The 100 km perspective: Our lives depend on what happens above us

The US has publicly announced for the first time that it possesses orbital weapons. Dr. Shmrit Maman argues that space is becoming a strategic arena, and that national security, economy, and science are converging into a single system. She emphasizes the need for national resilience based on redundancy, distributed architectures, and international cooperation.

The US has publicly announced for the first time that it possesses orbital weapons, without revealing details about the types of systems. Dr. Shmrit Maman argues that space is becoming a strategic arena in its own right, and that familiar boundaries are blurring: national security, economy, science, and technology are converging into a single system. She notes the establishment of the Space Directorate in the IDF as a move joining a global trend of transitioning from separate to coordinated systems. The key, she says, is convergence between military, civilian, commercial, and scientific sectors into one national system. Recent wars have demonstrated the integration of space into the security dimension, but the author emphasizes that the same infrastructures also serve civilian life: communication in disasters, fire monitoring, agriculture, water, and the environment. The question of national resilience depends on the ability to continue operating even when a satellite is damaged or a system is attacked, through redundancy, distributed architectures, cyber defense, and international cooperation.