, scouring hundreds of miles in search of enemy fleets and could suffer damage: losing part of a wing was not a big deal The Army appreciated the fact that biplanes were cheap because, just like the Navy, they saw no need for airplanes if they were not weapons against other air vehicles and, therefore, not weapons to use in their main missions of domination of the land and the sea. The idea that the air is another area in which gaining superiority did not come to them in the spirit.

Then General Mitchell arrived and, with his planes, sank a number of the largest German battleships (the Ostfreisland, in particular) in 1921, which had gone under the armistice regime, proving that it was possible to use aircraft against major ships and other major weapon systems. He argued that airplanes should be considered as important as ships, tanks and artillery, and that air was now a war field to dominate to allow dominance on land and at sea .

Mitchell's demonstration proved to the public that in 1921 the battleships were obsolete in the face of air power, but the military authorities refused to acknowledge such a reality and, instead of admitting that he was right they sent him away and had him dismembered. trade union riots in West Virginia. When, later on, the Navy's negligence resulted in the catastrophic crash of an airship causing significant loss of life, Mitchell publicly stated that senior commanders were so negligent. He was brought before a court martial, but those responsible for the current negligence were able to escape.

The United States was so trapped at the beginning of the Second World War that we tried to stay out of the war while desperately working to modernize our military forces, including our air capabilities. However, in Pearl Harbor, most battleships of the Pacific Fleet were sunk. We had only two aircraft carriers operating in the US Navy, but that proved one day what Mitchell tried to prove in 1921. It took 20 years in the United States to learn this lesson and almost lost a war before it's triggered because of that. refusal to learn. It was not until 1947, well after the end of the Second World War, that the air force became an independent military service and was the sole holder of the atomic bomb, the most powerful weapon in the world. 'history.

Mitchell is now considered the father of the US Air Force, but the Air Force has forgotten the lessons of his experience regarding the new area of ​​space combat. He is now as resolute, calcified and stuck in Earth-bound paradigms that the Navy and the Army were and are now. They view space only as a field for providing data services and observing land and sea forces, airbases and missile silos. The last time the Air Force advocated the use of military vehicles with crew, it was the air-launched exit vehicle in the early 1980s (of which you were only one). 39, have probably never heard of it), and the last time she had set up an active program for building crewed vehicles: Manned Orbiting. The 1960s laboratory and X-20 Dynasoar programs, which were canceled by Robert "Mac the Knife" MacNamara to save money on spending on Vietnam.

Today, China and Russia are actively developing anti-satellite weapons, sometimes generating significant amounts of debris. They do not retreat despite warnings about the potential catastrophic problem of rendering space useless because of space debris. There are valuable ways to test weapons in the space that do not contribute to the problem of junk food, which the United States uses.

We are fully capable of deploying a full-fledged strategic defense infrastructure capable of stopping major nuclear attacks. We have ABM interceptors in boost phase and terminal phase on Aegis cruisers of the navy. Alaska-based THAAD terminal interceptors are capable of intercepting one or two missiles (due to deployment limitations, not technology capabilities).

We also have intermediate weapons that we can mass produce and deploy in space if we wish. Lockheed Martin has high energy lasers powerful enough and precise to do the job: I've seen the prototypes and plans. As Ashton Martin, a recognized critic of SDI (Strategic Defense Initiatibe), admitted in the 1980s: "The debate is no longer scientific, it is political." In other words, we have the technology to defend the country against a nuclear attack, we simply choose not to do it, neglecting our duty to the country.

But the need for a space force goes far beyond the strategic defense of our country on the ground. The space has become a huge economic market. From GPS products using Global Positioning System satellites to navigate Earth to TV, radio and Internet services, Earth observation and other services, space has become a big market. The satellite industry associations' own market reports estimate that the satellite sector's annual revenues would rise to $ 261 billion in 2016, with an estimate of global growth of 100% over the next two years. next ten years. The turnover of the American industry amounts to about 110 billion dollars. According to another report, the global space economy reached $ 339 billion in 2016. There are now 1,500 operational satellites orbiting the Earth, an increase of 47% in five years. The United States alone operates 594 of these satellites.

Since 2016, SpaceX in particular has become the world's leading provider of space launches, with more than 60% of global commercial space launches in 2018, after a near-zero start in 2012. They offer the cheapest launches and promise to to further reduce them as they continue to be pioneers in rocket recovery and reuse technologies. SpaceX has proposed and built its very high capacity BFR rocket, not only to send massive amounts of payloads and passengers to Mars, but also to create a global point-to-point passenger transport service that can compete with companies allowing travelers to travel anywhere on Earth in about 30 minutes. Obviously, these passenger ballistic shuttles will be important targets for hostile nations and terrorists. Countries like Russia and China may seek to impede SpaceX's ability to colonize Mars, like some extremist environmental groups.

Which brings us to why there is a legal mandate for a space force. While critics falsely claim that the Outer Space Treaty prohibits the use of space for military purposes, this is not the case: it prohibits military bases on the Moon and other celestial bodies such as asteroids. The treaty bans nuclear weapons in space, but not other weapons. As we have seen, various countries have tested conventional weapons in space, including ABM weapons of kinetic destruction and anti-satellite weapons, but also firearms. Evidence suggests that the Soviets were mounting a 23 mm machine gun turret on their three-time-tested Salyut space stations.

The battlefield in space is not limited to the Earth's orbit. It's in the asteroids. Half a dozen companies, potentially endowed with billions of dollars, are currently working on technology development and asteroid extraction projects. A ferrous asteroid with a diameter of one kilometer contains enough nickel, iron, gold, platinum and palladium to exceed the overall productivity of the mining industry. Some believe that the market value of exploitable elements in the asteroid belt would exceed $ 700 billion: enough wealth for every human being on the planet to weigh $ 100 billion.

One hundred billion dollars for every human being on Earth, it also means lot tax revenues and many reasons for people to compete for, retrieve and exploit the most valuable asteroids, and to be concerned about the security of these resources. Either the private companies that develop these resources will be protected by a US Space Force, or they will be asked to arm their own ships and conduct their own private wars in space over these resources when governments refuse to settle their disputes.

Why should governments solve such problems off the Earth? Because they have already accepted. There is another treaty, the Convention on Space Liability, which states that the nation that launches or operates a rocket or spacecraft, or from which rockets are launched or companies that operate spacecraft are based, is fully responsible for the damage caused by these rockets and spacecraft (and, by extension, their passengers, if any)

It means a lot of things. If a reminder comes back into the atmosphere and lands on your house, the country that started it owes you a new home, as well as any compensation for the resulting injuries or deaths. But this also means that since humans and their spacecraft operate in space permanently, conflicts between spacecraft, space stations, their crew and their passengers in space are within the legal jurisdiction of the countries of the world. Where they are launched, or the nations under which they are marked, much like any ocean vessel.

If two humans on a lunar base get drunk and argue and one kills the other, where will the killer be judged? In which courts? Under the convention, it falls under the jurisdiction of the nation of origin or the one that operates the base where the event occurred. The same goes for Martian settlements, ships or asteroid extraction bases, and so on.

This jurisdictional requirement imposes on space nations the duty to put in place a means to strengthen their jurisdiction in space. Not only space lawyers and judges, but in the broader issues of space-based conflict between nations, these disputes will be solved in one way or another by anyone with the most weapons powerful in space.

In the seventeenth century, the king of France Louis XIV, king of the sun, engraved on his naval gun "Ultima Ratio Regum", which means in Latin "last argument of the kings". When it comes to disputes between sovereign powers, whoever has the bigger arms wins, much more often than not. The modern "relative" peace between the powers at the international level is based on the blood and death that were fought in the world wars of the last century, experiences that we do not want to repeat by allowing totalitarian regimes to gain power superior military in all areas. The application of international law always imposes military power. This forces the United States, as the world's largest space-loving nation, to create a US space force.

If we want space to be a jurisdiction in which the rule of law is stable, reliable, uncorrupted and governed by the principles of jurisprudence and the maintenance of diplomatic peace to which the United States aspires, we must have of a US Space Force able to enforce the jurisdiction of the United States. the United States in space as on the high seas to defend the interests of Americans.

Mike Lorrey is the CEO of Galactic Systems Inc., a specialist in virtual reality and blockchain technologies. He is a veteran of the US Air Force and has worked in NewSpace startups, including creating flight simulations for XCOR Aerospace.

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