A grey zone: The contours of outer space armed conflict and South Africa’s national interests

Abstract

ABSTRACT The prospect of extra-terrestrial (outer space) armed conflict between major powers is a real possibility. As early as 1966, an Outer Space Treaty was signed by over 100 countries in response to such a possibility. In 2019, NATO declared outer space a new potential war zone or military operational domain alongside air, land, sea, and cyberspace. This new war zone is mainly a strategic frontier, exclusively dominated by a few global superpowers. It would be naive to think that global superpowers’ wars fought in outer space will not have a detrimental socio-economic effect on non-participating countries. On the contrary, an outer space war will have dire consequences for the developing world, such as South Africa. This article is descriptive and explanatory in nature and analyses the potential risks of a twenty-first-century space war to South Africa's national security. It provides a deeper understanding by contextualising the international legal regulation of the military use of space, the use of force against the architecture of space resources, technological advances in satellite systems and weapons, the current geopolitical tensions between the major superpowers related to space and highlights South Africa's international relations with some of these global superpowers.