Ex-President Ronald Reagan in 1983 established the Space Defense Initiative in order to counter a possible nuclear attack on the United States, marking an important milestone in space warfare. But this was not the first time in which a possible nuclear war in space was mentioned. In 1967, the Outer Space Treaty banned the use of nuclear weapons in space, as both USSR and USA had been testing weapons in outer space in that period, specifically in 1962 when Operation Fishbowl incorporated a series of 11 nuclear tests, along with Starfish Prime, the largest test of the operation with a 1.2 Megaton bomb detonating at an altitude of 400 km.
Despite the treaty of 1967 and 1963, the USSR made a test in space warfare in 1975 when the cannons of Salyut 3, part of the secret Almaz Military Space Program, were fired. This program came from a long line of development that had started about 10 years earlier. This wasn’t the last time such a test took place. In 2007, China, which had recently launched its first crewed mission, was already testing space cannons by shooting down one of its own weather satellites. While the test was successful, it left a large field of debris orbiting Earth, which could’ve presented a hazard for future launches.
Overall, test or not, space weapons represent an incredible danger to global security. They could destroy many cities and some of these weapons have EMP (electromagnetic pulse capabilities), which destroy electronic devices in the range of hundreds or thousands of miles, potentially causing mayhem.
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