Discuss the challenges posed by the militarisation of Earth's orbit to global commercial and civilian satellite infrastructure. Suggest a governance framework.

The Outer Space Treaty, 1967 bars only weapons of mass destruction from orbit, leaving conventional and anti-satellite systems unregulated [1]. As orbit becomes a contested military domain [4], the burden falls on commercial and civilian satellites that underpin communications, navigation, banking and disaster response.

Challenges to commercial and civilian infrastructure

• Debris as the transmission channel: kinetic attacks and break-ups scatter long-lived fragments that strike all users indiscriminately. In 2024 alone, 3,665 objects entered the tracked population, a single Chinese CZ-6A upper-stage break-up adding about 650 catalogued pieces [2].
• Rising operating costs for civilian assets: ISRO analysed over 53,000 close-approach alerts and executed 10 collision-avoidance manoeuvres for Indian satellites in 2024 [2]. Every manoeuvre burns propellant, shortening mission life and raising insurance and replacement costs.
• Erosion of civilian immunity: armed forces increasingly lease commercial communication and imaging capacity, blurring the civilian–military distinction that International Humanitarian Law presumes, and exposing private operators to targeting.
• Escalation risk from ambiguity: no agreed definition of a "hostile act" in orbit exists; two manoeuvrable satellites closing in can each read the other as an attack.
• Governance deadlock: the Security Council twice failed in 2024 to adopt a first-ever resolution on preventing an arms race in outer space, after a Russian veto [3]; the First Committee remains split between binding treaties and voluntary norms [4].

A workable governance framework

• Behaviour-first norms: prior notification of close approaches, minimum separation distances, and no interference with civilian satellites — these need no agreed definition of a "weapon."
• Ban destructive ASAT testing, which is verifiable since break-ups appear in tracking catalogues within days; India, having already demonstrated Mission Shakti at low altitude [5], can join at negligible strategic cost.
• Plurilateral verification: expand independent space-situational-awareness sharing, including ISRO's IS4OM [2], so no single power monopolises orbital data.
• Binding instrument as the goal: sustain India's call at the Conference on Disarmament for a multilaterally negotiated, verifiable treaty [4].

Militarisation threatens the orbital commons that civilian development depends on. India, both a victim of debris and a counter-space state, is uniquely placed to bridge the binding-versus-voluntary divide — advancing rules of the road now while keeping a verifiable treaty as the destination, consistent with its treatment of outer space as the province of all humankind.