I had heard that space based stuff was “illegal” - finally looked up what treaty defines that
“Development of orbital weaponry was largely halted after the entry into force of the Outer Space Treaty and the SALT II treaty. These agreements prohibit weapons of mass destruction from being placed in space. As other weapons exist, notably those using kinetic bombardment, that would not violate these treaties, some private groups and government officials have proposed a Space Preservation Treaty which would ban the placement of any weaponry in outer space.”
The sad state of affairs is that international space treaties are practically unenforceable..
Hence ULA CEO proposing giant space lasers™ which obviously will not be defense only in the long run. The same way the US "defense industry" has never defended.
And who is going to stop the Chinese from putting weapons into orbit? Heck they might've done it already and we'd be none the wiser.
A laser being able to destroy a low flying high speed missile hardend against those is probably also able to a lot more. Like destroy enemy planes. Or combatants. Or heads of states. Or pesky journalists/dissidents.
Allowing sth like this to be deployed, not sure if this can be allowed by eg other nation states. It certainly puts the status quo in disarray...
“Development of orbital weaponry was largely halted after the entry into force of the Outer Space Treaty and the SALT II treaty. These agreements prohibit weapons of mass destruction from being placed in space. As other weapons exist, notably those using kinetic bombardment, that would not violate these treaties, some private groups and government officials have proposed a Space Preservation Treaty which would ban the placement of any weaponry in outer space.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_weapon