Russia and China have both made organizational changes in their military, as have the Americans with the formation of the US Space Force in 2019. There are concerns that this activity violates the Outer Space Treaty, but it only states that weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear missiles should not be placed ‘in orbit or on celestial bodies or [stationed] in outer space in any other manner’. There’s nothing in international law to prevent the stationing of laser-armed satellites. And every page of history suggests that if one country does it, so will another, and then another.
