Experts
Voice Concerns Over Weapons Race In
Space
For many years, analysts have been
arguing
for the necessity to keep weapons
out of
Earth's orbit. However, in more
recent
times, talks of a weapons race in
space have
been multiplying, mostly due to the
tests
that the United States have
conducted
recently. The US Air Force (USAF)
launched
its X-37B robotic space plane in
April,
while the US Defense Advanced
Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) conducted a
failed
test of its HTV-2 hypersonic glider
aircraft
prototype. Both machines raise
serious
concerns about the possibility of
weapons of
mass destruction making their way
into
space. A factor that contributes to
the
controversy is the still-unclear
purpose of
these missions. American officials
from both
the Pentagon and the USAF have
failed to
provide transparent motivations for
why they
conducted the recent test flights,
and so
the area is opened for speculations.
But the
truth is that the new technologies
that were
demonstrated this year make taking
weapons
in low-Earth orbit (LEO) a very
attainable
goal, and one that is only a few
years away.
If the United States get this
capability,
then the Chinese and the Russian
will strive
to obtain it, in order to preserve
the
balance of global power.