Future defense plans will rely more heavily on space from intelligence to active weapon systems. (U.S. Air Force image)

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Future defense strategy will take more advantage of America's dominance in space.

Albuquerque Journal

The military has long given signs it is willing to take warfare into space. Under the Bush administration, it might get that chance. But arms-control advocates, technological hurdles and international treaties promise to make the venture controversial, expensive and possibly damaging to U.S. relations with allies and competitors.

Proponents argue that taking the ability to make war into space, initially through armed satellites and space-based missile defenses, will become vital to national defense in the next 20 years. Other countries, China primarily, are reportedly working on ways to disable U.S. satellites, which have become essential to both military and civilian information-gathering and communications.

Opponents believe that one of humanity's oldest habits -- fighting -- should remain here on Earth. They accuse the United States of exaggerating any threat, to the benefit of military budgets and contractors.

Both sides note that New Mexico's defense-research complex is playing a major role in preparations for the potential militarization of space.

Advantage sought

In the military's lingo, space war is "space control" or "space superiority."

"In 2020, if not sooner, adversaries will essentially share the high ground of space with the United States and its allies," says the "Long Range Plan" of the U.S. Space Command. "The United States must be prepared to ensure our space advantage over an enemy."

Until his appointment as Bush's secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld headed a blue-ribbon panel studying U.S. vulnerabilities in space. Its conclusion: the U.S. is at risk of a "space Pearl Harbor" unless it takes measures to defend its satellites.

Rumsfeld listed "defense of space assets" among his top priorities.

"It's vital to our national security," said Frank Gaffney, an assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan and director of the Center for Security Policy, a conservative Washington think-tank. "It's vital for our commercial competitiveness."

The United States, easily the world's leading space-faring nation, has plenty of "space assets."

Satellites' roles

For the military, satellite-based global positioning systems guide missiles to their targets and give ground commanders an extremely accurate view of the positions of their forces. Spy satellites, able to track fleet and troop movements, provide automated reconnaissance and mapping. They also serve as an early warning of long-range missile launches.

For civilians, satellites aid weather prediction, connect pagers and wireless phones and provide video feeds for television.

Small and fragile, satellites' main defense is that they are hard to reach.

But not impossible. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union developed anti-satellite missiles that could be launched from high-flying jet aircraft.

Newer anti-satellite weapons could be based on the ground or in orbit. Many would use lasers or electromagnetic pulses to jam or disable the electronics on their targets.

China's official news agency reported the country is working on "parasitic" satellites that would attach themselves to U.S. orbiters and wreck them.

Another, relatively crude, satellite killer would be a nuclear weapon detonated near orbit. The resulting electromagnetic pulse could wipe out whole constellations of satellites.

Satellites and their ground-control stations are also subject to cyber attacks. While sophisticated encryption techniques make it difficult to eavesdrop on satellite communications, U.S. scientists are looking at ways to "harden" them to hackers.

In the future, military officials will also face the ambiguous question of whether attacking another nation's space assets -- without killing its citizens -- constitutes open warfare.

"A lot of people were tossing that around," said Rob Hegstrom, who ran a recent space wargame at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo. "We may want to look at how we define those things."

Seeking high ground

But long-range plans suggest space war will involve more than battling satellites controlled from the Earth's surface. Military documents suggest that lasers and "kinetic-energy weapons" that drop guided metal rods could destroy targets on the Earth's surface.

The military refers to space as "the ultimate high ground." This is an offshoot of a fundamental principle of warfare: it is advantageous to be above your enemies, whether at the top of a hill or in orbit.

Of the four military services, the Air Force is taking the lead in pursuing space warfare. Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., and other officials, however, have said space is such a priority that a fifth branch, a "Space Corps," should be created.

Armaments in space won't come cheaply. It costs about $10,000 to launch a single pound of material into orbit with the space shuttle or a traditional rocket. It will at least be more than a decade before the United States has a less-expensive space plane launch system to lower that to $1,000 a pound.

Space warfare would have to compete for military money with other undertakings, including new jet fighters and helicopters, missile interceptors, and force readiness improvements.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, recently estimated that the U.S. spends about $6 billion a year on its military space efforts, about 2 percent of the nation's $300 billion annual defense budget. The GAO report noted that the Air Force's plans call for billions more annually.

Advocates argue that preparing for space warfare is unavoidable -- that if the United States doesn't put weapons in orbit, another country will.

"We know from history that every medium -- air, land and sea -- has seen conflict. Reality indicates that space will be no different. Given this virtual certainty, the U.S. must develop the means both to deter and to defend against hostile acts in and from space," the Rumsfeld report says.

Orbital imperialism

Opponents say it's the other way around: U.S. weapons in space will force other nations to build their own. They argue space can be maintained solely for peaceful purposes.

"If any nation has a lot to lose by allowing space to become an arena of war, it's us. We have got all that stuff up there," said Karl Grossman, a journalism professor at The City University of New York and a crusader against the militarization of space. "Once we move into space with weaponry, you've got to expect other nations are going to meet us in kind. Inevitably there will be war in space."

Grossman and other activists accuse the United States of fomenting a new orbital imperialism. They charge that elements of the military view space control as a way for the U.S. to further dominate global affairs, much as European empires used superior navies and technology in previous centuries.

The United States is party to treaties that govern some aspects of space warfare, but they do not outlaw all weapons in space.

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 prohibits weapons of mass destruction -- like nuclear weapons -- to be based in space. Arms-control advocates note this provision was pushed by the United States during the Cold War, when Soviet space capability appeared to exceed ours. They would like to see this treaty extended to all weapons in space.

138 nations back treaty

In November 1999, the United Nations voted to reaffirm the treaty, highlighting the provision that space is to be used for "peaceful purposes." One hundred thirty-eight nations voted to do so; the United States and Israel abstained.

China and Russia make frequent statements against putting weapons in space, and arms-control advocates hail those nations' support of various treaties.

Don't buy it, says Gaffney, noting China's work on the parasitic satellite.

"It suggests to me they are very cynically utilizing arms-control as a device for curbing the capabilities of those who observe international treaties and obligations, while they ignore them," he said.

Rarely does a nation forgo an advantageous military capability as the arms-control advocates are asking to United States to do. South Africa, the Ukraine and Kazakhstan have given up nuclear weapons. Numerous nations have signed treaties disallowing chemical and biological weapons.

Efforts to develop a defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles, called "Son of Star Wars" by opponents, also drive some of the U.S. military's efforts to go into space. Star Wars was the Reagan administration's plans for missile defenses based in orbit.

Star Wars went away, but some of its ideas didn't. The Air Force is developing a space-based laser to shoot down ICBMs after 2020 or so. The military acknowledges such a weapon would violate treaties.

The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, now with Russia and some of the other Soviet successor states, prohibits space-based missile defenses. Because it also prohibits ground-based continental missile defenses like those under development, the Bush administration has indicated it might withdraw from the treaty.

N.M. weapons research

Development and operation of space-based weapons have ties to most of the surviving defense contractors, as well as to bases in four states: Alabama, Colorado, California and New Mexico.

Alabama is home to the Army's missile defense efforts, some of which involve space-based sensors. California has the Air Force's launch facilities at Vandenburg Air Force Base and the Space and Missile Systems Center, a procurement base, at Los Angeles Air Force Base.

Colorado, with Space Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, is the military's space headquarters and operations center for space missions. In January, units at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo., played the first space "wargame," set in 2017, in which fictional countries similar to the United States and China faced off in orbit.

New Mexico, meanwhile, with Air Force bases, White Sands Missile Range and the Energy Department labs, is home to most of the research for space weapons and related technology.

N.M. programs

Some of the military space programs in New Mexico:

KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE

Air Force Research Laboratory, Space Vehicles Directorate -- Kirtland personnel: 816. Budget: $241 million. Researches military satellites and manned spacecraft. This includes work on hardening satellites against attack and developing "inspector" and surveillance satellites.

Air Force Research Laboratory, Directed Energy Directorate -- Kirtland personnel: 600. Budget: $130 million. Researches lasers and microwave weapons that would be useful in space.

The directorate includes Starfire Optical Range, which develops telescopes that can provide detailed imagery of satellites, and the Satellite Assessment Center, which is studying the vulnerabilities of satellites to lasers.

Space and Missile Systems Center, Test and Evaluation Directorate -- Kirtland personnel: 330. Budget: $109 million. Plans and conducts test programs for new space equipment "to support the exploitation of air and space," according to its Web site.

Space Based Laser Integrated Flight Experiment program headquarters -- Kirtland personnel: 13. Kirtland budget: $1.5 million. Proposes to launch a laser-armed satellite into orbit after 2012. The experimental satellite would be a prototype for a constellation of 20 to 40 satellites that would shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles. The headquarters is in the process of moving to Kirtland from a California base.

HOLLOMAN AIR FORCE BASE

4th Space Surveillance Squadron -- Mobile unit that searches for near-Earth satellites.

746th Test Squadron -- Personnel: 138. Budget: $15.8 million. Tests weapons guided by global positioning system satellites.

55th Space Weather Squadron, Detachment 4 -- Watches the sun for solar "weather" -- like flares and storms -- that can damage satellites and spacecraft.

Balloon research and operations -- Part of Kirtland's Space Vehicles Directorate. Can cheaply launch equipment to near-space conditions using high-altitude balloons.

WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE

High-Energy Laser Systems Test Facility -- Personnel: 13 plus numerous contractors. Budget: $28.2 million. Tests military lasers. In 1997, the Army fired its big MIRACL laser at a U.S. satellite in orbit. It hit it, but the test did not provide any useful data, the military said.

18th Space Surveillance Squadron, Detachment 1 -- Personnel: 19. Budget: $144,700. This unit, almost entirely civilians in a complex near Socorro, operates wide-angle telescopes that track satellites in higher orbits above the Western Hemisphere.

Sources: U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army.

Copyright 2001 Albuquerque Journal

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