Occupying Space

The reorganization, which puts the Air Force in charge of all military space assets, elevates space to a national defense priority and will have far-reaching consequences for the U.S. role in developing the final frontier. While Defense officials have declined to speculate about new acquisition programs that may result from the reorganization, the widespread belief is that current programs to replace and upgrade satellites will be accelerated while future programs to improve launch capability and protect space assets are on the horizon.

The prospect excites military advocates who worry that the United States has been naive about protecting its assets in space, but it also raises fears in the minds of those who believe the United States is rushing to "militarize" space. Those who oppose plans to develop and field a missile defense system capable of protecting the United States from attack are especially concerned about the focused attention on space assets, which would be key to any such plan.

Rumsfeld, at a May briefing on the reorganization, claimed such concerns are misplaced. "Our first choice is not to prevail in a conflict, but to be arranged in a way that can dissuade others from engaging in acts hostile to the United States' national security interests and, therefore, deterring conflict from occurring," he said. The Pentagon estimates 32 nations now have satellites aloft, and more will have them in the future. Such proliferation increases the likelihood that hostile nations could turn their satellites to nefarious uses.

The national security implications of the U.S. role in space are not new to Rumsfeld. He chaired the congressionally mandated Com- mission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization until January, when he was nominated to be Defense Secretary. The commission concluded that the United States could one day face a "space Pearl Harbor"-a devastating sneak attack on its satellites and space assets. The reorganization plan announced by Rumsfeld is essentially an endorsement of the commission's recommendations.

By consolidating and restructuring the Defense organizations involved in space programs, Rumsfeld intends to bring discipline to the funding and oversight of their activities. The commission found there was no central source of control or information for military space programs, Rumsfeld said. "For the first time, we'll be able to see what we're really spending on [space programs]. Rather than having to run around and turn over every little piece of paper to try to find what's going on in space, we will have a way to look at it. And as we all know, what you measure improves. So if you're able to see something and track it, I think it will have a salutary effect," he said.

But space program reorganization is more than just a management exercise. Further stoking fears of an arms race in space, the Air Force earlier this year established two squadrons designed "to ensure our forces are fully prepared to defend against attacks on our space-based infrastructure," according to Army Lt. Gen. Edward Anderson, deputy commander of U.S. Space Command. One squadron, the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron, will mimic capabilities of potential adversaries in war games designed to train U.S. forces for space-based conflict. Another squadron, the 76th Space Control Squadron, will test technologies that could protect satellites and foil enemies attempting to attack them.

Testifying before the House Armed Services subcommittees on procurement and on research and development in June, Anderson said the United States needs to do more to protect both military and commercial assets in space: "In the five decades we have been in space, most of our attention has been put on force enhancement capabilities-providing information to the warfighters in near real time so that they can do the missions they are expected to do. But what we have also done, is we have created a set of weakly defended targets, that, if destroyed or damaged, could significantly affect our ability to do military operations as well as significantly affect the economy of the nation."

Achilles Heel

The soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who rely on satellite communications and intelligence to navigate and shape the landscape of military operations have long recognized the importance of space. Those operations have ranged from providing aid to Haitian refugees to taking out Iraqi air defenses or bombing Serb forces in Yugoslavia.

While satellites are critical to military communications, navigation, weather prediction and intelligence gathering, they also have become critical to ordinary Americans.

When the Galaxy IV satellite spun out of control in May 1998, it took out of commission between 80 percent and 90 percent of the pagers in the United States, along with automated banking machines and pay-at-the-pump fuel systems. For several weeks, Americans were keenly aware of their dependence on satellites for receiving everything from cellular phone service to cash from their bank accounts. That dependence, both military and civilian, is growing, and makes for both strategic and economic vulnerabilities, military officials say. U.S. Space Command estimates there are more than 700 active satellites in use-more than 300 of them from the United States. Over the next 10 years, as many as 1,500 more are expected to be launched.

In the United States and throughout the world, commercial investment in space operations is fast outpacing government investment. Increasingly, the Defense Department relies on commercial networks to conduct military operations at home and abroad. Some government officials estimate that 95 percent of Defense telecommunications travel over commercial networks.

That dependence on private industry was brought home last fall, when the Navy had to cancel an exercise in the Pacific because television networks broadcasting the Olympic Games from Sydney, Australia, had bought up the satellite communications capacity the Navy needed.

The military has had to turn to commercial providers to meet its "insatiable demands for bandwidth," says Mary Ann Elliott, president of Arrowhead Space and Telecommunications Inc., which recently was awarded a 10-year contract to provide the military with global satellite communications over air, land and sea for the next 10 years. The deal, valued at $2.4 billion, is the largest small-business contract ever awarded by the government. "The military uses its own satellite networks for critical warfighting functions, but all kinds of messaging, logistics and day-to-day data transfer and phone calls go over the commercial system," says Elliott. "In the long run, it's probably cost effective against the cost of building, launching and maintaining [the Defense Department's] own private satellite network."

Controlling Space

The United States' military and economic reliance on satellites makes them an attractive target for foes, says Anderson. "We believe that our ability to access space is critical for our national security as well as our economic well-being." Anderson advocates increasing the Defense Department's investment in what the military calls "space control" measures. "Space control does not mean that we are going to dominate space," Anderson says. Rather, it means "ensuring our use of space when we want it and denying it to others if required, and only for as long as necessary."

But to scientists and other skeptics, "space control" sounds a lot like space dominance-a recipe for a new arms race. Michael Krepon, president emeritus of the Henry L. Stimson Center, wrote in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs: "The repercussions will include new international competition to put weapons in space, further strains in alliance relations, closer strategic cooperation between Russia and China, deeper partisan division at home, weakened nonproliferation treaties, and ironically, greater difficulties in developing one of the Bush administration's cherished goals-missile defense."

Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, an advocate of boosting the military's role in space, says it would be foolish not to plan for adversaries in space. He suggests the U.S. role in space will be akin to its historic role on the high seas: "As in the past, when we protected sea lanes for commercial traffic, we will have to protect space lanes for commercial traffic."

Already there is evidence space will not remain immune from conflicts closer to home. In late 1999, Russian media reported that Russia jammed a mobile phone network in the northern Caucasus to prevent Chechen rebel commanders from communicating. The Xinhua news agency reported last July that China is developing methods to challenge U.S. satellite assets.

While the organizational changes announced by Rumsfeld do not directly address military threats to U.S. space assets, they establish the framework for developing such a response. Retired Air Force Gen. Thomas Moorman, a member of the space commission, commended the Pentagon's reorganization efforts, but says reconfiguring assets is only the first step toward addressing the importance of space. "While organization and management are important, the critical need is to elevate space on the national security agenda." The fact that Rumsfeld has accepted "the full spirit" of the commission's recommendations is important, he says.

"These are significant changes," says John Douglass, president of the Aerospace Industries Association and a former Navy acquisition chief during the Clinton administration, speaking of the reorganization. He says he generally supports the Bush administration's focus on space. "There's no question that space is an area of national and military interest that is rapidly changing and very quickly developing."

Like many, he is ambivalent about the military's future in space: "The idea that you could set apart part of the universe and say 'let's make this a violence-free area' appeals to me as a human being. I just don't know if we can really do it. If we could, it's probably worth trying to do in some meaningful way. The pragmatic side of me says even if you are willing to embrace the theory of a demilitarized space, you have to be very vigilant to make sure somebody isn't going to cheat, somebody doesn't show up with a space gun or space cruiser and then you don't have one, but they do, so they take away all your space assets. I believe there has to be research in this area."