Airspace, Satellites, and Modern Warfare Geography

Command of the air above a battlefield, and increasingly of the orbital space above the atmosphere entirely, has become a dimension of geography every bit as contested as land or sea. The imposition of no-fly zones over parts of Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, maintained under Operations Provide Comfort and Northern and Southern Watch, restricted Iraqi aircraft from large areas of the country's own airspace for over a decade, while the United Nations Security Council's Resolution 1973 in March 2011 authorized a similar no-fly zone over Libya, enforced by NATO's Operation Unified Protector, that in practice extended into a broader air campaign against Muammar Gaddafi's forces. These operations show how a state's territorial airspace, nominally an extension of its sovereignty under international law, can be effectively suspended by external military power.