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A Military Space Service: Why It's Time Has Come

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Mr. Gayl serves as a Civil Servant within the DoD. His personal views expressed below are intended to stimulate discussion, and do not represent formal positions of the Government.

 Washington - Nov 17, 2003
The future of U.S. supremacy in space is in jeopardy. New entrants to space exploration, rich in both intellectual capital and superpower ambitions, are pressing irresistibly forward. These include formidable past competitors, such as China and Russia, as well as India, Japan, Europe, and others.

If the stakes were only related to commercial advantage or national scientific pride these independent initiatives would be welcome in the spirit of peaceful globalization. Yet the taming of all land, sea, air, and undersea environments has invariably included their full exploitation for war.

Similarly, the seemingly relentless pursuit of technological advantage is an inherent drive in any willful, sovereign nation. It can therefore be assumed that the comprehensive militarization of space is inevitable. Though the human exploitation of space is still in its infancy, we are at risk of relinquishing our military space dominance to competitors at an early stage.

The Dilemma

The reasons for our National decline in space engagement are well known, and the case has often been made for reinvigorating U.S. military and civil space programs to correct the atrophy and prepare for future challenges. As a consequence of recommendations from the Commission to Assess National Security Space Management and Organization, the Air Force (AF) has been designated as the Executive Agent (EA) for National Security Space (NSS). This has served as a crucial initial step towards greater NSS unity of effort, leadership, and space advocacy. The results of implementation of the Space Commission's recommendations, with regards to Joint Space Cadre solidification and NSS martial identity, have been wholly successful to date. However, the dilemma for a single Service to simultaneously advocate and fund two environmentally disparate sets of technologies and warfighting responsibilities is becoming increasingly evident.

Space-enabled national security contributions are expensive, and threat-based NSS budget requirements will exert increasing pressure on the AF EA in response to increasing capabilities needs. At the same time, the AF determination to execute its traditional roles and missions - as well as modernize - will exert at least equal pressure on the same leadership. There is no doubt that AF leaders understand and appreciate the critical role of that our space supremacy plays in America's security. However, they also understand that when the President tasks a mission to a Combatant Commander he expects that AF weapons delivery on target and other traditional AF missions will be the first Service priority.

In consideration of traditional priorities there will understandably be less willingness to resource space capabilities that only indirectly contribute to the AF primary mission, especially when done at the expense of that primary mission. Nor will there be urgent concern for the warfighting opportunities and strategic advantages to be gained in space in the future that require long-term, robust investment in space, when those tangible benefits cannot be perceived now.

Therefore, while investment in continued space supremacy is in the nation's best interest, it is not, by itself, in the AF's best interest. The Department of the Air Force budget likely won't keep pace with the two distinctive sets of costly aerospace needs. As a result, the aggravation and competition between the air and space communities within the AF can be expected to become even more severe. Faced with what could amount to zero-sum-gain AF funding constraints, space is likely to suffer first.

This dilemma is not the fault of either AF aerospace community. Instead, it lies in a National Security Act and in Title 10 authorizations that are out-of-date. It is also understandable that an Aviation-oriented leadership might tend to appreciate and advance air capabilities over those required for space security. It would be folly to sacrifice the strategic and tactical qualities that maintain our U.S. Air Force as the world's most advanced and capable, but it would be as great a folly to lose or fail to reinforce our nation's tenuous hold on military space superiority. Considering the dilemma, a next step in NSS organization and management may be in order, namely the establishment of a separate, Title 10 empowered Space Service.

20th Century history provides some useful insights relevant to this issue . During the years immediately following the WWI Armistice, U.S. Army General William (Billy) Mitchell strongly advocated the establishment of an Air Force, separate from and outside of the Department of the Army. Military aviation was truly in its infancy at that time, and it was during WWI that General Mitchell had executed the first primitive versions of massed aerial bombardment. As a visionary, he accurately predicted the future potential of strategic air warfare that would become evident some two decades later. But any independent air force concept would have competed with the military tradition and resources of Army and Navy at the time, and his views met the strongest institutional resistance. He was chastised, and the U.S. missed an opportunity to comprehend and preemptively act on the direction that military technology and strategy were moving.

Innovations within Naval Aviation and unbridled American aircraft invention and industry allowed us to react to the strategic surprises of the Axis Powers that appeared later. But the victorious outcome was never guaranteed, and it is worth asking what could have been gained by the earlier establishment of an empowered Air Force. Perhaps the U.S. could have fielded a jet powered air superiority fighter of a technology vintage comparable to Messerschmidt 262 or a longer range and more survivable strategic bomber like the B29 much earlier. In the case of these and other opportunities, the war in all theaters could have been brought to an earlier conclusion once America entered WWII. Hindsight is always clearer, and General Mitchell's vision was finally vindicated in 1947 with the establishment of the Title 10 empowered USAF. In the years hence, the existence of a AF has been and remains crucial to our national security, but the lost opportunities prior to and during WWII could not be recovered.

A more recent and perhaps equally relevant example involved the accelerated establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. Admittedly, it was already a conceptual entity well on its way to debate and consideration prior to the Global War on Terrorism. However, if some semblance of its fully synchronized organizational functions had been in place years ago when it was first envisioned, perhaps the events preceding Sept 11, 2001 could have been interpreted, and the tragic results prevented. Again, like Billy Mitchell's vision of an Air Force, this assumption can only be made in hindsight, but historical examples and their relevance to current trends can provide us good templates to prepare for the future, in this case, the inevitability of space warfare. If history serves to guide our future preparedness, then NSS should now perhaps consider a military department to guard against surprise from any space-related event that places us at a strategic disadvantage

Objections

Space is merely an information medium, as space warfighting is restricted by past treaties (such as no orbital nukes) and current pressure from UN to ban all weapons in space.

This objection runs counter to current geopolitical movements and world events. As the gentlemanly regard for the United Nations and other treaties relating to space and other environmental realms continues to deteriorate, the self-imposed restraint of many nations evident during the Cold War will also dissolve. Furthermore, the loathing for the U.S. and its national security interests by morally unconstrained adversaries could cause these or newer treaties to be tools of deceit to hinder U.S. military space capabilities while proceeding with their own. The old Soviet Union's signing of the 1972 treaty banning biological weapons production and stockpiling, while covertly advancing their programs, comes to mind as an example. Similarly, the desire by those adversaries to maximize civilian casualties has become a favored asymmetric tactic against our nation and the few allies who feel morally constrained to employ precision. When combined with the world-wide proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), the ease of access to space by adversaries - potentially facilitated by the lower cost of competitor launch - will make space a preferred medium for weapons delivery platforms, frustrating U.S. defense efforts even further.

No competitor or adversary anywhere in the world is close to our level of sophistication in space capabilities.

Our comprehensive U.S. military space exploitation capabilities have been ramping down, while those of other nations have been ramping up. For example, our ability to cost-effectively place large payloads into orbit is steadily declining. Our Titan IV vehicles are nearing or have achieved total depletion. Our only heavy lift alternative in advance of the troubled EELV Program is the currently grounded and aging Shuttle fleet. At the same time Russian Proton, Chinese Long-March, and European Arianne lift capabilities are robust and relatively inexpensive, and they are becoming the most attractive means of orbiting larger commercial and military systems worldwide. We are also dependent on Russian engines for one of our own homegrown medium lift vehicles, namely Atlas. This represents loss of both a U.S. launch market and a critical sovereign national asset, one that cannot be easily rejuvenated.

There is no identifiable martial mission for a Space Service comparable to weapons employment from manned and unmanned platforms of the other traditional Services.

Senior Army leaders no doubt remained skeptical of the military cost-effectiveness of massed bombing even after Billy Mitchell assembled 200 primitive biplanes into a formation during the Meuse-Argonne campaign. Similarly, it is difficult to present a case for an unprovable future space capability to those who are only familiar with space as an information medium. However, the historical precedent of the U.S. Army Air Corps' transformation into the USAF should serve to increase that faith. As with aircraft, space access and other technologies will drive forward to gain any and all warfighting relevance, application and advantage from the space medium, quite independently of any nation's unilateral will to prevent it. Technological advancement and proliferation is no different from WMD proliferation as an expression of state and non-state potency and independent will. Space is an exposed U.S. flank, and an immediate Service martial mission exists for its defense. Offensive or defensive U.S. Space Service missions relating to space control, global strike, missile defense, transport, assault support, and other capabilities will necessarily follow.

The existence of a new, separate Service will require severe offsets from the other Services, and the total cost increase may not be politically acceptable.

The key proto-Space Service organizations and personnel positions are already in existence since the Space Commission, and would largely fulfill the initial Service resource needs. For example, positionally, the Under Secretary of the Air Force (USECAF) is a Space Service Secretary candidate, and the Commander of Air Force Space Command is a Service Chief candidate. Similarly, the AF Professional Space Community can immediately form the core of a Space Service. This core could be augmented with members of the civilian and military space cadres of the other Services by means of permanent inter-service transfers. In terms of creating new organizations with non-space compensation, the initial DoD impact would be modest. The National Aerospace Initiative (NAI) could immediately be programmatically empowered, absorbed (along with selected space resources and civilian cadres of the Service Labs), and renamed as the Service Science and Technology (S&T) organization. NAI is currently a space-related technology effort intended to coordinate and influence the activities of DoD, NASA, and Industry in the three pillar areas of High Speed/Hypersonics, Space Access and Space Technology. Following absorption of NAI, non-NASA space S&T would be solely 'owned' by the new Space Service, and not subject to S&T trade-space starvation of other NSS S&T stakeholders, such as the NAI is today. The AF Space and Missile Systems Center could be absorbed as the Service acquisition arm. The National Reconnaissance Office could likewise be absorbed as-is, along with its specialized functions and personnel mix.

The precise nature of the initial Service organization can be debated, and there are several alternatives that the Space Commission evaluated. An entirely separate Space Service model, the Department of the Navy model (i.e. an Air Force and a Space Corps/Force beneath a Secretary of Aerospace), and the SOCOM model all had distinctive advantages and disadvantages. But the evolved solution to the on-going dilemma must insure from the outset that the Service be Title 10 and Title 50 empowered, and that it have full Joint Chiefs of Staff and Joint Requirements Oversight Council membership. The Service would grow rationally in accordance with newly assigned roles and missions. It would submit its budget separately, and its requests would compete equally with those of the other Services and be balanced against all other national defense priorities.

Finally, as a reinvigorated NASA begins again to reach out to the moon and Mars, the Space Service would serve as a non-duplicative and fully complementary entity. The technologies developed in both distinctive mission areas would overwhelmingly crossover through such mechanisms as the NAI (or its S&T successor) without violating the sanctity of the exclusive military and scientific charters of each. It also would enable the successful transition from NASA demonstration to national security operationalization of space transportation and other pivotal capabilities.

The creation of a Space Service may drive other nations to militarize space in a way they had not intended to previously.

With or without U.S. prompting, capable competitors and adversaries will militarize space to their own advantage. However, it is the speed with which the U.S. can respond to the future national security challenges posed by space that will serve as its greatest psychological strength, so long as we allow the lead-time to do so. Potential military capabilities in space could serve to intimidate competitors to inaction rather than antagonize them to action. A prime example of this was the impact that the sincere dedication of U.S. resources to the Strategic Defense Initiative had on the Soviet Union. Instead of leading to a renewed arms race, the projected cost of responding to the U.S. intimidated the USSR into a position of negotiation, and relative inaction. Furthermore, others have recently relearned that when the U.S. puts its mind to reinvigorating national security it is a formidable and even dangerous opponent. That too can serve as effective NSS deterrence, but only if our space capabilities are real.

A Way Ahead

The Space Commission considered these issues as they relate to our relative loss of space dominance, and the possibility that the U.S. could experience a Pearl Harbor in space due to a lack of preparedness. The Final Report of the Commission made concrete recommendations that have led to great strides in the DoD and National Communities to unify a previously fragmented space community under the AF EA for NSS.

AF acting as EA certainly represents a significant improvement over the balkanized and unintentionally duplicative state of previous NSS affairs. In the person of the USECAF we have achieved unity of NSS efforts, singular Space Advocacy, and - most importantly - a single Milestone Decision Authority and oversight for NSS resources. The establishment of U.S. Strategic Command operationally complements the programmatic empowerment of the EA.

However, in the months and years since implementation, the new NSS organization and management has served as a revealing test of the capacity of the Department of the Air Force to balance traditional Air Force Title 10 responsibilities with those of space. The strain of two distinctive missions and technology identities, having equally distinctive investment strategies, beneath the same Service Chief and Secretariat is evident. In the past, AF-managed space programs were frequently mortgaged to finance terrestrial AF programs. Since the Space Commission, the invisibility of that practice has largely disappeared, so that any competition between air and space warfighting resource equity regimes presents an even starker contrast than before.

Recent discussions related to the NAI, as well as military interest in manned space flight serve as relevant examples of the cultural mutual exclusivity of air and space interests within AF. The favorable outcome of both topics was a tribute to the desire of some within AF to fully assume and execute the role of NSS EA as it was intended. At the same time, those and other examples of the larger AF space versus air cultural conflict forewarn that the incompatibility of space within AF will grow, with a need to establish a separate Space Service sooner rather than later. The Space Commissioners, Congress, and SECDEF had carefully considered the merits of other models before settling on AF EA assignment as an intermediate NSS solution. However, they did not dismiss the possibility that a further evolution to a Space Service, Force, or Corps, might be required for effective national defense in the future, and the time for such evolution appears to be now.

As a relevant example, in recent Congressional Testimony, the Marine Corps has presented a compelling emerging need to overcome the constraints of thick air travel and non-permissive airspace for responsive expeditionary transport and insertion. As an emerging Joint requirement, it recognizes that Marine, SOCOM, and other Joint Forces will require heretofore-unimaginable assault support speed, range, and altitude in order to achieve strategic surprise in the future. The link to space is clear. It also illustrates how the Corps' vision of inevitable future Joint requirements are largely predictable through the projection of current technical possibilities, just as it was for General Billy Mitchell almost a century before. This should encourage a revisitation of a National Security Act that does not reflect the impact emerging NSS technological opportunities will have on the nature of warfare.

Conclusion

The existing cultural dilemma is unfair to the Department of the Air Force, and will lead to the delay of our national preparations for the comprehensive role that space will play in the future of warfare. Unlike America's energetic recovery and entrance into WWII, strategic surprise in the realm of NSS could cause damage to our national security from which we cannot recover. We will be wise to learn history's lessons and take the initiative, while we still have the initiative. Establishment of a Space Service now is a sound preparation for an uncertain, yet imaginable future.

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Orbdev Files Federal Suit Over Eros Claim
Carson City - Nov 10, 2003
Orbital Development of Carson City, Nevada announced that legal action was begun in its "Eros Project" against the United States by filing a Complaint for Declaratory Judgment in Federal Court today.







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