Military Use and Arms Race in Space from the Perspective of International Law

Abstract

Today, one of the main concerns of the Committee for the Peaceful Use of Outer Space (COPUOS) and its subcommittees is the issue of militarization in space law. Top space countries such as the United States, Russia and China have added to this concern by using advanced space military equipment. Therefore, the international community must look for desirable and practical solutions to solve this problem in order to prevent militarization and the creation of an arms race in space. Based on this, the present article tries to investigate the military prohibitions governing space activities in order to prohibit such activities in outer space by analyzing the military use of space and legal documents and explaining the conventional and customary system governing space treaties and by examining some dual-use space-based weapons; Conduct a descriptive analysis and reveal more about the negative aspects of the military use of space.

Keywords

• space law
• arms race
• space militarization
• conventional and customary system
• space weapons