Military communication and early-warning satellites in high-altitude orbits play critical roles in nuclear C3I systems. A repositioning operation that brought a satellite into proximity with one involved in nuclear operations could be misconstrued as preparation for an attack against the latter. Moreover, many satellites involved in nuclear operations are dual-use. As a result, in a conventional conflict, they might be attacked in an attempt to disrupt nonnuclear operations being conducted by their possessor.
Such inadvertent threats to, and attacks on, space-based nuclear C3I capabilities would risk being interpreted as preparations for nuclear war—potentially sparking catastrophic escalation. Keep-out zones could reduce the threat posed by co-orbital anti-satellite weapons to high-altitude satellites in two key ways, even while recognizing that such zones could not physically prevent attacks in a conflict.
First, they would mitigate the danger of unintended threats to satellites resulting from nonhostile repositioning operations. Moreover, only the satellites declared by each participant would be afforded the protection of keep-out zones.
Participants would verify compliance with this proposed measure by using their own space situational awareness capabilities. The United States is likely already capable of effective verification. It is unclear whether Russia and China are too—though, if not, they are probably on a trajectory to acquire the necessary capabilities. One key political challenge is that China and Russia appear to want the ability to hold U.
However, as they are investing heavily in their own high-altitude military satellites, including for nuclear C3I, they may be interested in this proposal. Over the longer term, bilateral and trilateral treaties could be negotiated to build a more durable and robust risk-reduction architecture.
Three such agreements, with varying levels of ambition, are proposed here:. First, China, Russia, and the United States should conclude a treaty prohibiting the testing or deployment of space-based missile defense weapons. Space-based missile defenses are capable, at least in theory, of addressing some key weaknesses of terrestrial missile defense systems.
Russian and Chinese concerns about space-based defenses contribute to arms racing and exacerbate escalation risks, while complicating the development of agreements to manage these dangers. However, the development of space-based missile defenses presents daunting technical challenges and carries potentially exorbitant costs; for these reasons, the United States is unlikely to ever deploy a meaningful capability.
A trilateral prohibition on the testing and deployment of any space-based weapon designed to counter ballistic or boost-glide missiles would apply to both kinetic and nonkinetic weapons but would not affect the deployment of space-based sensors to detect missile launches or track missiles during flight. The prohibition would be verified through NTM, with efforts primarily focused on assessing compliance with the ban on testing. To gain a meaningful operational capability, a lengthy testing campaign would be needed.
Such a campaign would be difficult to conceal against multiple intelligence-collection techniques, even if a state were sometimes successful in hiding individual tests. Russia and China would likely support this proposal. The primary political impediment to its conclusion would be domestic resistance in the United States, stemming from an understandable though unattainable desire to develop a comprehensive defense against ballistic missile attack.
That said, limitations on space-based interceptors, whose development costs would be prohibitive, may be somewhat more palatable for the United States than limitations on ground-based missile defenses.
Furthermore, if China and Russia want a prohibition of space-based missile defenses, they will have to make significant concrete concessions to the United States in return. Second, China, Russia, and the United States should conclude a treaty that would limit each party to equal total numbers of launchers for ground-launched cruise missiles, ground-launched ballistic missiles, and ground-launched boost-glide missiles with ranges over kilometers miles ; SLBM launchers; and bombers with ranges greater than 2, kilometers 1, miles.
Such limits could help prevent arms racing and mitigate escalation risks by curtailing the threat posed to national and military leaders and to nuclear forces and their enabling capabilities. This agreement would limit launchers, rather than smaller items like warheads or missiles, to reduce verification difficulties significantly.
Ground-based launchers would be accountable if used to launch missiles with a range in excess of kilometers—and not kilometers miles as under the INF Treaty—to bypass the controversy over the range of the SSC-8, a Russian ground-launched cruise missile that the United States claims, almost certainly correctly, was developed in violation of that treaty. In a major concession to China and Russia, the United States would agree that, for the purposes of treaty implementation, its Aegis Ashore launchers met the definition for launchers of ground-launched cruise missiles and were thus accountable.
It appears that China, Russia, and the United States currently possess roughly equal numbers of accountable launchers and accountable bombers though there are large uncertainties in the estimates for China and particularly Russia , and it seems possible this rough equality will persist.
To facilitate verification, China, Russia, and the United States should exchange baseline information, comprehensive semiannual updates, and regular notifications about accountable launchers and accountable bombers. The three parties should be able to use NTM, including satellite imagery, to verify numbers of accountable bombers, fixed accountable ground-based launchers silos , and SLBM launchers.
On-site inspections would likely be needed to verify mobile accountable ground-based launchers. There would be many political barriers to reaching an agreement, including Chinese concerns about a radical increase in transparency. Most acutely, many U. One problem with this approach is that deploying mobile ground-launched missiles to allied territory, where they would be militarily useful, would likely prove politically fraught.
Moreover, while some buildup may be unavoidable, it risks stimulating arms racing. No other warheads—those in storage, those being transported, and those that have been retired and are awaiting dismantlement—are even indirectly accountable. Russia, by contrast, has little interest in such a treaty. The technical challenges associated with verifying a warhead limit would likely preclude agreement today.
However, the agreement would require inspections of warhead storage facilities. All warheads in transport would be exempt from inspections.
Inspections would face a fundamental difficulty: The classification rules surrounding warheads would prevent inspectors from viewing them directly or conducting any measurements that could reveal sensitive design information.
Therefore, verification would largely focus on warhead storage containers on the assumption that, to prevent nuclear accidents, Russian and U. In many circumstances, classification rules would not impede effective verification since the host state would generally gain no advantage by claiming that an empty storage container held a warhead.
It therefore would be necessary to verify that an object declared to be a warhead awaiting dismantlement really was an actual warhead. This process would be challenging for two reasons: first, it would be necessary to define what a warhead is in terms of measurable criteria, and second, the unauthorized disclosure of classified information during the measurement process would need to be prevented.
In October, the U. Meanwhile, U. Sherman said the U. Russia did neither on Monday. So clearly it was to send a decisive message. While the Biden administration has floated the possibility of incremental shifts in U. The impact could reportedly extend to aircraft avionics, machine tools, smartphones, game consoles, tablets and televisions.
The fall of the Soviet Union meant more than simply reducing the likelihood of nuclear weapons usage, however. For as long as nuclear weapons have existed, nations have been scrambling to find an effective counter. As early as the s, the United States and the Soviet Union worked to develop anti-ballistic missile systems to shoot down and, hypothetically, defang the nuclear threat. The ABM system was a double-edged sword: While it protected the country that deployed the systems from nuclear strike, their existence could potentially embolden that country to progress further up the escalation ladder.
Furthermore, as ABM evolved, so did technologies designed to evade it. Supposing one anti-ballistic missile could shoot down one intercontinental ballistic missile, it would follow that the likelihood of a successful nuclear strike would be improved by increasing the number of warheads on that ICBM.
Enter multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles, or MIRV: One missile is launched into orbit, and multiple warheads are released from space. Now the number of anti-ballistic missiles required to shoot down these warheads increases by an order of magnitude. The treaty rose from the fear of an arms race, but in effect it stymied ballistic missile defense development for decades.
Ultimately, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the bilateral support for this agreement began to wane. On June 13, , the United States withdrew from the treaty and recommenced work on ballistic missile defense. Some pointed to advances in ballistic missile defense as heralding the end of mutually assured destruction.
I wish I could agree, but again, for as long as nuclear weapons have existed, nations have found effective counters — and counters to those counters. Now the world takes another deep breath as it watches history begin to repeat itself. On March 1, , Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the development of new missile systems in response to the withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
These are glimpses into the coming age of hypersonic weapons and a return to the multipolar era of mutually assured destruction. Its brutally against its own citizens by not providing enough protection against the harshness of outer-space. Your job is to get on the nuclear missile launch console, nuke the senary capitol of Birchia known as Birch-City on Birchi The other capitols are located in Birchi-1 through Birchi-4 and the primary capitol is on earth located somewhere in the USA.
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