[Infowarrior] - Target Practice in the Final Frontier

[Richard Forno]

Target Practice in the Final Frontier

By Michael Krepon
Sunday, February 4, 2007; B03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/02/AR2007020201
463_pf.html
They warn us of approaching storms. They allow us to make emergency phone
calls on mobile phones. They're the digital conveyor belt for global
commerce. They help police and ambulances reach their destinations when
every minute counts. And the Pentagon relies on them to provide U.S. forces
with intelligence, communications and targeting information.

Satellites, it seems, have become our lifelines.

Still, it's easy to take satellites for granted -- easy, that is, until the
People's Liberation Army crashes a missile into one of China's aging
meteorological satellites, as it did last month. It was a crude show of
strength, which the PLA will do on occasion when it wants to make a point.
In 1995, for example, Beijing sent a fusillade of missiles in Taiwan's
direction, a blunt reminder to think twice about independence. This time
around, the PLA's message seemed directed at the Bush administration and the
Air Force, which has adopted a "space control" doctrine that endorses the
use of weapons in, from and through space.

The debris from China's missile blast could travel in space for much more
than a quarter-century before burning up in the Earth's atmosphere. That's a
long time, but not longer than the debate over weapons in space has raged,
beginning with the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Having prying eyes overhead is
unsettling enough, but it is not nearly so worrisome as weapons circling
overhead, ready to fire.

What the Air Force euphemistically calls "offensive counter-space"
capabilities -- use of the terms "space weapons" and "space dominance" is
verboten -- does not have a broad constituency of support in the Pentagon or
on Capitol Hill. The notion of turning space into one more war zone offends
many sensibilities, from those of devout believers who don't think the
heavens should be sullied by weapons, to those of pragmatic soldiers who
realize that, if satellites become fair game in warfare, their other
missions will become even harder.

President Ronald Reagan couldn't dent these concerns with the Strategic
Defense Initiative, his 1983 proposal to use space-based weapons as a shield
against nuclear attack. Journalist Frances FitzGerald offers a skeptical
account of this period in "Way Out There in the Blue," which treats Reagan's
scheme as part fantasy, part public relations and part device to kill arms
control. Mikhail Gorbachev is the hero of FitzGerald's narrative, while
Reagan's contributions toward devaluing nuclear weapons are short-changed.
Astronomer Robert Jastrow makes the moral case for Reagan's vision of
space-based defenses in his 1985 book "How to Make Nuclear Weapons
Obsolete."

So far, the Bush administration's testing in space appears limited to
demonstrations of multipurpose technologies: For example, a recent test
maneuvered a small satellite to make close passes at U.S. space objects.
These techniques could ultimately be used to help with satellite docking or
monitoring.

The Air Force's new doctrine and the Bush administration's refusal to
discuss, let alone negotiate, anything that could limit U.S. freedom of
action in space -- along with the traditional secrecy surrounding military
space programs -- has gotten China's attention. Last September, press
reports indicated that China had "painted" a U.S. satellite with a laser. It
is unclear how often this has occurred, or whether the United States has
carried out similar practices against Chinese satellites. (Shining lasers on
satellites can be used for space tracking and monitoring, as well as for
temporarily blinding a satellite, among other uses.) Now that Beijing has in
turn gained Washington's attention, the competition in space is likely to
heat up. An old U.S.-Soviet-style space race seems unlikely -- after all, we
live in an era of asymmetric warfare -- but it doesn't take an arms race to
mess up space, as the PLA just proved.

These days, "lasing" and jamming are the preferred Pentagon means for
dealing with satellites that could threaten U.S. combat forces. Initially,
however, the Pentagon considered nuclear detonations as a way to destroy
satellites, even deploying (but never launching) two nuclear-tipped rockets
for this assignment after the Cuban missile crisis. The Kennedy
administration learned that this was a bad idea after one particularly
powerful atmospheric nuclear test in 1962 damaged every U.S. satellite --
and one Soviet satellite -- in low Earth orbit.

The United States and the Soviet Union turned next to space weapons that
killed on contact, as detailed in Paul Stares's 1985 book on Cold War space
warfare, "The Militarization of Space." The U.S. military conducted dozens
of such tests, but only one, in 1985, was like the recent Chinese test, with
the Air Force blowing up an aging meteorological satellite. Fourteen years
later, a piece of debris from this test came within one mile of the
international space station. It took three additional years for this lethal
hazard to clear out of low Earth orbit. (The recent Chinese test has
produced a much larger debris field at a higher altitude, meaning that the
resulting hazard to spaceflight will be much worse.)

Political interest in space weapons is usually linked to spikes in public
anxiety. During the Reagan administration, many were concerned that the
Kremlin had achieved strategic and military superiority and might exploit
its advantages -- including the use of futuristic space weapons. The Kremlin
leadership felt precisely the same way about Washington, which made this
chapter of the Cold War so dangerous. Walter A. McDougall's Pulitzer
Prize-winning "The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space
Age," published in 1985, is a graceful and lyrical account of the space
race, and details the history of the Soviet and U.S. space programs.

Now, the focus is squarely on China. Just as the Pentagon once published
annual reports on "Soviet Military Power" and "Soviet Space Power," it now
issues annual reports on Chinese military capabilities; they are far better
than the old analyses of Soviet power, but the analysis remains spotty. For
instance, the recent congressionally mandated report "Military Power of the
People's Republic of China 2006," from the defense secretary's office,
covers many Chinese military innovations -- including a new doctrine of
modern warfare and the purchase of more advanced weapons systems -- but
failed to predict a "hit to kill" anti-satellite test.

In the current debates over space weapons, few advocates mince their words
less than Everett Dolman, a faculty member at the Air Force's Air University
and author of " Astropolitik: Classical Geopolitics in the Space Age."
Dolman argues that the Air Force should seek military control of space and
thus dictate terms to potential adversaries. In "Neither Star Wars Nor
Sanctuary," Brookings Institution scholar Michael O'Hanlon is less
enthusiastic about weapons in space, but doesn't wish to rule them out in
the case of a potential conflict with China over Taiwan. My own view is laid
out in my book "Space Assurance or Space Dominance: The Case Against
Weaponizing Space," in which I argue that the United States has more to lose
than to gain if space becomes a shooting gallery.

It is perhaps fitting that some of the best information and analysis on
weapons in space would be found in, well, cyberspace. The Space Security
Index 2006, issued by the research consortium SpaceSecurity.org, offers a
detailed overview of these issues on an ongoing basis. The Air Force Space
Command also maintains a detailed and informative Web site (
http://www.afspc.af.mil). And among the bloggers, I would recommend Leonard
David of Space.com, as well as Jeffrey Lewis, who keeps perhaps the leading
blog on nuclear proliferation and arms control, ArmsControlWonk.com -- where
he broke the Chinese anti-satellite test story on Jan. 17.

mkrepon at stimson.org

Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, lectures on
nuclear proliferation at the University of Virginia.