The " Space Race " !

The original " nuclear club " consisted of the United States of America, Britain, France, the Soviet Union and China.  Strenuous efforts were made to keep other countries from developing nuclear weapons and this was largely successful, until both India and Pakistan cemented their hostility to one another by forcing their way into the club.   Now the rogue state of North Korea has unsettled the world by testing both ICBM's and the nuclear warheads that could bring destruction to mega cities.

So far, space has been rather peaceful.  We have made it to the moon and exploratory vehicles have landed on Mars and it is likely that a space colony may become a reality in the not too distant future, but most world countries are served by satellites which beam down the communications that are now an integral part of the modern world.   Should there be a communications blackout it would throw the world economy into instant chaos.

From a military point of view, those satellites deliver a first strike capability.  Computers and the internet are so integrated now with banking and the entire commercial system that we take for granted that civilization would grind to a halt in an instant if they failed.   An attack in space could be more effective than launching a nuclear strike on enemy cities.

That thought obviously crossed the minds of defence chiefs and we know that The United States, Russia and China have developed the capability of knocking out satellites belonging to other nations and thereby taking war into space.  Now it has been revealed that India has test fired such a similar missile and the trio with such capability has become a quartet.

The enmity between India and Pakistan was such that it caused the development of nuclear weapons to be carried out in secret and their entry into the nuclear club came as a surprise to the world.  It now seems inevitable that Pakistan will be working to develop parity with India and we can expect a revelation that similar rockets are in their arsenal in the near future.

The enigma is North Korea.  The " Hermit Kingdom " was surprisingly fast in developing both nuclear weapons and their delivery systems and it would not be surprising if they  progressed swiftly to anti satellite capability.    The thought of satellite destruction in the hands of this unpredictable regime would be a nightmare for world leaders.

Rocket development had its infancy when Germany developed the V2 in the second world war but today a vast number of people have the knowledge to enable small nations to recruit and develop their own rocket capability.  We could be on the cusp of a new arms race without the huge cost associated with going nuclear.

The thought of anti satellite rocketry extending to small nations brings an unpredictability factor that was thankfully missing when the nuclear club had entry limitations.