Together with the traditional areas of domination – land, sea and air – special attention was devoted to outer space and in particular to cislunar space, the vast area between the earth’s atmosphere and the orbit of the moon.

 

It was not the first time that imperialism had looked to this area.

 

In February 1957, US Major General Bernard Schriever declared: “In the long haul, our safety as a nation may depend upon achieving ‘space superiority’. Several decades from now, the important battles may not be sea battles or air battles, but space battles, and we should be spending a certain fraction of our national resources to ensure that we do not lag in obtaining space supremacy.”

 

Beginning in the mid-to late 1950s, the US conducted five high-altitude nuclear weapons test explosions in outer space. They increased in size with the last one, on July 9, 1962, being the largest.

 

Opposition to the tests was widespread and led to the signing of the UN Declaration on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space in 1963, subsequently ratified as the Outer Space Treaty in 1967.

 

The Treaty included the following principles:

 

• the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind;

• outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States;

• outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means;

• States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner;

• the Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes;

• astronauts shall be regarded as the envoys of mankind;

• States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities;

• States shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects; and

• States shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies.

 

At the time, the emphasis was on blocking the use of Space for nuclear weapons. It implied that Space should be used for peaceful purposes but did not explicitly ban all weapons.

 

US military space forces satellites first participated in combat operations during the Vietnam War, providing communications and targeting. They were also used extensively by US imperialism in the 1991 Persian Gulf War of aggression against Iraq which has been referred to as the "first space war." The use of Space for military use had been revived by Reagan in March 1983, but his Strategic Defense Initiative (aka Star Wars) was controversial and scrapped in 1993.

 

In 2019, during Trump’s first Presidency, US domination of Space was revived with the formation of the Space Force which has equal standing alongside the five other branches of the US armed forces. Its vaguely worded responsibilities are:

 

1. Provide freedom of operation for the United States in, from, and to space;

2. Conduct space operations; and

3. Protect the interests of the United States in space.

 

 

Its current head is Gen. Stephen Whiting. Last August, he upped the ante, declaring that the US Space Command’s top priorities for fiscal 2027 include “space fires” to enable “space superiority” and “enhanced battlespace awareness” capabilities. 

 

The US Breaking Defense website observed that “For many years, Pentagon officials have been wary of discussing even the possibility of utilizing “offensive” space weapons due to political sensitivities and classification issues.”

 

It added that “Capabilities to operate in cislunar space, the vast swath of the heavens lying between the Earth and the Moon, further will become a SPACECOM mission as NASA and commercial firms pursue lunar “colonization” and other related activities.”

 

In March, Whiting was even more explicit about the meaning of the euphemistic “space fires”.

 

“It’s time that we can clearly say that we need ‘space fires’, and we need weapon systems. We need orbital interceptors. And what do we call these? We call these weapons, and we need them to deter a space conflict and to be successful if we end up in such a fight,” Whiting told the annual Space Foundation Space Symposium in Colorado.

 

“Weapons in space used to be considered inconceivable, but now space-based interceptors are a key component of how we win,” he elaborated. “We are a combatant command, and like all other combatant commands, we must be dominant at war, fighting and war winning. And dominant warfighting in space requires credible, acknowledged, kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities, fires and weapons.” 

 

“We can no longer assume that a war that starts in or extends into space will be short. We must prepare for a protracted conflict to be successful,” he said. “To win in a protracted conflict, we must maintain space capabilities beyond the initial stages of when the war starts. This longevity depends on our ability to deploy, regenerate and reconstitute space forces.”

 

 

Whiting singled out collaboration between the Space Command and private US firm Leo Labs deploying a next-generation Seeker-class ultra-high frequency radar site in the IndoPacific region.

 

Leo Labs sees Australia as a forward post for the US military’s domination of Space.  It has a space radar site near Bunbury, WA and is involved in the Aussie Space Radar Project (ASRP), a A$240M international collaboration between Australia and the United States, with A$160M of direct investment by LeoLabs Incorporated. 

 

Under the ASRP, LeoLabs Australia will manufacture and license LeoLabs’ next-generation modular space radar system in Australia. LeoLabs Australia, should it be successful under the Modern Manufacturing Initiative, will build LeoLabs’ first next-generation Low Earth Orbit (LEO) modular space radar in the Northern Territory; and then build the world’s first commercial Deep Space Radar in northern Western Australia.

 

There is no doubt that even in the absence of rivals for “colonization” activities in cislunar space, US imperialism would make militarisation of Space one of its aims in pursuit of “full spectrum domination”.

 

But they do have rivals, and both the Russian imperialists and Chinese social-imperialists are just as active in vying for control of Space.

 

The fear among US military circles is that the Chinese are currently winning the race for Space. Afraid of falling behind, US imperialist armed forces heads like Whiting are increasingly jettisoning the euphemisms and trying to marshal public opinion behind the need to station weapons in Space.

 

The Outer Space Treaty allows this and needs to be tightened to include a prohibition on the deployment of all weapons in Space.

 

An independent and peaceful Australia would initiate such a move through the United Nations.

 

An Australia led by an Albanese or a Dutton will never do this, but only further place Australia at the disposal of US imperialism.

 

We must demand that all weapons are banned from Space and that any developments there are done for purposes other than “colonization” by any state or nation on earth.