Weapons in space put the world at risk

Weapons in space put the world at risk

By WILLIAM D. HARTUNG

Within the next few weeks, President Bush is expected to release his administration’s new national space policy. The most crucial aspect of the plan will be whether it endorses placing weapons in space.

There have been a series of reports since 2001 that essentially advocate deploying space weapons. The Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, initially chaired by Donald Rumsfeld, argued that the United States must take steps to avoid a "space Pearl Harbor."

The Rumsfeld report said there is no current bar to "placing or using weapons in space, applying force from space to Earth, or conducting military operations in and through space."

Not so coincidentally, seven of the 13 members of the Rumsfeld space commission had ties to aerospace companies that could stand to gain from the launching of a major space weapons program.

But just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should do it. For years space has served as a sanctuary where nations cooperate rather than confront one another. Satellites save lives and support our economy by predicting the weather, helping first responders provide emergency assistance, facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid in cases of natural disaster and by making cell phones, pagers and modern financial transactions possible.

A weapons-free space environment also allows the United States to maintain its military superiority by supporting state-of-the-art reconnaissance, communications and targeting capabilities.

Placing weapons in space that can shoot down another nation’s satellites will encourage them to respond in kind, putting U.S. satellites at risk.

Despite the benefits of a relatively benign space environment, there are voices within the Pentagon and military bureaucracies who argue that putting weapons in space is inevitable. In a U.S. Air Force document on "counterspace operations," Peter B. Teets, then assistant secretary of the Air Force — and formerly COO of Lockheed Martin, a major military and space contractor — argued that "controlling the high ground of space ... will require us to think about denying the high ground to our adversaries. We are paving the path to 21st century warfare now."

Research has already begun on a number of space weapons, including the XSS-10 and XSS-11 Experimental Spacecraft Systems, microsatellites that can surround other satellites and photograph, jam or collide with them; the Near Field Infrared Experiment, a program aimed at testing the ability to destroy targets in orbit; and the Microsatellite Propulsion Experiment, which plans to launch maneuverable kill vehicles that are perfect for taking out satellites. There are also plans afoot to develop Hypervelocity Rod Bundles, frequently called "Rods from God," designed to drop from space and hit targets on Earth.

In addition to the threats to U.S. security and our economy from sparking an arms race in space, the whole process would be extremely costly. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, launching an adequate number of Space-Based Interceptors to achieve total global coverage in a missile defense role could cost up to $60 billion over a decade’s time. Space-Based Interceptors can also be adapted to work as anti-satellite weapons, although the numbers needed to reach an initial capability would be much smaller. And a Council on Foreign Relations study group estimates that placing just 40 rods in space for the "Rods from God" program would cost more than $8 billion.

Given all the other space weapons projects on the drawing board, a concerted effort to weaponize space could eventually exceed the $100 billion-plus already spent on the missile defense program, which has been plagued by delays and technical difficulties from its inception. Witness the fact that in the last two major missile defense tests, the interceptor missile did not even make it out of its silo. Launching and maintaining hundreds or thousands of weapons in the harsh environment of space would pose its own technical obstacles, some of which may not be readily overcome.

The better way to go would be to act now to establish some rules of the road for space-faring nations. The Henry L. Stimson Center has developed a model code of conduct for space that includes no flight-testing or deployment of space weapons, minimizing space debris that can destroy satellites and cooperating on space traffic management. The time to act on these ideas is now, while the United States still maintains unparalleled dominance in space.
William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School in New York City.

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