The effectiveness of such attacks can be enhanced by use of reentry vehicles designed for controlled aerodynamic maneuvering during reentry, as developed during the 1970s in the U.S. Air Force's Aeroballistic Reentry Systems (ABRES) program. (Article IV of the 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Clestial Bodies states: State Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kind of weapon of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner. The strength of this treaty provision has perhaps been eroded by the failure of the United States to protest the Soviet FOBS program both publicly and vigorously, shortly after the treaty entered into force; by recent U.S. studies of placing Minuteman warheads in orbit for survivability during periods of increased tension; and by the open question of whether unassembled nuclear warhead components can be considered to be "weapons." The potential effectiveness of both first-strike and second-strike attacks against targets in low orbits and on the Earth by strategic weapons deployed in far orbits (GEO and beyond) has been stressed previously. Defense against this kind of attack, once launched, appears to be difficult, if at all possible. This case points up the critical need for effective and credible safeguards for SPS to assure the international community that military adapters could not be added to the SPS. The technology of robotics (as exemplified by remote manipulation equipment in nuclear laboratories, the Space Shuttle payload deployment arms and manipulators, and a host of related developments in automation) will enable many SPS construction and operational functions to be accomplished by remote control. These developments will also lead to the possibility of small automated vehicles, equipped with grapplers, which would be capable of approaching foreign spacecraft to inspect them, to capture and retrieve them, or to negate them by weapon fire or by physical breakage by direct contact (satellite mutilation). Grapplers might also be incorporated in sortie vehicles for special missions, but the risk of possible boobytraps in foreign spacecraft make remotely operated grapplers more attractive.
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