Verification of a Ban on Space Weapons

Abstract

Although the title of this paper implies that a kind of international agreement on space weaponry ban is considered as possible, I am not going to go into details of this hypothetical treaty. Nor will I give any formal definition of space weapons; instead, I shall try to present some general (from the physical point of view) considerations of the possibility to verify a ban on a specific class of space weapons, namely those that are based on “new physical principles”. But first I want to consider three possible methods of verification: ground to space inspection; space to space inspection; and on-ground (pre-launch) inspection.