Four Myths about space power

Parameters, Spring, 2003 by Nader Elhefnawy

The satellite gap between America and every other nation in the world is universally recognized, and the significance of this fact is also unquestioned. America s unparalleled investment in space, in satellites, the infrastructure that goes with them and the precision weapons that best exploit them is appreciated as having made possible its successful campaigns against Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan.

If anything, the gap seems certain to grow steadily greater in the coming years. In the three years between Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, American airpower went from being effective principally against fixed targets like infrastructure to routinely devastating moving formations using real-time intelligence with the help of faster satellite relays. The Army and Navy as well as the Air Force have been directed to devote increasing attention to space, specifically to "establish requirements, maintain a cadre of space-qualified officers, and research, develop, acquire, and deploy space systems unique to each service." (1) The United States is even slated to begin testing space-based weapons, starting with space-based interceptor missiles in 2006. The implicit technical possibilities have compelled some to envision the United States going even further and seizing outright the highest ground of all (happily unoccupied by anyone else) to impose a Wilsonian international order on the planet. With an invincible space f orce keeping the peace between nations, war as it has traditionally been known theoretically becomes impossible.

On paper, the scenario (no longer limited to government reports, think tanks, and military and policy journals, but increasingly appearing in mainstream magazines like last April's issue of Wired (2)) looks like a masterstroke, a geopolitical checkmate against all future aggression. While some acknowledgment is given to the fact that satellites are not invulnerable, the thornier problems and profound limitations of an "astrocop" system rarely get the consideration they require. In particular this sort of thinking about space power takes four dangerous myths for granted.

Myth #1: America capacity to exploit space and deny its use to opponents will be virtually unquestioned.

At first glance this proposition appears to be true, as the United States has no large peer competitors, actual or even potential. China's military remains one to two generations behind the United States technologically. (3) Russia continues to possess the infrastructure for mounting a challenge to the United States, but is likely to remain cash-strapped for a long time to come. (4) Japan's stagnating economic growth and reluctance to increase its military expenditures makes its rise as a space power unlikely. Western Europe has yet to develop a coherent defense and foreign policy, and is slowed further by its skepticism about information warfare. (5) In the meantime, European militaries are falling technologically behind the United States to such a degree that the interoperability of NATO forces seems threatened. (6)

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 I'Observation de laTerre (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. (7) 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. (8)

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. (9) (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.

The declining price and widening availability of satellite construction and space launch capabilities suggest that more states will be able to establish a presence in space, increasing their redundancy. Over earlier US objections, the European Union is pressing ahead with its Galileo project with the help of Canadian and Russian finance and expertise. (10) (Unlike the Global Positioning System, Galileo is a civil project funded from mainly private sources.) Russia has the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS). China is pursuing its own equivalent in the Beidou system. Japan is launching its first constellation of reconnaissance satellites over the next few years. There is also a widespread interest in missile defense not only on the part of major states like those just mentioned but also in small countries like Israel and Taiwan which could lead to their pursuing greater space capabilities.