NATO will try to declare outer space as a new warfare area this year, four senior diplomats said, in part to show US President Donald Trump that the alliance is adapting to new threats after Trump signed a plan to introduce a US space force. .
With the decision to be made at the summit of world leaders from December 3 to 4 in London, in which Trump will also participate, it should be officially recognized that wars do not have to be fought only on land, in water, in the air and in the computer world, but can also be conducted in space.
“There is agreement that outer space should be declared a space for warfare, and the summit in London is the best place for it to become official,” said a senior NATO diplomat involved in the discussions and warned that the technical issues are still being discussed.
NATO diplomats deny war would be waged in space, but say declaring space a war zone would fuel debate over whether NATO should even use space weapons in air defense against enemy missiles or destroy satellites.
The decision to declare space a new defense front could convince Trump that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a useful ally in countering China as a rising military superpower, diplomats said.
Although NATO countries have 65 percent of all satellites in space, commercial Chinese satellites offer a variety of capabilities, from high-speed Internet in airplanes to tracking missiles and armed forces over a wider area.
China is developing weapons that can be used in orbit and became the first country to land a probe on the dark side of the moon last year.
Related image
Russia, NATO’s former strategic partner and now a hostile power for many allies, is also a space power and one of the few countries that can launch satellites into orbit.
“You can only wage war in space, but whoever controls the universe will also control what happens on land, at sea and in the air,” said former NATO official Jamie Shea, now an analyst at Friends of Europe think tank. – a tank in Brussels.
NATO defense ministers are expected to agree on a broad space policy at their regular meeting in Brussels, although there will be no decision on declaring space as a defense operational domain.
Trump, who used the last NATO summit last July to admonish European allies about defense spending and accuse Germany of being a “prisoner of Russian energy,” signed a plan in February to create a US space force.
hina.hr
