The "Star Wars" aspect of the Third World War.
One could say that the war in space had begun when Sputnik was orbiting the Earth back in 1957. But after all the media craze over man going into space, the US being the first to the moon and the eventual ending of the Apollo missions in the 1970s that the true developments had begun. For starters it is easy to learn nowadays about the CIAs, DIAs, and NSAs joint satellite reconnaissance program launching the KH series satellites into space and the Keyhole satellite but these were small time when compared to other developments.
First we'll cover the Americans and NATO. When it came down to it there wasn't any further moon landings after Apollo 17 - at least none from NASA. The Deparment of Defense had always had an interest in deciding how they could use the US's unique monopoly on the moon and when the threat of missiles being launched from subs, or from within the USSR, became a problem they opened a project that would hopefully give them some sort of early warning when it came to detecting Nukes that NORAD's limited scope couldn't provide. Project Delta was the deploying of ICBM detection modules on the lunar surface twelve were placed by DoD contractors. They all were placed succesfully and began to transmit signals to Air force Lunar Command then located at Wright-Patterson Air force base in Dayton Ohio. They transmitted signals that allowed monitors to detect ICBM and SLBM launches upon their leaving on their silos. With the success of Project Delta more and more developments came along most notably were the Enterprise Project, Goliath and the Python assault weapon. The Enterprise project (Yes, that is a reference to Star Trek) was basically a jack of all trades satellite, developed during the Reagan years the Enterprise and her two sisters were specially designed to be able to do a multitude of things it had the ability to take high quality photographs, lase targets from space with a built in laser designator built into the satellite, it could then guide cruise missiles from naval ships or from Goliath down onto the target. It had equipment aboard that would allow NSA officers aboard to hack into "secure" communication lines and gather Sigintel, literally being bale to transmit reports to intelligence officers on the ground about enemy movements and positions in real time allowing commanders to adjust their forces. This was used to very good effect at the Battle of Frankfurt to help turn back Soviet attacks. Finally the satellite each carried three Anti-Satellite Missiles and a load of minelets all that could be released in case on an attack from one of the Soviet Interceptor Satellites. The Three Enterprises were manned by a crew of two Air force weapons operators, and two NSA Intelligence officers, and usually one NASA officer to oversee the maintenance of the Satellites' equipment and structure. Goliath was another and far more lethal space station again under the command of the Air Force but also the US Missile Command. Goliath was a single satellite developed by a joint British and American team that had the ability to mount ballistic missiles that could be used on ground targets. Most of the missiles were MIRVs meaning that within each missile were several more warheads that could be retargeted separately.