U.S. Open to Ideas for Limiting Space Weapons

The U.S. government on July 13 told the United Nations that the new U.S. space policy represents "a departure" from the previous doctrine insofar as the United States will now at least consider proposals to prevent an arms race in space.

Found this article on the Space.com website, I thought it's quite interesting in so far as the US is now willing to consider proposals to prevent an arms race and the U.S. authorities will now view measures to control arms in space much as it does other arms control agreements.

There is a fair bit of information in this article, for starters the joint draft treaty on arms control in space submitted by the Russia and China governments in 2008 was blatantly rejected by the U.S. due to:
having too many loopholes to be of value, and lacking the means to verify that all spacefaring nations were respecting the treaty's terms. but now the U.S. is willing to: no longer oppose making space-related arms control a topic of debate at the Conference on Disarmament, so long as the discussions do not rise to the level of formal negotiations in view of a treaty.
The article is stating the U.S. is willing to change it's outlook on a debate due to the amount of space junk out there in orbit and to prevent collisions in space, BUT! on the other hand U.S policy, allows space to be used for national and homeland security activities, and also preserves the right of a nation to defend its space-based assets from space- or ground-based interference.

To my mind the U.S. government want to preserve the right to use space for defence but don't want all the space debris up there interfering with their precious satellites and lord knows what else they have up there, so now they are willing to consider a debate (That's nice of them isn't it) , one other thing that struck me about this article was the statement:
European government officials say they have noticed a more-open attitude on the part of U.S. government officials in U.S.-European talks about coordinating work on space surveillance, both for debris mitigation and for other purposes.
I wonder what the other purposes are?? it doesn't say in the article, all in all an interesting read on the space weapon debate.

Space.com

Now this just all strange to me.... Why the new policies? with everything going on as in all these new UFO footage and buzz going around lately it just strikes me to be odd besides all this talk about taking space farther(new moon landing,sending/going to mars,etc).

Or there's a race to take control of space and there's already secret space weapons in place ? for what purpose will that serve? Or are their plans for USA to spy on us, other countries or something?

Something is really going on that we don't know about

Good luck to the US for saying that there even is an arms race in space when the aliens could probably blow them and all of us away.

On the other hand, the aliens might be thankful that humans are finally seeing the light.

This sounds nice and all, but does anyone know when the last time the US, or anyone else for that matter, was willing to 'talk' about any form of arms restriction, limitation, reduction, or ban, without already having a strategic advantage in that area first?

reply to post by Wayne60


They all talk themselves up and they are all full of bs.

If I lived on another planet, I wouldn't risk coming here - nor would I want to.

I havn't read the article yet and I'll prolly post again when I do, but just from reading the OP this sounds like non-news to me. This sounds like the new boss is the same as the old boss, but Obama just wants you to think that he is more peaceful and open and compassionate than the evil demon Bush.

I'm fairly certain we already have treatys with other space faring nations stating that we won't put any weapons in space. A bout a couple years ago we (the US) shot down one of our own sattelites with a rocket. In my opinion this was a response to China doing something similar a few months earlier. My point is that we had to shoot a missile from earth to take out the sat because we have already agreed to not put weapons in orbit.

As far as I know this type of thing goes further into the nuclear realm as well. From what I understand we already have treatys that say we can't put nukes in space. This may sound all good, but this treaty is preventing us from building nuclear powered rockets that could shorten a trip to Mars or make further destinations reachable by humans. (I'm still not clear on how Mars Science Labratory which will land on Mars in 2012 is able to get around this considering it doesn't use solar panels but instead will run off of a nuclear power source)

Anyway, this just looks like another example of Obama trying to demonize Bush and make himself look better while really doing nothing new. We have already agreed to not weaponize space.

reply to post by fieryjaguarpaw



I urge you to read the article, this isn't about Obama trying to be Mr nice guy or demonize Bush, it's about the U.S. government up until now have been unwilling to even discuss the policies they have regarding space and weapons, they are now, due to the amount of space debris floating about in orbit, but they will not change their policies or even have a debate that may lead to space sanctions being put in place… this is just an article about the U.S. bending a little when it comes to talking about the problems up there in orbit.. the U.S. no longer oppose making space-related arms control a topic of debate at the Conference on Disarmament, so long as the discussions do not rise to the level of formal negotiations in view of a treaty...

reply to post by Wayne60


Your missing the point somewhat, the U.S. Government isn't willing to talk about a restriction, limitation, reduction, or ban, just willing to discuss problems with space debris ect which they have not done before.. European government officials say they have noticed a more-open attitude on the part of U.S. government officials in U.S.-European talks about coordinating work on space surveillance, both for debris mitigation and for other purposes.
I do get your point regarding having a strategic advantage though, even if it doesn't really come into play regarding the Space.com article.. I guess time will tell if this leads to anything, but as it stands the U.S. Gov won't budge when it comes to their policies..

I just read it. To be honest it sounds like mumbo jumbo to me (but then again I'm pretty tired right now) I fail to see how the article ties in space debris and monitoring the sky from Earth with space based weapons. Seems like two compleatly seperate issues that are disscussed as though they are the same thing.

And like I said we already have treatys that prevent us from putting weapons in space. If we didn't I assure you we would have a stockpile of missiles already up there... and so would Russia and other countries as well.

So the new admin. is going to consider not doing something we have already agreed not to do?

The only thing that I can figure (and again I'm not running on all cylinders right now) is that the Obama admin. is saying that not only are we not going to put weapons in orbit, but that we won't even use ground based weaponry on targets in space. If this is the case then this is a really bad move. What if some country decides to take out one of our sats? We just stand by and watch our sats turn into space junk? Is that the connection to space debris? We'll just keep a better eye on our stuff as it gets blown apart but will refuse to do anything about it?