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Formulating new and creative ideas for weapons may be inevitable, but man always has a choice whether to develop those weapons or not. Dr. Colin S. Gray cautions that the feasibility of deploying weapons in space does not mean that such weapons are strategically required -- or prudent. However, we are also warned that once someone begins development, the "technological imperative becomes nearly absolute" and that "Once the initial conditions are set, however, the logic of technology becomes nearly irresistible, at times sweeping us toward destinations never contemplated or desired." This suggests the choice to weaponize space may be beyond rational decision making. If this premise is correct, some actor may weaponize space as a poorly thought out reaction to some unforeseen security dilemma, or may already be on the slippery slope towards weaponizing space as it seeks to protect its space systems -- the two conditions that Watts believes will likely lead to the weaponization of space. The momentum is not likely to stop over the long run.
In addition, the United States enjoys a remarkably favorable military position in space today, without suffering much political and strategic fallout for making major use of the heavens for military purposes. It should preserve that situation as long as possible. And it has no need to rush to change current circumstances to maximize its own military capabilities. Some concepts, such as space-based ballistic missile defense, while holding a certain inherent appeal, would be needlessly provocative and exceptionally uneconomical to pursue at present. The satellites of other countries (and private companies) are not yet militarily significant enough to warrant development of destructive antisatellite weapons.
While the satellite gap may now appear to be unbridgeable, the wide array of communications, navigation, reconnaissance, and weather satellite services commercially available means that other states can meet much of their need for space power in the marketplace. The imagery offered by the French Systeme Pour l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT) corporation is good enough that the United States relied heavily on it in the Gulf and Kosovo and has developed the Eagle Eye Vision program to facilitate its use. Militaries that can not afford communications satellites of their own can lease transponders on the satellites orbited by other countries, and some -- like Australia -- have already done so. Navigation aids like the Global Positioning System can be used by anyone with a cheap receiver. The commercialization of space is also likely to progress even more rapidly over the coming years. Given the usually civilian character of such services, it may be more politically difficult to cut off their signals or attack them outright than would be the case with dedicated military satellites. Attacking a commercially owned satellite, even one which is partially leased to or providing information to a belligerent's military, would be broadly equivalent to attacking neutral shipping in wartime. A conflict in which this became a regular practice would be comparable to the unrestricted submarine warfare of the world wars. (It also would represent a practical inconvenience for the United States given the reliance of its economy and military on commercial services.) The number of such services available may offer such redundancy as to make it impossible to totally deny a sophisticated enemy access, even after it has executed its initial strike.
ASAT weapons, however unpleasant to some sensibilities, promise a distinct capability to strike at the enemy's center of gravity. Imagine a proliferation of ground-based transmitting installations and mobile communications facilities spread over a vast area on enemy soil. The task of locating and launching air strikes against every space station, node, and terminal relevant to enemy military operations, perhaps during the night or under enemy fire, may be impossible. Given recent technological advances, the number of space data receivers and transmitters can be increased without bounds, especially as new technologies allow for further miniaturization. When the redundancy of an enemy's ground-based telecommunications and C3I targets can be increased two-, five-, or even ten-fold, the only effective way to paralyze his C3I is by hitting the space links. Military space policy must therefore legitimize and enable a diversity of offensive as well as defensive tactics.
The second lesson to remember from the development of air power is that countermeasures to any new technology are actively pursued by those nations threatened by the new technology. Throughout the ages, it has been an iron law of weapons development for new concepts to be negated eventually by offsetting countermeasures.11 The invention of radar by Great Britain to detect incoming German aircraft during WWII provides just one example. If space assets used for war are seen as threatening to a nation, that nation, or a coalition of similarly threatened nations, will seek to counter it.
To see the path that a space test bed is likely to follow, one need only look at the present ground-based program: the Pentagon claims there is little true difference between a test bed and an operational deployment. Moreover, in space the deployment could be more dramatic. Although the current ground-based configuration envisions a few dozen interceptors, continuous space coverage over a few countries of concern would likely require a very large number of interceptors because a particular interceptor will be above a particular target for only a few minutes a day. Today's missile defenses provide very little real protection as the United States currently faces no realistic threat of deliberate attack by nuclear-armed long-range missiles. But space weapons could actually be detrimental to U.S. national security. They would increase the perceived vulnerability of early warning systems to attack and cause Russia and perhaps other countries such as China to pursue potentially destabilizing countermeasures, such as advanced anti-satellite weapons.
These problems are a feature of what some call the 'always/never' dilemma: "nuclear weapons must always detonate when those authorized direct and never detonate when those authorized do not." These are cross purposes -- finding the right balance between the two requires making intelligent judgments about which risks one chooses to run. Given the enormous destructive power of nuclear weapons and important economic and political interests that the United States shares with both Russia and China, all sides should be more interested in the 'never' part of the equation. Yet space weapons, by threatening the nuclear forces of both countries, could well create incentives for Russia and China to do the opposite.
Attacks on satellites could severely damage prospects for escalation control and, in the worst case, could trigger the use of weapons of mass destruction against U.S. expeditionary forces, allies, or the U.S. homeland. Since space warfare would not be perceived as a trivial pursuit, those nations that could be gravely disadvantaged by the flight-testing and deployment of space weaponry are likely to consider equally grave countermeasures. At a minimum, an attempt by the United States to seek space dominance through deployed war-fighting capabilities is likely to generate the launch of relatively cheap, low-tech, but lethal ASATs by weaker adversaries. An unequal competition to weaponize space could still place at risk satellites that are essential for U.S. military communications and early warning in deep crisis. The weaponization of space could thus result in increased U.S. casualties on the conventional battlefield.
China has not been exceptionally successful in garnering commercial funding of its space program. China did not announce how much they charged per launch of Iridium, Chinastar-1 and Sinosat-1 satellites launched recently. Strictly speaking, only Iridium was a foreign customer, since the others were for Chinese domestic use. A reasonable estimate for a CZ-3B launch is about US$50 million- US$60 million. Since China conducted four commercial launches in 1998, two CZ-3Bs and two 2C/SDs, China could have earned US$150 millionUS$240 million to reimburse a portion of their space program. This constitutes a relatively large percentage but a relatively small total funding source. A strong Chinese economy remains elusive. Well-publicized rocket failures make marketing of its commercial launch capability difficult. The Chinese have the ability to overcome their technical difficulties, but economics will limit China as a space power until the domestic economy can provide greater levels of government and commercial funding.
Thus, although U.S. satellitesboth military and commercialmight be vulnerable to ASATs, the threat posed by ASATs is more hypothetical than real. Space Commission staff member Tom Wilson states: The proliferation of ballistic missile and space technology has made it easier to develop direct ascent anti-satellite weapons and to obtain the capability to deliver nuclear warheads into space. Studies have shown that the detonation of a low-yield nuclear weapon in LEO [low earth orbit] will not only fatally damage nearby satellites but will also increase the naturally occurring radiation around the earth, reducing most LEO satellites lifetimes from years to months. Many countries such as China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia have this capability. It is important to point out that this capability to which Wilson refers does not mean that those countries have operational ASATs. It means, rather, that those countries have a nuclear weapons capability or they have a capability to launch a payload into a low earth orbit. It does not mean that they have mated those two capabilities to develop and deploy an ASAT weapon.