There is the Outer Space Treaty (1967), which forbids placing "nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner", but you can get around that by saying that it's just a conventional weapon, not nuclear or WMD. If it's for space to space combat, you could say that any weapon is potentially a WMD due to the Kessler potential, but if its space to ground, like an orbital missile platform or something, you are technically in the clear.

I'm guessing it doesn't ban weapons in space completely because of things like the survival guns on Soyuz (if they still fly them), used for defending yourself against wild animals in the event that you land in a forest or similar. "No weapons in space" would ban that as well, but I think it's reasonable to have a survival kit, just in case

Space is more like international waters legally. The outer space treaty is rooted in maritime law principles. The Chinese and Russians are in no mood to slow down relative to the US. There will likely be some escalation in debris and damage resulting from that might eventually result in some kind of action. But most of the damage here would be economical and sending more stuff up is now very cheap. Manned flight is relatively infrequent and aside from the space station and very short lived space tourism, most activity in space is unmanned.

So, if a lot of satellites get taken out that's a problem but if a few get lost, nobody will care. The space station and other important stuff can be in relatively safe orbits. There's also the notion that a lot of the debris in low earth object comes down pretty quickly. Lots of unstable orbits. LEO is where most of the activity is for things like starlink and competing constellations. Which moderates the risk a bit.

> Space really should be a neutral ground like Antarctica

"They are dismantling these systems because they do not expect they will ever have a use for these weapons. Not because chemical weapons are immoral. Because they are ineffective, whereas landmines, cluster munitions and nuclear weapons are assumed to have future uses. Morality was never at issue, effectiveness was.

That has some big consequences, most of which are actually unpleasant. It means that efforts to ban ‘immoral’ weapons that are effective will likely never succeed. The model that activists thought they were building on is a foundation of sand – the only way you ban weapons is after they are basically useless anyway (to cut that point finer: you get to ban weapons after they stop being useful to the great powers, who may then enforce the ban on smaller states). The idea that we might summon up enough moral indignation to set these weapons aside seems unfounded. We are not nearly so moral as my high school teachers imagined, nor are we so cowardly as a ‘Fremen apologist’ might think. We’ve simply made an amoral calculation about effectiveness" [1].

> the consequences of space debris might trigger the Kessler effect

Kessler is terribly understood in the public consciousness. There is no known solution for generally denying access to space using anything less than orders of magnitudes of the resources it would take to just continually shoot everything down. In high orbits, Kessler can deny specific orbits–GEO is a notable one that we could generationally fuck. But the idea that nobody will be able to go to space, much less LEO, is wrong and distracts from the real issues with space-based weapons, especially ones in LEO.

[1] https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

This just isn’t feasible it’s like wanting the ocean to be free of weapons. Space is most of what there is, nations that want to defend themselves will have to utilize space as a war fighting domain all we can do is put that off

You don't need to have weapons in orbit for the Kessler Syndrome:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...

Too late

https://www.reddit.com/r/Planes/comments/15fh5js/a_us_air_fo...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59299101

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...

and this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_systems_...

The outer space is already a dumpster and a disaster.

Ion thrusters allow satellites to stay in low orbits with significant drag, providing significant protection from Kessler syndrome.

That would likely require basically banning GPS, imaging and communication satellites too, if we get a WW3 I would be shocked if there weren't physical attacks against those assets by anyone with the requisite launch capabilities because they're just that useful to militaries. Maybe it gets relegated mostly to jamming them instead but I'd be surprised if that level of restraint happened.

There's not really enough stuff up there to cause the kessler syndrome yet, maybe at some specific bands you could cause some annoyances... but ~75% of satellites are operating in bands that would decay into the atmosphere, fortunately it's just easier to operate in the decaying band anyway

They're not dumb; everyone knows this. It's like the old "mutually assured destruction" image of two people standing in a pool of gasoline, each with matches at the ready.

So one option is they're not planning kinetic weapons: directed EMP to burn out electronics, laser to burn out cameras, etc.

Another option is whoever deploys a kinetic weapon does not have investment at that rough altitude and wants to deny all players there; an outsider maybe.

I agree with the principle but Russia and China absolutely already have armed satellites in orbit, so that needs to be negotiated before unilaterally stopping.

Only works when the thing you want to make off limits isn't all that desirable in the first place.

> Space really should be a neutral ground like Antarctica.

Cute, Antarctica is just future beachfront...give it time.

Space is too important and strategic for it to remain free of weapons and military presence.

Unless you can enforce a weapons ban, "should be a neutral ground" means absolutely nothing.

Everyone would launch weapons while they deny it, because that is the rational and responsible thing to do.

Oh I'm sure it will be "neutral," in the sense that all of us normal humans are potential targets in this day and age, under this leadership.

Not really possible. For example, the Soviet Union had naval radar satellites (RORSAT) in space that could directly guide missiles to specific ships.

If a war would have kicked of in europe where transatlantic convoys would have been critical those satellites would have to be shot down by ASAT weapons.

We do things in response to the actions of others; I'll leave it there.

Regulations are only as strong as the power to enforce them.

Really the whole world should be.

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> Space really should be a neutral ground like Antarctica.

That's cute that you think that. The reality is you can't do less than your adversaries may/will/are doing.

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Funny you mention Antarctica. Pretty sure that place is also heavily militarized. Some Norwegian sailors has being severely punished for sailing boats there.

The funny thing is people in conspiracy circle has being taking about that space has being militarized for years! China and Japan just openly talked them:

https://san.com/cc/nasa-china-wants-military-moon-base/

Really at this point between conspiracy and official realize is just matter of a year if not just a couple months now.

Ya, that's a hilarious comment from the Chinese after they have literally tested their own anti-satellite weapons. But then their diplomats have never been short of chutzpah.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/chinas-anti-satellite-test

In human terms, there is a spectrum between knowing where to buy a firearm, owning a firearm, and pointing a gun at your head.

Being the first country to put weapons in space, is far from comical.

Weapons in space is like putting nukes and missiles in international waters 12 miles from coast of all other countries, to reduce strike time.

The next logical step is to use AI to influence US voters with "no data centers in space" outrage.

Wouldn't it be possible to confirm who may be supplying imagery by taking some IRGC supplied imagery such as [1] and figure out which satellite(s) were overhead at the time and capable of taking the image? It may not be particularly straightforward to do so--but seems theoretically possible with:

- Consideration of time-of-day/azimuth of overhead satellite based on shadows and perspective.

- Comparison to other imagery of the same location checking for portable objects (such as vehicles) and keeping track of when they appear and disappear, and whether they're present in the imagery being analysed.

- Consideration of cloud coverage and weather conditions to rule out unwanted satellite passes.

Then write up a report and publish it, making it a believable and concrete finding instead of a finding that otherwise may just be perceived to be speculation/vibes.

[1] https://soaratlas.com/maps/asia-jordan-strike-at-u-s-aircraf...

It's really not interesting at all. The US Destroyed that satellite to stop that information flow.

Yaogan-50 for anyone asking.

Interesting. A bit conspiratorial, but hey. It would be a major provocation if so

I thought the Russians were supplying them with HiRes imagery. I've not heard of any Russian optical or radar satellite breaking up.

Lame. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casaba-Howitzer would 'Rock the Casbah' even more.

But then came evil communistic Cyteen, spoiling the plan, with cloned AZIs, evil space Nazis. Supporting the Alliance of Merchants at Downbelow. Damn & Woe!

How exactly that came to be (from Earth-Company side) was expanded a little bit, as sort of a prequel in Heavy Time(1991) and Hellburner(1992), and later again in Alliance Rising(2019) and Alliance Unbound(2024) from the POV of the affected stations in the so called Hinder Stars(the first to be explored by slower than light ships from the Earth), made obsolete by FTL later on, because of more direct routes to Downbelow and further into Cyteen territory.

One of my favorite SF books.

I feel that applies more to Russia's space program--some cosmonauts (not all, of course) support Putin's war.

The SIR-C/X-SAR was launched in the Shuttle Bay and used to map the entire surface of The Earth. Some would call that a munition. This article, following that event IS the confirmation.

As far as I know, a major issue with NASA space programs such as the shuttle was that each group held its own requirements. So, most likely the DoD had some additional demands.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. The Shuttle requirements were absolutely modified by DoD's desire to ship military satellites and carry out operations. One of the many tug-o-wars that ended up with such a compromised design.

And since you brought up the X-37B, I have to admit, I absolutely love its dynamic flight capabilities whereby it literally banks off the upper atmosphere like a silver surfer to rapidly change orbits at perigee. Quite an interesting bit of tech that did evolve from the shuttle and is still doing work this very day.

Gorbachev's dead now and look who sits in his place. I'm not so sure such a treaty would still be respected anyway. As as for who sits in Reagan's place...

The capabilities of the "space weapons" didn't exist. Reagan used the threat of those weapons to perpetuate USSR's unsustainable military & defense investment, knowing the US could sustain it. Within 5 years, USSR was defunct.

Reagan had the right strategy , for his time.

> As long as warmongers are in control we will continue to live in danger and fear.

Can you expand on your solution to world peace?

I mean in hindsight there's no way israel or china would have disarmed.

Only relevant part is this:

> Cost estimates for the Golden Dome program range from $175 billion (White House), to $1.2 trillion (Congressional Budget Office), to $3.6 trillion (American Enterprise Institute) depending on the architectural details. The wide range largely hinges on the number of space-based missiles and the cost of replacing satellites whose low orbits decay quickly due to atmospheric drag. Some $24.4 billion in federal funding was directed to the Golden Dome in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025, with another $13 billion allocated for the fiscal year 2026, totaling 2.2% of the federal discretionary budget during that year.

It's just a ploy to transfer more public money to government contractors and friends, like Musk.

Rods from God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

See also: the mass of starlink satellites over time.

using a 23mm auto cannon on orbit is more or less useless. There’s no way to reasonably shoot something when your relative velocities could easily be strictly greater than the bullets. Even if something is coming straight towards you it’s very difficult to aim when you have to take into account orbital mechanics. You would need a huge amount of RCS fuel in order to counteract the impulse from the gun. And even if you did shoot the gun if you miss, you now have a bunch of bullets that share your orbit and will at some point intercept your flight path again, if you don’t miss, you still have shrapnel sharing your orbital path.

Even space telescopes have been built on the skeletons made for spying, and rockets in almost any form were weapons before they were carrying peaceful missions. That we have Russian, American, and European components communicating together at the ISS is kind of a lovely, if temporary, closure of the circle.

I'd wager starlink is mostly military with the cover of civilian use case.

It's been quietly brewing in the background for a couple years with accusations out the US about Russia and China secretly testing systems to intercept and sabotage US satellites either temporarily or destroy them permanently.

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Say goodbye to satellites and space tourism for the next 200 years :(

Sort of related: The Shuttle was designed for military use, but mainly regarding launching and capturing spy satellites. From a NASA report on the Space Shuttle's history ( https://www.nasa.gov/history/sts1/pages/scota.html ):

> One Air Force requirement that had a critical effect on the Shuttle design was cross range capability. The military wanted to be able to send a Shuttle on an orbit around the Earth's poles because a significant portion of the Soviet Union was at high latitudes near the Arctic Circle. The idea was to be able to deploy a reconnaissance satellite, retrieve an errant spacecraft, or even capture an enemy satellite, and then have the Shuttle return to its launch site after only one orbit to escape Soviet detection. Because the Earth rotates on its axis, by the time the Shuttle would return to its base, the base would have "moved" approximately 1,100 miles to the east. Thus the Shuttle needed to be able to maneuver that distance "sideways" upon reentering the atmosphere.

> In addition to the Air Force's cross range demand, the military also wanted a larger Shuttle payload bay than NASA originally advocated. NASA wanted the Shuttle payload bay to accommodate modules for a future space station, which necessitated a payload capacity of approximately 50,000 pounds. The Air Force wanted a bay 15 x 60 feet that could hold 50,000 to 65,000 pounds and that had doors that could open out into space to deploy satellites easily. This payload requirement meant that the fuselage of the Shuttle needed to be essentially a large rectangular box with rounded surfaces. In general, NASA went with the Air Force's requirements because it needed the Air Force's support to help insulate it from the political charge that the Shuttle was really just a step towards human exploration of Mars or a permanent space station, which is precisely what some people at NASA wanted it to be.

The Air Force was working on a Shuttle launch site at Vandenberg AFB in California, but after the Challenger disaster they decided that the Shuttle wasn't reliable enough and opted to instead use traditional disposable rockets to launch spy satellites.

Depending on how you want to define “weapon” the actual offensive capability of the shuttle may qualify. It was designed to be able to capture satellites and return them to Earth.

We have no evidence that this capability was ever used offensively though.

Typical tactics to shift the blame to China.

The more practical approach appears to be fully on-orbit activities, as those are currently far harder to attribute. The field of "Space Domain Awareness" is still nascent and rapidly evolving.

See my other comment for my expanded take on this, informed by being a peaceful space-nerd who cannot seem to avoid this topic, even if I tried:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49711876

> but hitting a precise target on the ground from space is really hard

Guidance systems exist. Kinetic != unguided.

It probably felt really hard decades ago. But we are already well into the era where you can target a particular seat of a car driving on a highway with a nonexplosive kinetic weapon.

Do you feel any embarassment coming from the previous generation, which set the stage for what we have now? I think it will be much of the same.

Hopefully our grand children are alive to hear that explanation.

There is no 'we'.

other satellites

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Not in space, from space.

Maybe they'll ask for a "slower pace of development" so it doesn't look as much like they're just asking for new regulatory barriers on their competition.

There have been detailed and credible claims of Chinese space weapons for some time now.

https://media.defense.gov/2020/Sep/01/2002488689/-1/-1/1/202...

https://www.ifri.org/en/studies/current-and-future-trends-ch...

https://www.swfound.org/publications-and-reports/2026-global...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402390.2024.2...

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4431/1

https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Annual_Report/Chapt...

> they all have nukes in space sitting over each other's countries waiting to drop.

The Nukes of Damocles

You actually think they don't already?

We opted for training sea lions instead to defend our submarine bases

>All the world is a stage

Not really. Most of the cold war nuclear war scenarios only consider nuclear exchange in the northern hemisphere. Until this day there's little strategic value in south America or south Africa. Maybe Australia and new Zealand but still low compared to the north. The Argentinian Patagonia must be the safest place to be in a nuclear winter.

So, it's a pistol on a robotic arm, or what? Kinetic weapon doesn't say much.

A pillar with a tiny engine that just incrementally increases the speed could be devastating at a distance though, I'm sure I've read this as some solution to a problem (or attempted solution to some problem) in some sci-fi book, can't remember which though.

China and (maybe?) Russia are putting weapons up there no matter what.

People act like had the inventors of the powder explosive gun never used it, we would still be fighting with arrows and spears today. Completely not how it works.

America spends more % of its GDP than France on healthcare.

At this point I would take filled potholes.

Even worse, Iran has shown how utterly pointless and ineffective these expensive weapons are.

Cool, we have a weapon in space that cost $1B and 6 months to re-arm. That's not super helpful when who we are fighting is flying $20k lawnmower powered drones to take out all our bases in the region.

We are basically the modern version of the Spanish Armada.

It's not paywalled - it's the BBC. But maybe try CNN's version: https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/15/us/us-space-force-weapons-cap...

FTA it says the treaty covers "weapons of mass destruction". But historically (at least prior to the 2000's), there was an unspoken rule of not weaponizing space. I think that's changed in the last ~20 years and recall covered of China sending kinetic weapons into space.

And you think America cares about treaties?

Laws are for the little people, obviously.

When the sole focus is profit and to crush enemies and not to care for the people, the world will start to look like it's full of enemies and profit. It's a self perpetuating, self inflicted situation.

Only to be impacted by the debris field it creates

Ah so thats the reason behind the ‘datacenters in space’ headlines some time ago

"Space weapons" here most likely means some combination of anti-satellite weapons and electronic warfare such as GPS jammers. AFAIK it's been widely believed that the USSR/Russia has had these capabilities in orbit since the 80s. I'd be willing to bet that the US has had them for decades as well, it just hasn't been publicly acknowledged.

I always find it funny here, how out of all the targets "the enemy" could hit, HN-er is afraid they'll hit the datacenters :)

You don't need space weapons to hit datacenters, you need one van full of explosives and someone willing to die to deliver it to a datacenter.

To temporarily disable them, you just need a cheap drone with some explosives.

More unwise is doing nothing and letting adversaries have it.

You thought we had a whole Space Force without any Forces?