Paris, 21 June, 2006 – The WEU Assembly has called for the European Union (EU) to set up a European Space Surveillance Network “to provide constant, near real-time data on the position of all European and non-European satellites” for fear of a space arms race.

A report, entitled “Weapons in Space” and prepared for the Technological and Aerospace Committee by Alan Meale (United Kingdom, Socialist Group), said such a system should be complementary to its American counterpart and that Russia and China should be invited to participate in the European programme from the outset. The Assembly also urged the EU to increase capability to replace key satellites rapidly, to enable satellites to operate autonomously for short periods and to make limited self-repairs in orbit, to improve encryption, and to shield satellites’ crucial subsystems and enhance the stealth characteristics of their design.

Presenting the report, which was adopted unanimously, Mr Meale said the aim was to raise awareness among parliaments of “what is already occurring in relation to the weaponisation of space—together with a better understanding of what may follow if it develops.” Unless a debate is launched now, “it is unlikely that suitable progress will be made by our governments towards the establishment of the series of necessary common and sensible criteria to protect and defend one another […] and our allies and friends around the world.”

Noting that today’s armed forces are so “dependent upon space-enabled networks that it is difficult to imagine them working successfully without them,” he declared that they “are extremely vulnerable to attack, easy to obstruct or destroy, very expensive to build, difficult to launch, operate and of course maintain.” Other dangers include the risk of explosions in space and of inner and outer space being used to trigger “a new and very different technological arms race,” he said.

It had come “as a shock to most,” which was what had prompted the report, to discover that the US Administration “had decided to invest a reputed US$ 25 billion – initially for research purposes only – to make the protection of its military superiority in and via space the key plank of its future defence planning,” Mr Meale explained. This move will be seen overwhelmingly as an effort by the US “to gain and retain total terrestrial superiority – something which is also likely to cause an immediate international response and, most worrying of all, maybe a space arms race.”

The difference between military developments in space 50 years ago and today was that before these announcements, “recent military political opinions have largely been confined to backroom boffins’ drawing boards – with military engineers, planners and architects plainly aware of international political thinking about the inevitable dangers involved in the weaponisation of either inner and/or outer space,” he added.