Evidence: Most Popular
There is a common theme running through this and other recent space policy studies. In the words of the commission report, "the security and economic well being of the United States and its allies and friends depends on the nation's ability to operate successfully in space." This is clearly a valid conclusion, but one that has seemingly not yet made much of an impression on the public's consciousness. The availability of the many services dependent on space systems appears to be taken for granted by the public. However, if space capabilities were denied to the U.S. military, it would be impossible to carry out a modern military operation, particularly one distant from the United States. The civilian sector is equally dependent on space. Communication satellites carry voice, video, and data to all corners of Earth and are integral to the functioning of the global economy. The commission noted that failure of a single satellite in May 1998 disabled 80 percent of the pagers in the United States, as well as video feeds for cable and broadcast transmission, credit card authorization networks, and corporate communication systems. If the U.S. GPS system were to experience a major failure, it would disrupt fire, ambulance, and police operations around the world; cripple the global financial and banking system; interrupt electric power distribution; and in the future could threaten air traffic control.
In opening new high-risk frontier areas, a general pattern of military and governmentled exploration efforts is inevitably followed by commercial exploitation activities. The same pattern seems to be holding for space. Governments opened the way; commercial operations are following. Although telecommunication has been the predominant commercial space activity, the areas of remote sensing and other products that are expected to be unveiled are now emerging as new areas of commercial space endeavor. Many of the planned commercial ventures are multi-national in composition; a number of ventures are also headquartered in countries other than the United States. The increase in multi-national space activity undoubtedly will trigger a plethora of international disputes similar to those of past centuries that accompanied the development of international norms for controlling the use of the high seas.
The U.S.. and Soviet experience with MIRVs is often brought up to show how Washingtons "nave" foray into missile madness provoked Moscow to respond in kind. But to arrive at this conclusion, one must suspend all awareness of the strategic context surrounding the MIRV decision and assume that America had (and still has) a monopoly on knowledge. While the United States appeared to lead the Soviet Union in mirv technology, throughout the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of the early 1970s, which featured the MIRV negotiations, Soviet missile engineers were already busily integrating the technology into their systems. At the time, it was generally expected that Soviet planners, who demonstrated true MIRV technology as early as 1973, would fully exploit this new innovation. U.S. actions, in other words, do not deserve blame for having provoked a Soviet countereffort.
To these examples we may add a long list of tactical blunders growing out of ambiguous circumstances and faulty intelligence, including the U.S. bombing in 1999 of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during Kosovo operations. Yet though these tragic actions occurred in near-war or tinderbox situations, they did not escalate or exacerbate local instability. The world also survived U.S.-Soviet "near encounters" during the 1948 Berlin crisis, the 1961 Cuban missile crisis, and the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars. Guarded diplomacy won the day in all cases. Why would disputes affecting space be any different?
Nor has any other country clearly crossed this threshold. It is believed that in October and November of 1975, the Soviets used intense beams of radiation to interfere with three American satellites, although the US government later officially explained these incidents as having been caused by forest fires or volcanoes. More recently, disruption of satellite systems -- by Russia against satellite phone communications being used by Chechen rebels and by Iran against Western satellite broadcasts -- has been reported. Also, one could interpret American air attacks on Iraqi satellite ground stations early in the 1991 Persian Gulf War as space control insofar as the intent was to deny Iraq access to overhead systems. Nonetheless, lethal or destructive force application from, to, or within near-earth space basically lies in the future.
It is obvious that American space systems do have inherent vulnerabilities. It is also obvious that technologies for exploiting those vulnerabilities exist, or are likely to become available over the next several decades. However, neither vulnerabilities in American systems nor the potential capabilities of others necessarily translate into threats. In order to threaten American space assets, a potential adversary must have not only the technological ability to develop weapons and the means to develop and use them, but also the political will and intent to use them in a hostile manner. There is little evidence to date that any other country or hostile non-state actor possesses both the mature technology and the intention to seriously threaten American military or commercial operations in spaceand even less evidence of serious pursuit of actual space-based weapons by potentially hostile actors. There are severe technical barriers and high costs to overcome for all but the most rudimentary ASAT capabilities, especially for development of on-orbit weapons. It further remains unclear what political driversoutside of American development of space-based weaponrywould force American competitors, in the near- to medium-term to seriously pursue such technology. Neither vulnerabilities in American systems nor the potential capabilities of others necessarily translate into threats.
Although the Space Commission report and more ardent 'space hawks' might lead one to believe otherwise, there is no current anti-satellite (ASAT) threat. In fact, operational ASATs are vestiges of the Cold War era. Richard L. Garwin, a physicist and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, "In the Cold War era, it was perfectly clear that deployment of space weapons by the Soviet Union would have led to an effective ASAT deployed by the United States; conversely, the Soviet Union was fully capable of providing the necessary ASAT to counter U.S. space weapons." But in the post-Soviet era, neither the United States nor Russia has dedicated space ASAT weapons deployed. According to RAND, no other "nation possesses an operational ASAT capability that poses a significant threat to U.S. national security space systems."
If this analysis is correct, then the analogy between the development of navies in response to guerre de course and the emergence of space-based military capabilities in response to prospective attacks on satellites breaks downs in important ways. Sinking a nation's ship on the high seas, whether a military or commercial vessel, has long been viewed as an act of war. Article VIII of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty states that any party "on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body." In 1996, the United States declared as national policy that the space systems of any nation are "national property with the right of passage through and operations in space without interference." Nevertheless, damaging or destroying satellites does not seem to have quite the same status as damaging or sinking a nation's ships and killing its crew. Satellites may have owners and operators, but, in contrast to sailors, they do not have mothers. Granted, the destruction of a KH-11 or comparable satellite at a key juncture in a crisis with a major regional power would be taken very seriously by American leaders. Whether this act would inevitability lead to war, however, is far from clear.
Although the distances involved and the opportunity for activity to take place out of the view of a particular part of the world may make surveillance and observation of satellites difficult, it is hard to prevent someone willing to spend the necessary resources from observing satellites. Because orbits are subject to only minor unpredictable disturbances, satellite positions are predictable. If the satellites are defenses, the depth of the static defense they provide will vary over the course of their orbits. And because orbits are stable and predictable, the variation in defense depth will be predictable and exploitable. Another downside to stable orbits is that a satellite destroyed in orbit leaves behind a persistent debris field that increases the hazard to other satellites needing to transit its orbit.