Despite a general lack of attention in America, the Modern Space Race is underway today. Governments and militaries within Russia, China, and the United States are vying for space-tech dominance in exploration, militarization, and defense. No matter the many exciting potential outcomes arising from the emerging space-tech field, some developments, specifically the building and testing of counterspace tech or anti-satellites, bring severe risks. Modern options include spoofing signals, frequency jamming, and laser dazzling; these weapons can temporarily or permanently hinder daily functions. If our satellites are damaged or destroyed, one attack could result in lost positioning, communications, weather, or military surveillance capabilities, leaving tools as mundane as mapping your way to work and as severe as detecting North Korean missile activity under question.

While the above non-kinetic technologies are potentially destructive to a target satellite and its associated nation, these weapons are beneficial because they are controlled and impair clear targets. Nations inflict harm with non-kinetic capabilities as a planned attack, making their damages less common. Kinetic options, on the contrary, tell a different story. Even testing these counterspace attacks can be more destructive and affect more parties than any direct non-kinetic attack.

Kinetic anti-satellite (KE-ASAT) weapons, defined by their archaic, “hit-to-kill” style of dismantling satellites, introduce alarming, unpredictable risks to all space-launching nations. KE-ASAT missiles are fired from the ground – direct ascent – or another orbiting object until they collide with a target satellite. In addition to taking out an enemy satellite, this collision can release thousands of space debris larger than 1cm in diameter and millions more that are much smaller into orbit. These pieces are hazardous to any nation with capabilities in that orbital region. At only 1 cm in diameter, low earth orbit debris traveling at speeds about 17,000 mph are impossible to shield against when colliding with unsuspecting space objects.

In 2007, China successfully tested its Kinetic Kill Vehicle (KKV), which weighed in at about 600 kilograms and crashed into an old weather satellite “at a combined relative velocity of 32,000 km/h” (Marshall 88-9). This ground-based direct ascent KE-ASAT collision directly resulted in at least 35,000 pieces of debris greater than 1 cm in diameter (89). While this event was one of the most significant debris-causing events, China is not alone in using KE-ASATs, as Russia, India, and the United States all have conducted at least one debris-causing test as recent as 2021, 2019, and 2008, respectively. Each test resulted in hundreds, if not thousands, of large debris.

The risk of these KE-ASAT tests is not merely speculative. In 2021, When Russia tested a direct ascent missile on one of its satellites, 1,500 pieces of subsequent metal debris forced the International Space Station to make an emergency maneuver (Marshall 89). Although the number of tests remains low – in addition to no previous KE-ASAT foreign attacks – the effects of this technology have been long-lasting. Some debris pieces leave orbit for numerous reasons, including atmospheric drag, yet a significant proportion of current debris will remain a hazard for decades or centuries. Take China’s 2007 launch, for example; while some have fallen out of orbit, a staggering 3,000 pieces of large debris (greater than 10 cm in diameter) are still orbiting in congested paths as of March 2021. This debris leads many low earth orbit satellites to use extra fuel to avoid a collision or simply be destroyed if avoidance is impossible.

The problem of space debris is of significant severity to humanity. While unintended collisions into satellites are costly and dangerous, this risk is not unidimensional. When debris collides into a satellite – or another piece of debris – the resulting collision creates more debris, allowing for more “cascading” collisions, called the Kessler Syndrome. Eventually, a “critical mass” is reached, where the accumulated debris breaks all current capabilities across entire zones or orbital regions and renders these areas unable to house new satellites. At the highest level, such destruction could risk necessary surveillance technology and our future ability to make habitations off Earth – a vital step in ensuring our species’ success. Because KE-ASAT tests and attacks create sizable and unpredictable debris outcomes, they greatly peril a Kessler Syndrome event. As such, the international community should consider kinetic anti-satellites as weapons of mass destruction.

Defined by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is “a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, or other device that is intended to harm a large number of people.” Non-proliferation and non-development efforts for these weapons have been imperfect, yet great leaps have occurred. To combat WMDs, the United Nations has overseen various “specialized agencies” and multilateral treaties like the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Biological Weapons Convention. These initiatives have increased international safety and reduced the threat against the recognized WMDs.

It is no coincidence that the agreed upon WMDs have seen prominent attention, as the United Nations explicitly “[gives] highest priority to reducing and eventually eliminating nuclear weapons, destroying chemical weapons, and strengthening the prohibition of biological weapons” – the three globally considered WMDs. Unfortunately, multilateral KE-ASAT bans have found much less success without such a distinction. Unilaterally, the United States committed to stopping KE-ASAT tests in 2022; however, the most recent multilateral test ban attempt failed in 2014 because Russia and China’s plan only banned orbitally launched KE-ASATs, ignoring direct ascent tests.

The threat of a KE-ASAT-induced Kessler Syndrome event is not going away, and even if relative peace is maintained on Earth, nations testing KE-ASATs may cripple our easy access to orbit and beyond. To combat any immediate harm, governments must first commit to a multilateral KE-ASAT test ban, with the goal of later reducing the development of future technologies. Without testing, nations are more likely to lose confidence in capabilities, making them less effective in future times of war.

However, if a successful ban is to happen multilaterally, we – scholars, citizens, and policymakers – must first see KE-ASATs as beyond just a missile. This technology will indirectly impede military operations, severe weather tracking, and our ability to become multi-planetary; it is a weapon of mass destruction. Language matters, and until we respect the genuine threat of KE-ASATs, we risk succumbing to their damages. Without the WMD label, less attention and urgency will face the subject. Simply put, to ensure modern international security and future ambitions to explore beyond Earth, we must first consider kinetic anti-satellite weapons as weapons of mass destruction.

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