‘Space is already militarized’ Space lawyer Michelle Hanlon explains why international law still matters in a new era of astropolitics

In recent years, Washington and Moscow have traded increasingly sharp accusations of “militarizing” outer space. After Russia shot down one of its own satellites in a 2021 test that created a massive debris field, Washington condemned the move as “dangerous and irresponsible behavior.”

In early 2024, panic flared in the U.S. over reports that Moscow was preparing to deploy nuclear weapons in orbit — something Russia denied. That spring, Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution reaffirming the Outer Space Treaty’s ban on nuclear weapons in space, calling it a politicized “dirty spectacle” meant to “tarnish” Moscow’s reputation. The following month, the U.S. voted against a Russian draft resolution to ban all weapons in space, dismissing it as “the culmination of Russia’s campaign of diplomatic gaslighting.”

The accusations haven’t stopped since. In January, Russia blasted Donald Trump’s plan for an “American Iron Dome” missile defense shield as proof of Washington’s drive to turn space “into an arena of armed confrontation.” The U.S., meanwhile, continues to warn that Russia is testing new military capabilities in orbit. In late June, a Russian spacecraft released a sub-satellite near a U.S. government satellite — prompting renewed allegations from analysts that Russia’s “inspector satellites” are actually dormant weapons.

Concerns like these aren’t new. Over half a century ago, fears of an arms race in space helped drive the creation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty — the foundation for international space law. But is this framework keeping up with the increasing militarization of space? To learn more about the political and technological challenges facing space law today, Meduza spoke with Michelle Hanlon, the executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi.

The following interview has been lightly edited and abridged for length and clarity.

— From a legal standpoint, what constitutes a “weapon” in space? Given that many systems can serve both civilian and military purposes, what criteria are used under international space law to classify an object as such?

— International law applies in space per Article 3 of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. So this is what we know about weapons in space. We know that you cannot place nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction anywhere in space. We don’t have definitions in the Outer Space Treaty, but we certainly have definitions that we can borrow from Earth: whatever is banned or considered a nuclear weapon terrestrially will be a nuclear weapon in space.

The Outer Space Treaty does not ban conventional weapons in space. And it says that “the moon and other celestial bodies shall be used [...] exclusively for peaceful purposes.” That, of course, is very open-ended. But we know there are military uses of space that are perfectly acceptable. Our first uses of space were in fact military, right? They were reconnaissance satellites. And so that’s where we’re in this gray area.

— Is there any understanding, then, of militarization in space law as a whole?

— There’s absolutely a lot of talk about the militarization of space, [namely] about creating aggressive and defensive capabilities. What people have to remember is that space is already militarized in the sense that the military uses space. The U.S. military, French military, and Chinese military use it for reconnaissance and telecommunications.

People will say, well, the United States has militarized space because they now consider space a warfighting domain. That’s part of the U.S. military doctrine. China may not have decided to call space a “warfighting domain,” but it’s created capabilities that could very easily become warfighting ones. The proximity and rendezvous operations, the fact that they’re putting equipment on their space station to keep others away — those [constitute] a militarization of space as well.

I think my concern is that when we start using words like “militarization,” it creates an environment of fear. The fact of the matter is, there are some very innocent explanations. China is putting a defensive capability on their space station because they spent a lot of money on it and they don’t want to get hit by something. It’s not necessarily that they’re going to shoot other people out of the sky. The United States calls space a warfighting domain in part because access to space is so important for the U.S. economy. It’s not that [we’re] going to put forts in space, it’s just that we always need to understand what’s going on and make sure that we always have access to the satellite communications and the weather satellites that we rely on.

Again, the concept of this “militarization of space” — that ship has sailed. Space is militarized. So I think we really need to turn the conversation more into, how do we prevent or mitigate or reduce the risk of conflict in space?

— Concerns about anti-satellite weapons keep resurfacing, particularly around claims that Russia is developing new capabilities. Do these technologies test the limits of the Outer Space Treaty? 

— No, the Outer Space Treaty does not ban anti-satellite weapons. If you have a weapon on Earth that can shoot a satellite down and you want to test it, that’s fine. Of course, they’ve been testing on their own satellites. If an anti-satellite weapon from Russia hit a U.S. satellite then we’re drawn back into terrestrial law. Is that an act of war? It’s a U.S. space object. Does that constitute something that the U.S. can respond to under the U.N. Charter? Can they do something in self-defense? All of those things roll back into what we do and how we look at each other terrestrially.

 — Last year, U.S. officials accused Russia of developing a nuclear anti-satellite weapon intended for deployment in orbit — something Russia denied. In cases like this, how are such claims handled at the multilateral level?

— International law, as you probably have gleaned, doesn’t have a lot of teeth. When there was the ASAT [anti-satellite] test by Russia in 2021, they did nothing illegal, but the international response was to say, okay, this makes us nervous, so we should have a rule that says you can’t create debris with an ASAT test. That went through the United Nations, and many nations signed on to it and many did not.

Placing a nuclear weapon or a weapon of mass destruction anywhere in space is one of the few ways you can outright violate the [Outer Space Treaty]. Then you would get an international response. We call it “name and shame and wag your finger”— more sanctions and that kind of stuff. And ultimately, nations can take the offender to the International Court of Justice and see if they can’t get a ruling about it.

Again, that’s not to say that anyone will pay attention to the ruling, but at least we’re creating sort of an aspirational bar that we want to meet. 

— Under the Liability Convention, the launching state is responsible for damage caused by its space objects on Earth. But in a hypothetical scenario where Country A attacks Country B’s satellite, and debris from Country B’s satellite causes damage or harms someone in a third country, who is legally liable?

— Now we’re talking about liability versus responsibility. Under the law, the country the debris [belongs to] is liable. No question about that. 

This is something that’s in the [Liability Convention] to protect the victim. Let’s say Country A is aggressive against Country B. Country A is violating the law, damages the satellite, debris from Country B falls onto Country C. The law is very clear: Country B is responsible, so Country B will pay. It’s called an “absolute standard.” Country C doesn’t have to show liability. The fact that it was not Country B’s fault doesn’t matter. 

This is something that we wanted to be very clear about in the Liability Convention, to protect everybody on the ground. So if you get hit by something, you’re not trying to figure out the chain of liability.

Now, that doesn’t stop Country B from suing Country A for damages. [Country B could seek compensation for] the cost of the satellite, the cost of any research the satellite was doing, and then the damages it caused on Earth. But if there’s damage to an object in space, the liability is not absolute. It’s a negligence standard, so you have to prove that [Country A] violated some standard when you got hit.

— With NATO recognizing space as an operational domain, the U.S. establishing a Space Force, and both the U.S. and Russia accusing each other of militarizing orbit, space is increasingly being treated as a potential theater of conflict. In your view, is international space law currently equipped to address this reality?

— There are a lot of gaps in international space law, no question. And that was on purpose. In 1967, we really had no clue what was going on in space or what we would be capable of in space. (You had two camps in 1967: those who thought there were going to be hotels on the moon by 1975, and those who didn’t think that we would ever have a commercial space sector.)

The Outer Space Treaty is very much a framework. It’s guiding principles, and it even says that — it’s “principles governing the activities of states.” What we’re finding now is that all the things that it left open [ended] — because you can’t regulate stuff you don’t know about — are starting to happen. So, we need to start regulating. 

The good news is, we’re starting. We’ve seen this progression of what we call “soft law.” Remote sensing became big, so we created the Remote Sensing Principles at the international multilateral level, through the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space [COPUOS]. We’ve also created guidelines about using nuclear power in space and about orbital debris. They’re non-binding, but they carry a lot of weight because the entire COPUOS had to agree with them. And so now we’re seeing more and more attention being paid to orbit and orbital debris and what it means and a lot of effort at the U.N. COPUOS to assure transparency.

One of the best ways to avoid conflict is to make sure everybody knows where everybody else is so that you can avoid each other. We’re starting to see this happen more at the COPUOS. Now the big question is, will it happen fast enough? We know that the U.N. treaty system takes a long time. The Outer Space Treaty took 15 years to negotiate. The last set of “soft law,” non-binding resolutions, which became the [Guidelines for the] Long-term Sustainability [of Outer Space Activities], took [around] eight years to agree to.

So are we going to run out of time before that happens? That, I think, is much more critical than [saying] we need to renegotiate the Outer Space Treaty. We are on a good path forward, but let’s hope that we are able to stay on that path. Even if there are some close calls along the way.

— Is there political will to negotiate treaties on military activity in space? Cooperation on science and peaceful uses seems easier, but militarization is, by definition, about each nation seeking an advantage. Is this an area where states would actually push for rules, or is it one where they’d want to avoid regulation to keep the upper hand?

— Just because we’re in space, we don’t lose our geopolitics. There’s a lot of strategy involved, but that doesn’t mean that nobody wants peace in space. What is very, very clear is that we all rely on space for critical infrastructure for a lot of reasons. We all need to explore space; we’re going to run out of some very vital raw materials here on Earth. Most nations would agree that we don’t want to create a debris patch on orbit that we can’t get past. Whether you’re militarizing space or not, it would be dumb to create a debris patch like that. Strategically, we all want access to space, and so I think that’s what’s going to be guiding any treaty mechanisms in the future.

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