With respect to Mr. Loverro and his point of view I did not forget any of these talking points he brings up; word limits prevented addressing the narrative promulgated by the Biden Administration and NGOs, and I opted to use the opportunity to elucidate on my perspective. That said, I will briefly rebut Mr. Loverro’s points: First, the point is not whether the U.S. needs to destructively test ASAT capabilities. The reality is we made a unilateral arms control concession without extracting similar concessions from peer and near-pear geopolitical actors. Moreover, as noted in the article, the need for destructive testing is gone. The technology and techniques for doing so have been available to any state that possesses anti-ballistic technology, and thus as noted in the article an incident involving destructive actions are demonstrations of a capability not a test. Second, while the West dismisses the role of lawfare and hybrid warfare, the Russians, the PRC and certain NGOs are aware of its use. This means despite Mr. Loverro’s assurance testing of ballistic missile defense is protected, the role of lawfare and its use by the entities mentioned cannot be dismissed, especially since destructive testing involves technology ancillary to missile defense. Further, Mr. Loverro’s assertion the PRC, the Russian Federation and India implicitly agree with the ban is nonsensical for two reasons. 1) There is no evidence standing down further “testing” by these actors means they agree with the moratorium and 2) there is no reason for these actors to “test” a capability that they have demonstrated. Finally, the argument this unilateral concession puts the U.S. in a position of leadership is inaccurate. Indeed, the U.S. efforts at the Conference of Disarmament in 2018 calling out the Russian Federation and the PRC for their counterspace activities effectively burned down the soft-power efforts of those two actors in regard to outer space security and put the U.S. in a position of prestige. The unilateral concession made by the U.S. and its support of the Open-Ended Working Group, which was a diplomatic catastrophe, were a phoenix from the ashes moment for the PRC and the Russian Federation and their soft-power agenda. All-in-all, the ban is a political win and positive optics for those who support the ban but is also a soft-power win for the Russian Federation and the PRC.

The moratorium has now put the US back in the leadership position in space diplomacy, a position we had ceded for the last 40 years. It cost us nothing, further ostracized Russia, gained explicit or implicit agreement from almost every nation of the world, and made it that much harder for anyone else to engage in a debris-causing test. Pretty nice payoff for the price of a signature.