 The new Air Force Space Operations Directorate has achieved operating capability. This is one of several key initiatives the Air Force is pursuing to adapt its operations, processes and organizational structure to reflect the reality that space is a warfighting domain. Space superiority, like air superiority, is not an American birthright. It requires vigilance and action and ensure we gain and maintain air and space superiority. America is gearing up to fight a war in space. They want to dominate space to ensure their dominance of the Earth below. That is the core of their strategy, repeated in official documents, congressional testimony and the internal newscast from members of the US military. In July 2021, I saw some news articles that made me look more closely at this story. The US military wanted a large site for a radome installation, a kilometre across, either in Scotland or southern England. The reason why I was interested is that a site which fitted at description, USAF, Bathurst and John, is just a short distance from where I live. This is a complicated issue. To explain it as clearly as possible, I will have to break it down into three parts. Space debris, dark and warfighting in space. Then I will tie the issue all together in the conclusion. Part 1, space debris. Space is big, really big. However, humans only use an infinitesimal part of it, the area immediately above our heads. Therein lies the problem. This is the key to the ecological issue of space debris. Unwanted junk orbiting the Earth which sails no purpose, in dangers of the satellites, but which we are unable to remove. Like the hubris behind the nuclear waste problem, satellites were launched in the 1950s without any concern about disposal. Today that failure has the potential to deny all of humanity access to space in the future. The further out they are, the more slowly a satellite moves relative to the Earth's surface. That means certain altitudes favour certain satellite applications. These different altitudes are classified into various orbits according to these uses. Low Earth orbit is from the atmosphere up to about 1200 miles above the surface. The lower limit is about 200 miles, below which satellites begin to drag on the atmosphere and slow down. Most satellites are somewhere from 400 to 1100 miles up, orbiting about every 90 minutes. Most satellites have been launched into low Earth orbit, so it is the most overcrowded. This is also the area for manned spaceflight. More important than manned flight, low Earth orbit is the domain of Earth observation satellites, which are critical to everything from weather forecasting to climate change research to detecting pollution or mapping habitats around the world. Medium Earth orbit extends from 1200 to 22,000 miles above the surface. The main use for this area are slower moving satellites, such as global positioning systems, many of which orbit around 12,600 miles up. Geosynchronous Earth orbit is on the boundary between the high and medium orbits, 22,236 miles up. Here are satellite moves at relatively the same speed as the ground below, meaning from Earth it appears as a fixed point in the sky. Most orbit near the equator to give a large footprint across the Earth's inhabited regions and are mainly used for communications and broadcast TV. According to the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, up until April 2021, 11,139 objects had been launched into space. Of those, 7,389 were still up there, half of them no longer working. What's more significant is that a third of those launches took place in the last five years. The first satellite, and the first put into lower orbit, was Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957. It broadcasts for three weeks, ran out of power, and fell back to Earth two months later in January 1958. The first satellite in geosynchronous orbit was Syncom 3, launched in August 1964. It operated until 1969 when it was switched off, and it is still there. It occupies a small part of the geosynchronous orbit, and will continue to do so for many years into the future unless it is physically removed. The US Space Surveillance Network brings together different elements of civilian and military space observatories to map and catalogue space debris. It also shares data with other bodies working on the issue, like the United Nations and the European Space Agency. This is the source of much of the public data on space debris. The US military's main tracking capability, adapted from ballistic missile warning systems, is based at six sites around the world, such as Filing Dales in England. It uses radar to track objects as small as 10 cm in diameter in low orbit and around 1 m in diameter in geostationary orbit. Currently the Space Surveillance Network is tracking over 20,000 objects or pieces of space debris larger than 10 cm. The Space Surveillance Network also uses NASA's Orbital Debris Programme sites to detect smaller pieces of debris down to a few millimetres. These systems are currently monitoring another 900,000 pieces of space debris between 1 and 10 cm in size. At present, whole satellites are only a small part of this cloud of debris. There are also spent rockets, and pieces that broke off satellites or were dropped by astronauts. There are estimated to be 129 million objects bigger than 1 mm. A minimator may sound insignificant, but a speck of metal moving at tens of thousands of miles per hour has the energy of a bullet. At 10 cm, it has the energy of a large bomb. The first recorded case of a satellite being hit by a known piece of space debris was in 1995. In the worst case, one satellite may accidentally crash into another. This happened for the first time in 2009. According to the European Space Agency's data, a fifth of satellite failures happened for no apparent reason. This is most likely the result of being hit by unseen pieces of space debris. That 2009 satellite collision generated over 2,000 fragments larger than 10 cm. The risk is that one of those will hit another satellite and create more debris, which might hit another, and then another. The worst-case scenario is that there will be a cascade effect, like a chain reaction, destroying most of the satellites in that orbit. This is called the Kessler syndrome, after the scientist who first calculated its probability in 1978. The probability of cascade is related to the density of satellites. The more satellites, the higher the risk, as there are more satellites to sustain the cascade effect. Today's satellite launches are rising exponentially, driven by new commercial satellite constellations in lower orbit, such as Elon Musk's Starlink project, with around 1,600 of the planned 42,000 satellites having been launched since February 2018. Other large constellations are planned too, by one web, around 900 satellites, Boeing, around 1600 satellites, and Amazon, around 3,200 satellites. What is required to initiate cascade is a large fragmenting event, like a satellite collision, or a satellite being destroyed by the military. Once initiated, it cannot be stopped, and could be a barrier to get into space for a number of decades, until most of the debris has cleared by falling back to Earth. In 2016, the US Air Force's Budget Research Appropriations listed a new project, Dark, the Deep Space Advanced Radar Concept. 10 million was allocated in the 2017 budget, and 30 to 40 million each year from 2018 to 2021. Successive Budget Appropriation Reports describe Dark as follows. Dark will leverage ongoing defense science and technology efforts to mature radar concepts and technologies to develop and evaluate prototypes that demonstrate increased sensitivity, capacity, search rates, and scalability to detect, track and maintain custody of objects in deep space orbit. The current and future space domain demands that space systems be responsive to new and changing threats, and can rapidly integrate new capabilities to make our war fighting force more resilient in a contested battle space, and ensure our space mission force is ready to defeat a thinking adversary in a complex, multi-domain battle space. This implies that Dark is not a passive system for space debris tracking. It is an active part of an unstated space weapons program. The draft Budget for 2022, produced in May 2021, lists an appropriation for 2022 of $123 million. The US Space Force is now shifting into the deployment of Dark at the first site in the USA to be contracted and assessed in 2022 for construction in 2023. The current budget draft also notes. The Space Force intends to develop and field two additional Dark sites in the future to culminate in a final operational system of three global sites to ensure SDA coverage. A strategy based on the success of the site one rapid prototype will be developed later for sites two and three. It appears site two is planned for Scotland or southern England, and site three is in Australia. The Dark system uses four to six parabolic dish antennas, or radomes, to send signals into space. The signals bounce off objects and are received on the ground by 10 to 15 dish antennas. To improve signal reception, the receiving antennas need to be spread out over a wide area. The figure suggested is an area one kilometre in diameter. The current budget does not list the figures for sites two and three, though earlier budgets did. The schedule described in the budget indicates the UK based Dark site could commence construction in early 2024 to be completed and operational by 2026. Site three will be constructed over 2025 to 2026. Of course, having the ultimate telescope to see objects in space cannot of itself protect or create security from the military's use of space. And while the Dark plan calls for making our war fighting force more resilient in a contested battle space, what is not stated anywhere is how this passive role of looking at space debris can do this. Part three, war fighting in space. In mid-July 2021, the media dribbled out stories about Dark following the visit of UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace to the US Space and Missiles Systems Centre. In these stories a partner only highlights the way Ben Wallace's visit was misreported, but also highlights the way in which threats in space are misrepresented to the public by politicians and the military. The BBC news item said, Now the US military wants to build a large new radar site in Britain to track targets in deep space. It comes amid growing concerns about a space arms race. The US and Britain have accused China and Russia of developing weapons to shoot down satellites. The US Space Force is developing a global radar system to identify potential threats up to 22,000 miles in space. As well as the UK, other sites will include Texas and Australia. Then they interviewed Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. Space is a growing domain for both commerce but also to protect all the key national infrastructure that we need to in today's world. It is under threat in some areas, our adversaries are weaponising space and so we have to make sure at the very least we're providing resilience. The correspondent concluded It may prove controversial, but the government's made clear it wants Britain to be in the vanguard of efforts to keep space safe. To make sense of that, it is first necessary to know the history of space weapons and their use. Russia experimented with anti-ballistic missile and anti-satellite systems from the 1960s. The project was abandoned in 1983. The first country to develop and test a successful anti-satellite weapon against a real satellite was the USA. On the 13th of September 1985, an F-35 jet fired an ASM-135 anti-satellite weapon from an altitude of just over 7 miles. The missile destroyed a NASA satellite, the Solwind Solar Observatory, in low Earth orbit around 330 miles up. After the destruction of the Solwind satellite, 267 fragments were tracked, some pushed into an orbit 300 miles higher than the satellite. Due to this relatively high orbit, the debris cloud created by the destruction of the satellite continued to orbit for another 20 years. A year later, in September 1988, the US tested another space weapon system, colliding two satellites together in low Earth orbit as part of its Star Wars program. Due to the concern about the amount of space debris created by the previous test, this test took place close to the atmosphere to reduce the spread of debris. China tested an anti-satellite weapon against one of its large weather satellites on the 11th of January 2007. To date, this was the largest ever single fragmentation event, generating over 3,000 pieces of debris. A year later, in February 2008, in Operation Burnt Frost, the US shot down a malfunctioning spy satellite with an anti-satellite weapon, launched from the USS Lake Erie in the Pacific Ocean. As it was nearing re-entry, most of the debris fell back to Earth. Russia did not successfully launch an anti-satellite weapon system, the A235 Nudol, until 2015. What's curious is that in these stories about space weapons and threats, the country they leave off the list is India, who tested its own anti-satellite weapon, codenamed Mission Shakti, in March 2019. This generated over 100 fragments, but it was near to the atmosphere to reduce debris. Sky News also covered Ben Wallace's visit, though it was even less informative. They interviewed Air Chief Marshal, Sir Mike Wigston. I would say that we need to prepare for the potential to defend our critical infrastructure in space. Right now there are countries like Russia and China that are doing things, developing systems that are a threat to satellites. The Sky News report continued. To help counter the threat, the US is planning to build three radar bases that can probe deep space. They'll be able to detect objects as small as a football, up to 36,000 kilometres away. Britain says it's focusing on how to defend against space weapons, not build any of its own, but space is viewed as a war-fighting domain. They also interviewed Ben Wallace, who said... I don't think there would be a standalone war in space and it wouldn't be like Star Wars and Moonraker with lasers firing all over the place. I suspect in a major conflict, space assets would be targeted. So we have to now invest and prepare today to make sure we have alternatives. Of course, how do we defend our critical infrastructure with a system which only watches? Again, as with dark, that part of the problem seems to be emitted from the discussion. What was not stated in those news items, but which was revealed by the Express in February 2021, was that British pilots are training to use American anti-satellite weapons on British aircraft. Pilots have been selected for training missions aimed at combating Chinese and Russian military and communication satellites in times of war. Simulated exercises are set to get underway before flying training exercises take place. Training flights without missiles would see typhoon pilots fly to 40,000 feet before embarking on a 20,000-feet vertical climb. During a real-life attack they would target enemy satellites and release anti-satellite missiles at 60,000 feet before returning. Currently the USA has the most advanced anti-satellite system. If any of those systems were ever used in the most congested part of low Earth orbit, at a time when even more satellites are being crammed into this space, it risks initiating a cascade event. Put simply, their space security system actually endangers the use of space by everyone should it ever be put into action. That is not the situation which was conveyed by the media in July 2021. What is clear from Ben Wallace's US visit is that the British government is in an advanced state of planning to deploy American anti-satellite weapons systems for use by the British military, using Britain as one of the major operational hubs to run this global system. Forgive the pun, but we are being deliberately kept in the dark about the facts of these systems and their safety. Conclusion. No final frontier for the military. Space represents one of the last truly global commons. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prevents states laying claim to space, albeit that has not stopped certain states trying to roll back those restrictions for certain commercial activities. The problem with the treaty is that, created in the early years of the space race, it is vague and out of date. In particular, while it prevents weapons of mass destruction in space, the wording of that is vague in the context of today's weapons systems. In 2002, Russia and China jointly submitted a proposal for a treaty to prevent the deployment of weapons in outer space and the threat or use of force against outer space objects. An updated treaty was submitted by Russia and China in 2008 and a third in 2014. In 2017, following a review by the General Assembly, a proposal was made to ban an arms race in space. The first step was to convene a group of experts to review the existing treaty framework and make recommendations to update and extend that system to other space weapons. In October 2017, the USA, backed by the UK, opposed this and it was defeated. Therefore, Ben Wallace, in stating the threat to space that China and Russia represented without acknowledging the previous history of space militarisation and UN negotiations, was deliberately misleading the public as to past events relating to these issues and deflecting any discussion about the USA and UK's opposition to a UN process that will prevent the threats he was talking about. Therein lies the contradiction which must prohibit the militarisation of space. The military of any state cannot be allowed to have dominance in space since any action to create security could lead to an escalating cascade that would deny access to all. And due to the high risk, even the single use of an anti-satellite weapon could lead to widespread destruction, targeting civilian and non-combatants which is the very definition of a weapon of mass destruction. Any system which is essential in the preparation, launching and the guidance of such weapons such as the deep space advance radar concept must be considered equally reprehensible to the weapon itself.