First Orbit War

The United States Aerospace Force, totally stripped of its domination of the skies by popular demand, turned to building the most powerful space force in near orbit. This was matched by the NeoSoviet Union's own ESA-assisted space armament plan, and the two powers proceeded to litter near orbit with killer satellites, concealed drones, work habitats and massive battle stations which served as orbital fortresses and bases. Space patrols periodically cleaned out orbital nests of enemy hardware, under the basis of the U.N. Space Salvage Laws of 1995, which dictated that any unidentified object in orbit constituted a danger to orbital navigation, and could be removed and salvaged by any responsible party. Since the killsats, drones and spy-eyes were naturally not identified-to do so would negate their concealment and therefore their effectiveness-Neo-Soviet and USAF shuttles plied the space-lanes, scavenging each other's weapons. The ESA and the Highriders stayed away from the conflict, because many of the devices were boobytrapped and highly dangerous to anything approaching too closely.

Needless to say, these operations brought inimical hardware into close proximity, with explosive results. Incidents of damage and injury began to mount, and opposing patrols started exchanging more than greetings and navigational data when they passed. The crisis mounted until the surprise attack on the Mir XIII space weapons platform, the Neo-Sov's biggest battle station. The USAF successfully boarded it with EVAT marines, in the only spacesuit invasion in history. The ESA intervened on the part of their allies, and a short space war raged for about six hours until the ESA bombed Colorado Springs from Luna. In the meantime, over 40% of the world's Earth-to-orbit platforms and vehicles had been destroyed by the all out war. The fledgling Crystal Palace survived only because of its distant orbit and its low target priority (it was more important to kill off armed Neo-Sovs than unarmed, distant civilian targets).

The First Orbit War, as it came to be known, set the record for the highest cost-per-hour in material destroyed or expended: 2.98 billion eurodollars per hour.