AUSTRALIA SPACE
The mid-level space power
By Dr Chris Flaherty My Space Warfare Analysis Lab
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his concept paper will look at the notion of the Mid-Level Space Power, answering the question – what type of Space Force would it have? The notion of a Mid-Level Space Power, presupposes a hierarchy of Space Powers are emerging in the current century. These entities, can be characterized along two tangents: (1) Either a Space Superpower, Space Power, or Space User; and as well, (2) Characterized by either pursuing Militarization, or Weaponization of Space Strategies. TABLE 1: The Mid-Level Space Force likely sits, given the examples of others created in the last three years by the non-Superpowers, as a Defence Agency, Regiment, or Squadron level military entity. Framing the creation of a new Mid-Level Space Force is its HistoricalTechnological Contexts. It is being created in the context of an approximate six-decades into the Space Warfare Age. There are far-more-older Space Forces, that have, or are in the process of a rapid technological transition from Space Warfare concepts dominated by Electronic and Cyber Warfare, and various types of Kinetic Warfare, to Space Manoeuvre Warfare – as these Forces have access to Interplanetary Spacecraft. The key distinction to emerge is a Terrestrial-Based Space Force (a Mid-Level entrant), and a true Interplanetary Space Force. This is also part of an anticipated process where the Space Forces, belong to a class of Space Superpowers, that convert into Solar System Powers (this prospect is explored at the end of this paper).
40 | Australia in Space Magazine
At the top of the Space Powers hierarchy are Space Superpowers, dominating the Space Race, since the beginning of the Space Age, following the end of WW2. In the last decade, other entrants to Space, have been able to build Space launching capabilities, and satellite construction, and make military use of Space, accessing the Space Tactical Layer (addressed later in this paper), and likely Space Manoeuvre Layers: Suborbital, Low and Medium Earth Orbits, Cislunar, and Mars Space. This area will also be covered later in this paper.
MILITARIZATION AND WEAPONIZATION OF SPACE The dynamic of Space Power also divides between opponents who opt for Weaponization over a solely Militarization of Space Strategy. Under current International Space Laws regime, a Space Power opting for its basis of power – the Weaponization of Space, puts it outside the International System, if this is used for non-defensive purposes. This latter development, comes from a largely expanded notion of a ‘Right to Defend in Space’. One of the historical predicaments of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, was that it did not preclude the Militarization of Space, through broadly banning the stationing of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Outer Space, and prohibition of military activities on celestial bodies (United Nations). This has even seen creation of a legal regime on the International Space Law applicable to military uses of Outer Space
