http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/637bf054-8e34-11e5-8be4-3506bf20cc...

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/637bf054-8e34-11e5-8be4-3506bf20cc2b.html

a very long article.. but here's the snippet:

A new arms race in our skies threatens the satellites that control everything from security to communications

©Justin Metz
An unlikely memorial runs across the middle of the marketplace in Kettering — an otherwise unremarkable English market town. This slab of granite, set into the paving as part of a timeline of local history, reads “Russian Satellites: Grammar School Beats Nasa”. Etched into the stone is the distinctive outline of a sputnik orbiter.
Kettering Grammar School — like the space race — is long gone. But for a period it was on the front line of the extraterrestrial battle between Washington and Moscow. The Kettering Group — the school’s enthusiastic science masters and their eager pupils — became the world’s foremost amateur satellite sleuths, tracking secret Soviet launches and uncovering the location of a previously secret Russian cosmodrome from the workaday shire town.
As the cold war passed into history, so did the group. Geoff Perry, the main teacher and leader, died in 2000. But some of his former pupils never lost their enthusiasm for tracking the orbits of satellites in the skies above us. In 2014, an email from one of them hit my inbox. Did I know much about satellites, it asked? Perhaps I should look into this curious new object?
“In May 2014 there was a regular Russian rocket launch that put four satellites up into orbit,” recalls Bob Christy, a former Kettering pupil. “But one of them wasn’t the same as the others.” Three — as had been publicly declared — were Rodnik communications satellites. The fourth, though, was something quite else. Officially it was classified on the Pentagon’s public space database as orbital junk. But then it began to manoeuvre. “It moved away from the others,” says Christy. “And then we watched it put itself on a trajectory to catch up again with the rocket booster that launched it. It was some kind of test.”
What exactly Norad 39765 — known also as Kosmos 2499 and Object 2014-28e — is has still not been publicly declared. The Russians do not even acknowledge its existence. But the activities of the mystery “ghost” satellite have given many in the defence and intelligence community pause for thought. “In the last year, the Russians, China and the US have all been testing these kinds of things,” says Christy. “People talk about them being inspectors, but if you have the ability to manoeuvre up to another satellite in space to inspect it, you also have the ability to destroy it.”
Indeed, as far as several seasoned analysts, intelligence officials and diplomats spoken to by the Financial Times are concerned, 39765 best makes sense in the context of one of Russia’s most secretive cold war ventures — a programme that is now being revived: Istrebitel Sputnikov. The satellite killer.
Space, military officials like to say, is the ultimate higher ground. Since the cold war ended, however, it has been a largely uncontested territory. In January 1967, the US, UK and USSR became the first signatories to the Outer Space Treaty. In it, they committed to keeping the moon free of military testing and not putting weapons of mass destruction into orbit. China joined the pact in 1984. Another 100 states are now signed up.
As a result, for three decades, space powers have been able to operate their own satellites with impunity. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, there are at least 1,300 satellites now orbiting the Earth. Some have military purposes. Some are for civilian and commercial use. Most — 549 — are American. European powers are big players too. Russia has 131, the UK 40. But growing numbers are from rising countries. China now has 142 in orbit, India 33.
With all this activity, the pax caelestis is unlikely to hold for much longer. Sixty years after the space race began, an orbital arms race is again in development.
Military officials from the US, Europe and Asia spoken to by the Financial Times confirm in private what the Kettering Group and other amateur stargazers have been watching publicly. Almost every country with strategically important satellite constellations and its own launch facilities is considering how to defend — and weaponise — their extraterrestrial assets. “I don’t think there is a single G7 nation that isn’t now looking at space security as one of its highest military priorities and areas of strategic concern,” says one senior European intelligence official.
“The threat is increasing and this is a major concern,” says Frank Rose, US assistant secretary of state for arms control. “Both Russia and China are developing ASAT [anti-satellite weapon] capabilities to hold US systems at risk. Now, we don’t believe it’s in anyone’s interest to engage in a space arms race . . . We don’t want conflict in outer space. But be assured, we will be able to operate in a degraded space environment. We’ve made it clear that we will do what is necessary to protect the space assets of the US and our allies against potential attack.”
Satellites are fragile things: a nudge to their orbit, a tilt of their solar panels towards the sun, a laser blast directed at their sensors or a projectile casually fired into their path are all capable of wreaking permanent, irreversible damage. “We have plenty of vulnerabilities we need to work on and space is one of the most important,” says General Denis Mercier, Nato’s supreme commander, who is charged with adapting the alliance to deal with future threats. “It’s a domain that is going to be as important in modern warfare as any other. We have a responsibility and a necessity to work on it.”

©Justin Metz
Space, says Mercier, needs to be considered in the same breath as sea and air when it comes to defence. While developed societies are becoming more dependent on it than ever before for almost every aspect of their digital economies, their grip on the technologies that have given them global strategic dominance is slipping. And as more countries around the world look to maximise their military advantages, space is becoming the most obvious domain to contest.
“This is going to explode in the very near future . . . you already have 60-plus nations who are interested in space capabilities,” says Elizabeth Quintana, senior research fellow at the military think-tank Rusi. “And with that, there are a number that are developing very serious anti-space capabilities, most notably China and Russia. When you think that western militaries and societies are critically dependent on space, it is an area to be seriously concerned about.”