Debate intensifies over weapons in space

Washington — Reports that the Bush administration plans to adopt a new policy that would more explicitly spell out the military’s commitment to placing offensive and defensive weapons in space are sparking an increasing debate.

Proponents say such weapons are needed to protect the U.S. homeland and satellites in space that provide such crucial military and civilian services as targeting for weapons, global positioning data and satellite TV and radio. They also point out that space has been militarized for decades and say today’s military would be instantly brought to its knees if an enemy could interfere with or destroy satellites used by the Pentagon.

Opponents warn that a new arms race will result if the United States moves ahead with experiments for such weapons as hypervelocity rods, nicknamed Rods from God, that are designed to strike ground targets from space at a speed of 120 miles a minute. That’s if they survive re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, which critics say is doubtful.

"The critical question we must ask is not whether the United States should be the first to weaponize space, or if space weaponization is inevitable, but rather can the United States afford to be the second state to weaponize space?’’ asked Everett Dolman, a professor at the Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.

Dolman, who supports research into space weapons, said the Defense Department faced little choice but to pursue such programs. "No nation relies on space more than the United States,’’ he said Tuesday at a seminar sponsored by the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, a group that is roundly critical of such new weapons.

’Defensive crouch’

"If space were suddenly to go away tomorrow, the United States would have to go into a defensive crouch immediately,’’ he warned, in large part because worldwide communications would be totally disrupted. "We’d face a Vietnam- style buildup if we wanted to remain a force in the world.’’

In addition to the Rods from God, some of the other possible space weapons include systems of lasers and mirrors that permanently blind spy satellites or "dazzle’’ them temporarily. There are also "passive defenses’’ for satellites that would protect them from jamming attacks or physically harden them to protect against lasers or other destructive rays.

Dolman and other experts at the predicted that in the next few weeks or months the Bush White House would revise a 1996 directive by President Bill Clinton that introduced the concept of "space control.’’ While that directive approved of things like spy satellites, it shied away from expressly approving the use of weapons that could destroy targets on earth or in space or protect American satellites. In adopting such a policy, Clinton followed a line of presidential reasoning stretching back more than 40 years, to President Dwight Eisenhower.

The next day, the New York Times reported that Air Force and Bush administration officials had confirmed that a policy change was in the works that would permit weapons development in the name of protecting U.S. interests and assets. By Thursday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the policy wouldn’t call for weapons in space but would try to protect satellites, which are all but defenseless and could be destroyed by an explosion, nudged out of their orbit by so-called kinetic energy weapons or fried by X-rays.

’Another arms race’

Critics of the space weapons program warn that the result of U.S. research and testing could be an arms race. "If the United States chooses to go the route of space dominance, other countries will look at ways to make sure it doesn’t happen, and we’ll be back in another arms race,’’ said Mike Moore, contributing editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

He and others suggest that the United States should agree to talks on an international treaty that would ban space weapons and bar anyone from interfering with satellites. "If we put a fraction of the energy we put into space control into a really workable space treaty, we could do it,’’ Moore said at the seminar.

The arguments foreshadow a possible House debate next week as Congress takes up a bill authorizing a $441 billion Defense Department budget. Most of the military space budget is classified, but independent analysts put it at least several hundred million dollars.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, has introduced a bill that would bar the United States from placing weapons in space but allow it to keep spy satellites.

"If we worked together toward creating peace on earth, we would not have to bring war to the high heavens,’’ Kucinich said Thursday in introducing his bill. His 28 co-sponsors, all liberal Democrats, include Reps. Mike Honda of San Jose, Barbara Lee of Oakland, George Miller of Martinez, Pete Stark of Fremont and Lynn Woolsey of Petaluma.

Democrats are trying to get Kucinich’s bill or something similar brought to the floor during debate on the bill, expected Wednesday. But that will depend on a decision of the Rules Committee on Tuesday in the Republican- controlled House.

Some critics theorize that one reason the Bush administration wants to pursue space weaponry is that sea, land and air-based missile defense systems still haven’t proved successful, despite the expenditure of some $120 billion since President Ronald Reagan launched his Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed "Star Wars" by critics, in 1983.

The United States has deployed two land-based missile defense systems, at Fort Greeley, Alaska, and at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County, at a cost of several billion dollars.

The system’s ground-launched missiles are designed to be shot into space to bring down incoming missiles, a defense against such opponents as North Korea and its new long-range missiles. But so far, the system hasn’t been tested successfully. The two latest tests literally never got off the ground because of problems at launch, frustrating supporters of missile defense.

’Steady improvement’

The Pentagon wants to spend $7.8 billion on missile defense in the coming fiscal year, down $1 billion from the current year. Critics say the cut shows that even the Bush administration is losing patience with missile defense’s failure to work.

Proponents say that’s not the case. "Our program is structured to balance the early fielding elements of this system with its continued steady improvement through an evolutionary development and test approach,’’ Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry "Trey’’ Obering told the Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittee May 11.

"The budget also balances our capabilities across an evolving threat spectrum that includes rogue nations with increasing ballistic missile expertise,’’ added the Missile Defense Agency director.

Obering’s agency oversees its own testing, which Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D- Walnut Creek, said was a conflict of interest for a multibillion-dollar agency that hasn’t had much success.

Who should test it?

When the House Armed Services Committee voted on authorizing the Pentagon budget, she unsuccessfully offered an amendment that would have moved testing design from the agency to the independent Office of Operational Test and Evaluation.

"Before we pour billions more into a missile defense system that has yet to prove reliable, we should demand greater results from the money we’ve already spent,’’ Tauscher told her colleagues.

Her staff said Tauscher might try to offer her amendment in the full House on Wednesday.
Any time, any place on Earth

The Air Force has spent billions of dollars developing a space-based system able to deploy weapons at a moment’s notice to strike any location on the face of the Earth. Here are some examples:

Common Aero Vehicles

Launched from a military space plane, the Common Aero Vehicle would be able to deliver up to 1,000 pounds of munitions to a target 3,000 nautical miles away (1 nautical mile = 6,076 feet). From space it could hit deeply buried bunkers as well as mobile targets.

Hypervelocity Rods

Hypervelocity Rod Bundles - nicknamed Rods from God - could hit ground targets anywhere in the world from space. Long metal rods weighing perhaps 100 kilograms and deployed from an orbiting platform would strike at a speed of about 7,200 miles per hour.

Lasers

The Evolutionary Air and Space Global Laser Engagement concept involves "airborne, terrestrial, or space-based lasers in conjunction with space-based relay mirrors to project different laser powers and frequencies to achieve a broad range of effects from illumination to destruction."

Sources: Air Force; Department of Defense; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic...