By Mike Moore
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is ferociously bright, competent, tenacious, and persuasive. And he is a vigorous advocate of weaponizing space. If he persuades the Bush administration and Congress to buy into his space vision, more than 40 years of national space policy, in which space has been set aside as a weapons-free sanctuary, will be reversed.
If that happens -- admittedly a large "if" -- it would surely ignite domestic and international outcries so intense as to make past controversies over ballistic missile defense proposals seem like warm-ups. And it would, in unpredictable and possibly adverse ways, affect how the United States interacts with other nations, both friend and foe.
Who's Vulnerable Now?
On Jan. 11, the same day as Rumsfeld's confirmation hearing in the Senate, the congressionally authorized Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization issued its report. Rumsfeld chaired the commission and the report presumably reflects his thinking.
The health of the U.S. economy as well as the effectiveness of its military forces, the report says, are inextricably linked to the continued functioning of a vast array of space-based military and commercial "assets" -- intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, warning, communications, weather, mapping, and navigation satellites.
Although the United States is without peer among space-faring nations, the Space Commission's report says, America's huge lead also makes it vulnerable to "state and non-state actors hostile to the United States and its interests."
America's economy would be disastrously disrupted and its ability to fight high-tech wars fatally compromised if a significant number of those space assets were disabled or destroyed. The commissioners Ð 13, including Rumsfeld -- said it is in the U.S. national interest to:
- Promote the peaceful use of space;
The report focuses on the third point. The U.S. military must evolve into a ground, sea, air, and space force: "The commissioners appreciate the sensitivity that surrounds the notion of weapons in space for offensive or defensive purposes. They also believe, however, that to ignore the issue would be a disservice to the nation." The president should "have the option to deploy weapons in space to deter threats to and, if necessary, defend against attacks on U.S. interests."
High on the commission's priority list is developing and testing a variety of anti-satellite systems, because U.S. satellites are essential to the nation's intelligence, early-warning and war-fighting capabilities. The commissioners believe that unfriendly nations will eventually have observation and command-and-control satellites that could imperil U.S. forces. They said, "The senior political and military leadership needs to test these [anti-satellite] capabilities in exercises on a regular basis, both to keep the armed forces proficient in their use and to bolster their deterrent value."
The commissioners also said the United States must develop the capability to project power from space. "Unlike weapons from aircraft, land forces, or ships, space missions initiated from earth or space could be carried out with little transit, information, or weather delay. Having this capability would give the U.S. a much stronger deterrent and, in a conflict, an extraordinary military advantage."
As for the endlessly controversial matter of national missile defense, the commissioners turned exceedingly cagey, perhaps because a space-based national missile defense system would clearly violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The report merely says:
"Some believe the ballistic missile defense mission is best performed when both sensors and interceptors are deployed in space. Effective sensors make countermeasures more difficult, and interceptors make it possible to destroy a missile shortly after launch, before either warhead or countermeasures are released."
"Space for Peaceful Purposes"
One hears echoes from the 1950s in the Space Commission report. After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in October 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was besieged by military men and think-tank warriors who wanted to counter the Soviet space-power "threat." The president, they said, should get on with the task of taking the "high ground" of space.
"Whoever has the capability to control space will likewise possess the capability to exert control of the surface of earth," Thomas D. White, Air Force chief of staff, told the National Press Club in November 1957. In December 1959, Air Force "Basic Doctrine" was revised to describe the service as an "aerospace" force.
Although President Eisenhower greatly mistrusted the Soviets, he was not enamored of extending the arms race into space. Instead, he declared that the United States should keep space free of weapons, formalizing what came to be known, pejoratively in hawkish precincts, as the "space for peaceful purposes" policy. President Eisenhower did not, however, bar the secret introduction of military-oriented satellites, particularly spy satellites. Such instruments, he believed, would be defensive and thus peaceful in character. They would allow the United States to more reliably understand what the hyper-secretive Soviet Union was up to.
U.S. space policy has had a schizophrenic quality ever since then. Although the United States and the Soviet Union proclaimed throughout the Cold War in every conceivable forum that space should be dedicated to peaceful purposes, both launched ever greater numbers of satellites useful to military and intelligence analysts and, later, to combat commanders. Nevertheless, the Eisenhower formulation, with inevitable fine-tuning here and there, remains U.S. policy for military use of space.
No More Space Treaties
In the 1960s, the United States, worried that the Soviet Union might have the capability and intention to put nuclear weapons in space, pushed for the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Article IV of the treaty says that parties to the treaty cannot "place in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner."
The treaty, however, does not bar the kind of precision weaponry the members of the Space Commission envision. In a nod to the now deeply rooted international tradition of keeping space free of weapons of any kind, the commissioners noted that a U.S. decision to weaponize space would stir concern. But the hand-wringing would be misplaced. Space weapons would be used for "defensive" and "non-aggressive" purposes.
Further, the commissioners add, the United States should "shape" the international environment to ensure that no new treaties constrain the United States. That suggestion simply reaffirms de facto national policy. Since Ronald Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983, the U.N. General Assembly has annually attempted to get the ball rolling on a treaty that would ban all weapons in space. The latest General Assembly resolution to that effect was passed last November by a vote of 163 to 0. Three nations abstained: the United States, Israel and Micronesia.
The preferred forum for negotiating such an instrument would be the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, which operates by consensus, thus giving every member a veto. Just as surely as the space-weapons matter is brought up in Geneva year after year, the United States blocks substantive action. Last September, for instance, Robert T. Grey, U.S. ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, said:
"The United States agrees that it is appropriate to keep this topic under review. ... On the other hand, we have repeatedly pointed out that there is no arms race in outer space -- nor any prospect of an arms race in outer space, for as far down the road as anyone can see."
Rather than banning space weapons, the U.S. insists that the Conference on Disarmament should focus on negotiating a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. China greatly complicated matters in 1999 after the Clinton administration decided to accelerate research and testing on a national missile defense system. China insisted that talks on a new space treaty get equal treatment with "fissban" negotiations. Though such linkage has widespread support in Geneva, the United States remains strongly opposed.
Kosovo and beyond
The Space Commission's recent report is important chiefly because of Rumsfeld's involvement. Otherwise, it is cold porridge, a collection of ideas, observations, and recommendations that have been floating around for decades in military circles.
Since the end of World War II, the Air Force, and think tanks such as RAND, have been envisioning potential military uses of space. Among their early proposals: nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, reconnaissance satellites, and orbiting weapons.
Today's visionaries, in the armed services, think tanks and scientific communities, are conceiving new possibilities for space warfare. Most noticeably, they are seeking to integrate their efforts with the technology-driven Revolution in Military Affairs (almost always reverently capitalized), which is well under way in America's armed forces. A key concept of the RMA is that insofar as possible, the United States intends to fight future wars with precision high-tech weapons armed with conventional explosives.
Joint Vision 2010, a conceptual template released in 1996 by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, celebrates the possibilities of the revolution. The document (updated last year as Joint Vision 2020) describes a new style of warfighting, one that features a "system of systems" -- digitally networked Army, Navy, Marine, and Air Force units that jointly fight in an information-rich environment, using standoff weapons that minimize the possibility of heavy U.S. casualties. The goal is to assure that in the 21st century, the United States will achieve "full spectrum dominance" of the "battlespace."
"Information superiority" will make it happen -- the "capability to collect, process, and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information while exploiting or denying an adversary's ability to do the same." Having the best surveillance, reconnaissance, navigation, and command-and-control satellites is essential to that superiority. America's new way of fighting was previewed in the 1991 Gulf War and later refined in the 78-day, U.S.-directed NATO air campaign over Kosovo and Serbia in 1999. In the latter war, NATO air forces attacked 900 targets with 37,465 sorties and suffered no combat casualties. Indeed, to minimize the possibility of casualties from anti-aircraft fire, the planes flew at altitudes of 15,000 feet or higher.
There were close to 500 civilian Yugoslav deaths, according to a comprehensive on-the-ground survey of the campaign conducted by Human Rights Watch. Most of the deaths, the report noted, were not the result of inaccurate munitions; they were caused by mistakes in target selection.
To military analysts everywhere, a bombing campaign that had so little "collateral damage" carried a staggering message: Air-delivered, designed-in-America munitions hit their targets with unprecedented accuracy, thanks in large part to a vast array of military satellites.
Planning for Space Superiority
U.S. Space Command, a joint Army, Navy, and Air Force operation, was organized in 1985 to coordinate the country's military activities in space and to develop plans and doctrine for future operations. The command's principal missions have been to launch and operate satellites that "enhance" the effectiveness of combat forces, as in the Gulf War and the NATO campaign.
Critics, particularly on the left, have noted that today's military satellites are far removed from Eisenhower's spy satellites. They aid in target selection and the precision delivery of munitions, while facilitating the instantaneous command-and-control of terrestrial forces. Nevertheless, they are not weapons within the traditional meaning of the word. They don't shoot at, blow up, or disable anything. Space has been "militarized" for 40 years; but it has not been "weaponized."
Space Command has, however, put boundless energy in developing doctrine and "weapons concepts" for more active missions -- "space control" and "force application." Space control would ensure that the United States and its allies have "assured access" to space while "denying enemies the same freedom." At the least, that calls for anti-satellite weapons. But the latter mission -- force application -- edges into Star Trek territory.
"Global Engagement," says Space Command's Long Range Plan, issued in 1998, "is the combination of global surveillance of the Earth (see anything, any time), worldwide missile defense, and the potential ability to apply force from space." An illustration on the inside back cover of "Vision for 2020," a Space Command brochure, is illuminating. (See page 40.) Our vantage point is in near-earth space. Below is a portion of the earth, painted in sere sepia shades. We see the easternmost tip of the Mediterranean Sea and below it, the Red Sea, partly obscured by clouds. Above the Mediterranean is a bit of the Black Sea; to its right, the Caspian Sea. Below that, the Persian Gulf.
The rest of the painting is bluish-black space, speckled with stars. In the foreground -- almost close enough to touch -- floats an orbiting laser. It glows orange as it zaps an earthly target. The exploding target is somewhere near Iraq.
"The American military is built to dominate all phases and mediums of combat," Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers said last year shortly before being promoted from commander-in-chief of Space Command to vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the second-highest uniformed military post. "We must acknowledge that our way of war requires superiority in all mediums of conflict, including space. Thus, we must plan for and execute to win space superiority."
A Space Pearl Harbor?
Space lasers are high on Space Command's wish list. They could shoot down ballistic missiles in their boost phase, says Space Command, or disable or destroy enemy satellites, or even attack terrestrial targets or aircraft in flight.
But operational laser arrays are decades away, according to best-case estimates. Other force-application options, however, could mature sooner. One concept, an unmanned Common Aero Vehicle or CAV, could be developed and deployed as early as 2008, according to the Air Force.
In its first incarnation, a CAV -- a pint-sized robotic spaceplane -- would be launched into partial orbit by an intercontinental ballistic missile. Mating a CAV with an ICBM, the Air Force says, would "provide warfighting forces with a conventional strike capability with near-global range." Later on, the Air Force hopes to launch the spaceplanes in long-lived Space Maneuver Vehicles, which could permit some CAVs to be in orbit at all times. According to the Air Force, that would give the United States the ability to "halt an enemy's operations within hours, minutes, or even seconds."
Although the January 2001 Space Commission report speaks of building a "force application" capability, it does not focus on lasers or CAVs. The commissioners believe that defending U.S. satellites and building anti-satellite weapons to disable or destroy hostile satellites are the most pressing needs. Indeed, the commission took a broad-brush approach in most of its observations and recommendations. The report was intended as a wakeup call, not a blueprint.
The commissioners acknowledge that many people believe it unlikely that an enemy, whether a state or a terrorist organization, would ever attack U.S. space assets. But, say the commissioners, "History is replete with instances in which warning signs were ignored and change resisted until an external, Ôimprobable' event forced resistant bureaucracies to take action." They warn that unless the U.S. is wise enough to reduce its vulnerability in space, it may someday face "a disabling attack against the country and its people -- a Ôspace Pearl Harbor.'"
A Wakeup Call for Space Power
A wakeup call was precisely what Sen. Bob Smith, a Republican from New Hampshire, had been looking for. Smith is the leading space power proponent in Congress.
Although there have been space power advocates in the armed forces, in think tanks, and in Congress since the late 1940s, they were aware that weaponizing space could be dangerously provocative in the hair-trigger Cold War context. From time to time, the United States and the Soviet Union toyed with the idea of full-scale deployment of anti-satellite weapons. But in the end, substantive deployments of ASAT systems were viewed as destabilizing, because the threat that either superpower's surveillance satellites could be disabled would make both states more insecure in a crisis.
The fading of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union opened a window of opportunity, says Smith, an opportunity that the Clinton administration was too timid to seize. And Smith complains that the Air Force, whose officers dominate Space Command, has been content to limit the role of space to support and force enhancement. When faced with budget crunches, they protect their beloved air-breathing programs at the expense of visionary space efforts.
"Even the Air Force's Space Warfare Center and Space Battlelab," Smith said in November 1998, "are focused primarily on figuring out how to use space systems to put information into the cockpit in order to drop bombs from aircraft more accurately. This is not space warfare."
In 1999, Smith, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, pushed through legislation establishing the Space Commission. Smith's choice for chairman: Rumsfeld.
Although many peace activists routinely accuse Smith, Space Command, and the U.S. government of conspiring to "control the earth" from space so that U.S.-managed global business can reap obscene profits, the truth is almost certainly more prosaic.
Since the presidency of George Washington, U.S. military forces have been charged with the mission of defending the United States and its interests. One does not have to be a Clausewitz to appreciate the military value of high ground. And since the late 1940s, space has been the ultimate high ground.
Advocates of U.S. military space programs believe that if the United States doesn't take control of space for the benefit of humankind, the bad guys will take control for darker reasons. "The logic essentially boils down to the belief that weapons in space are an inevitability," says Jim Oberg, a civilian analyst much favored by Space Command. "Since weaponization of space is inevitable, the United States, as the country with the historical opportunity to be the first to field them, would be foolish not to do so.
"And, should it not afford itself of the opportunity, it will likely find itself held hostage to the state that does."
But Will It Happen?
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld may be a true believer in space power, and he will almost surely promote it. But there are lots of obstacles on the road to space.
First of all, Rumsfeld also says he will raise the pay and benefits of the men and women in the armed forces, push through a host of force modernization plans, and put more money into every-day training.
And he must contend, as have all recent defense secretaries, with the unrelenting turf wars between the services. Army and Navy brass tend to see expanded space missions as a power grab by the Air Force, which essentially runs Space Command.
Rumsfeld's boss, President Bush, is intent on pushing through tax cuts. That, combined with a closely divided Congress, could make it less likely that expensive new space-related initiatives would be approved and funded.
Finally, U.S. allies and friends have been alarmed by decades of U.S. insistence that it needs to build a national ballistic missile defense system, which might jeopardize the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, the bedrock upon which U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control treaties were built. And lately, allies and friends have been bewildered by the apparent U.S. drive toward military dominance, including the possible weaponization of space.
Consider Canada, whose officers work side by side in Colorado Springs with Space Command officers in the closely parallel organization, the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Despite the NORAD ties, the Canadian government describes an attempt by any nation to implement "space control" as "destabilizing." It has long called for a treaty to ban weapons in space.
Preserving space as a weapons-free "sanctuary," the policy established by President Eisenhower, is the right stance for the United States, wrote Air Force Lt. Col. Bruce M. DeBlois, in the winter 1998 issue of Airpower Journal, the Air Force's professional journal. DeBlois, now division chief of Strategic Studies and Assessments at the National Reconnaissance Office, says a policy of space sanctuary is justified for a host of political, strategic, and practical reasons. But he also asserts that it is consistent with American national character:
"The United States exports its national values of individual freedom and democracy and maintains a pattern of not bullying other nations into accepting these ideals. The expectation is that the inherent worth of the ideals is self-evident. Maintaining the moral high ground in order to support this pattern is essential, even if it requires the United States to take some risks. ...
"The idea of putting weapons in space to dominate the globe is simply not compatible with who we are and what we represent as Americans."
Mike Moore is senior editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an arms control publication established in 1945 by key members of the Manhattan Project. Moore can be reached at m-smoore@socket.net.