Space Weapons in US Defense Planning
Jeffrey Lewis
What are the prospects for space weaponization? The question is particularly important as the world approaches what promises to be a bruising 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference (NPT Review). The Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva remains deadlocked while the United States reviews its support for the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. Although the 2000 NPT Review identified thirteen practical steps to demonstrate good faith in the commitment to pursue disarmament, the declared nuclear powers are unlikely to make progress on these steps before 2005.
Preventing the weaponization of outer space is not explicitly one of the thirteen steps. The vision of expanded military activities in outer space articulated by the Bush Administration, however, draws heavily on the outline of the Nuclear Posture Review and has complicated efforts to build consensus for a work plan in the CD.[1]
US National Security and Space Policy
The Nuclear Posture Review called for modernizing US strategic forces by adding anti-ballistic missile and conventional long-range strike systems, both of which may include space-based elements. The United States Department of Defense (DoD) typically does not use the term “space weapon” to describe these systems – instead, the DoD divides military space operations into four mission areas:
1. Space control operations provide freedom of action in space for friendly forces while, when directed, denying it to an adversary, and include the broad aspect of protection of US and US allied space systems and negation of adversary space systems.
2. Space force enhancement operations multiply joint force effectiveness by enhancing battlespace awareness and providing needed warfighter support.
3. Space support operations consist of operations that launch, deploy, augment, maintain, sustain, replenish, de-orbit, and recover space forces, including the command and control network configuration for space operations.
4. Space force application would consist of attacks against terrestrial-based targets carried out by military weapons systems operating in or through space. The force application mission area includes anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems and force projection.[2]
Of these four mission areas, some of the space control and space force projection missions are what most observers think of as “space weapons.” The publication of several US military documents outlining these capabilities, including the 1998 US Space Command Long Range Plan and the US Air Force’s biennial Strategic Master Plan, have resulted in considerable criticism of the United States, particularly from the Russian Federation and China. Concern over US military activities in outer space has contributed to the deadlock in the CD and may complicate the NPT Review.
White HouseMuch of the concern centers on suspicion of the motives of the United States. But the actual intentions of the Bush Administration are not clear – the White House ordered a review of the 1996 National Space Policy, but the results regarding national security matters have not been made public. Officially, the Clinton-era National Space Policy (1996) and DoD Directive Space Policy (1999) continue to define US government statements regarding military activities in outer space, with the single exception of ABM systems.[3] These policies are reflected in the doctrinal statements and transformation plans outlined by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, service headquarters, and combatant commands (see Table 1).
The Final Report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, chaired by Donald Rumsfeld until his nomination as Secretary of Defense, provides some evidence about the general outlook of the Bush Administration toward space. The Commission, empanelled by a Republican-controlled Congress, called for “power projection in, through and from space.” The Commission also recommended the US Government “vigorously pursue the capabilities called for in the National Space Policy to ensure that the President will have the option to deploy weapons in space to deter threats to and, if necessary, defend against attacks on US interests.”[4]
As for arms control, one commission member drew a sharp distinction between arms control and the approach of the Commission: “We, as a Commission, believe very strongly that one of the biggest threats to future space capability may be the unintended consequences of well-intentioned people signing up to certain treaties and restrictions today that in and of themselves seem to be very innocent,” General Ronald Fogelman (USAF, Ret). noted. “And as you go down the road, they could end up tying our hands in ways that would very much limit our ability to continue to be dominant.”
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 Figure 1: Air Force Command Required and Available Resources. The heavy gray line depicts anticipated total obligation authority (available resources). Source: Air Force Space Command, Strategic Master Plan FY06 and Beyond, October 1, 2003, p. 13. |
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Broad policy documents, from the National Space Policy down to the Air Force Transformation Flight Plan, do not, however, indicate which programs will survive the thicket of political, technological, and budgetary hurdles. For example, Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) published an analysis, represented in Figure 1, that “depicts what resources would be required to acquire all the capabilities for which AFSPC is responsible in the timeframes desired by the warfighter” against an estimate of available resources – total obligation authority (TOA).[5] “AFSPC TOA is inadequate,” Air Force Space Command concluded that the requirements are “un-executable.”[6]
Documents such as the Strategic Master Plan and Transformation Flight Plan are, in fact, largely wish lists designed for the budgeting process. The requirements set by such documents are typically optimistic and subject to alteration, particularly by the US Congress. Identifying the programs likely to reach operational testing and deployment requires a careful examination of the documents produced to support the President’s annual budget request and the authorization and appropriations bills passed by Congress.
Of the many force projection and space control programs, which are the most likely to be tested and deployed in the next few years? Based on an analysis of the fiscal year (FY) 2004 and 2005 Budget Requests, the two most important programs, for opponents of space weaponization, are space-based ABM systems and micro-satellites capable of autonomous proximity operations.[7]
Force Projection and Space-Based ABM Systems
Pentagon plans for space-based force projection are largely space-based ABM programs. The Pentagon does have active research programs to develop hypersonic vehicles and spacebased kinetic energy weapons called hypervelocity rod bundles. Hypersonic vehicle concepts, however, are currently being designed to transit space – although there are longer term plans for Space Operations and Space Maneuver Vehicles that would allow on-orbit basing of hypervelocity rod bundles and the Common Aero Vehicle, a hypersonic glide vehicle.
In the near-term, space-based force projection platforms are likely to appear in the form of space-based ABM interceptors to enhance the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS), which will stand-up in Alaska by the end of this year. In December 2002, President George W. Bush indicated that the US would continue the “development and testing of space-based defenses, specifically space-based kinetic energy (hit to kill) interceptors and advanced target tracking satellites.”[8]
The FY 2004 Budget Request anticipated a major effort to research these technologies, including the creation of a space-based ABM test bed starting in 2008. After substantial Congressional resistance during the authorization and appropriations process, the FY 2005 Budget Request has substantially fewer funds dedicated to space-based missile defenses, but several programs remain.
The principle program that supports space-based interceptors is the BMDS Interceptor program – a boost-phase kinetic energy interceptor which is intended to be based on land, at sea, and in space. In FY 2004, Congress reduced the line item forBMDS Interceptors by $182.0 million and ordered the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to focus on land- and sea-basing modes, rather than space. Consequently, MDA has shifted most of the funding for the space-based component of the BMDS Interceptor program into the land and sea components.[9] However, the FY 2005 budget request contains some funding for two space-based boost-phaserelated activities.
- $68.0 million for the Near Field Infra Red Experiment (NFIRE) satellite, funded as “Experimentation & Test.” NFIRE, scheduled to launch during early 2006, is a risk reduction effort for the space-based interceptor. The satellite will collect data on the characteristics of missile plumes and hard bodies outside the atmosphere, as well space and earth horizon backgrounds. MDA will conduct two missile “fly-bys” to allow NFIRE “a close-up view of a burning ICBM at conditions that are truly real world.”[10] During the second test, NFIRE will simulate an engagement by launching “a kill vehicle for a flyby of a burning missile.”[11] MDA is not attempting to hit the ballistic missile and the kill vehicle lacks an axial stage that would allow it to conduct engagements in real world conditions. The NFIRE was originally scheduled for launch in June 2004. However, after Congress cut BMDS Interceptors and ordered MDA to focus its efforts on ground-based interceptor programs, MDA reprogrammed about $37.5 of the $82 million identified for NFIRE and slipped the launch date to early 2006.
- $10.5 million for Space-Based Interceptor Test Bed activities. The funding is intended to initiate technology development and testing of advanced, lightweight space-based interceptor components including development of a liquid axial stage and reductions in kill vehicle (KV) and lifejacket weight. This is substantially less than the $119.5 million that MDA originally intended to request for FY 2005.
MDA also conducts a substantial amount of research that could support future space-based efforts in the Ballistic Missile Defense Technology program, which funds the development of new component technologies and innovative concepts that can be integrated into future Block improvements of the BMDS system. All of the research efforts have been consolidated under a single project, Advanced Technology Development, which contains efforts such as Sensing Systems Technologies, Engagements Systems Technologies (including the Multiple Kill Vehicle program) and the High Altitude Airship.
- Sensing Systems Technologies is a $72.1 million effort that includes an unspecified amount for a micro-satellite program to investigate “small satellite concepts, payloads, and applications for future BMDS technology demonstrations and test assets.” In 2003, MDA awarded Californiabased SpaceDev an $800,000 contract “to design three formation-flying microsatellites” as an alternative to the Space-Based Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) designed to track missiles in boost phase.[12]
- Engagement Systems Technologies is an $85.4 million effort that includes an unspecified amount for the Multiple (formerly Miniature) Kill Vehicle (MKV) program. MDA hopes to use as many as twelve MKVs on a single ground-based interceptor to provide multiple intercept opportunities in the mid-course of a ballistic missile’s flight. MDA is reportedly exploring other basing modes, including sea-based.[13]
Remaining work on the Space-Based Laser (SBL) program, which was canceled in 2002, has been shifted into the Advanced Technology Development Project. Although MDA is soliciting proposals from the laser and electro-optics industry that could revive the SBL, MDA appears to be focused on using lasers to improve tracking, weapon guidance, and imaging. MDA is decommissioning the Lockheed Martin facility in California where integrated ground tests of the high-power laser and optical subsystems were conducted.
Space Control and Autonomous Proximity Operations
In the near-term, the Pentagon is focusing on reversible measures to control space, including a pair of groundbased systems to temporarily interfere with communications and reconnaissance satellites. The Counter Satellite Communications System is a mobile system “intended to disrupt satellitebased communications used by an enemy for military [command, control and communications],” while the Counter Surveillance Reconnaissance System, currently in the initial design phase, will impair reconnaissance satellites with “reversible, non-damaging effects.”[14] These two systems are expected to reach initial operating capability in 2004 and 2007, respectively.
The Pentagon has a range of destructive anti-satellite programs in various states of completion, including the moth-balled Kinetic Energy Anti-Satellite (KE ASAT) program, which program officers believe they could demonstrate on orbit for about $60 million, as well as an air-launched anti-satellite missile.[15] The arms control community should monitor the development of these systems, but – for the time being – they are not serious threats unless the Bush Administration decides to conduct a KE ASAT test for purely political purposes.
The most serious prospect for the weaponization of space is from progressively smaller satellites capable of autonomous proximity operations – orbital maneuvers that would allow satellites to inspect other satellites, diagnose malfunctions and provide onorbit servicing. Such satellites could also provide sophisticated surveillance in space and would make excellent anti-satellite weapons.
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Table 2: Upcoming Autonomous Proximity Demonstrations. Sources: See endnotes 17-26. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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In fact, the Defense Technology Area Plan (2000) called for “the development of micro-satellite vehicles with significant capability” including the ability to “conduct missions such as diagnostic inspection of malfunctioning satellites through autonomous guidance, rendezvous, and even docking techniques.”[16] Future demonstration missions are planned by NASA, DARPA and the Air Force (see Table 2).
- NASA’s Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) is an advanced flight demonstrator scheduled for launch in 2004. Once in orbit, the DART satellite will rendezvous with a DoD communications satellite and perform several autonomous rendezvous and close proximity operations, such as moving toward and away from the satellite using navigation data provided by an advanced video guidance (AVG) sensor and other on-board sensors.[17] Orbital’s contract for DART is valued at $47 million.[18]
- The Air Force’s Experimental Spacecraft System (XSS) is a series of Air Force Research Laboratory satellites designed to demonstrate imaging applications of proximity operations. The most recent satellite, the XSS-10, was launched in 2003.[19] That satellite maneuvered to within 35 meters of an expended Delta II rocket body, transmitting digital images, and conducted a number of other on orbit maneuvers for twenty-four hours before completing its mission; the next satellite in the series, the XSS-11, is schedule for launch this year. Unlike the XSS-10, the XSS-11 will remain in orbit for a year and conduct close-proximity operations to multiple targets of opportunity.[20] The USAF requested $18.6 million in FY 2005 for the XSS microsatellites. Lockheed’s contract for the XSS-11 is valued at $21 million.[21]
- DARPA’s Orbital Express will demonstrate the feasibility of using automated spacecraft to refuel, upgrade, and extend the life of on-orbit spacecraft.[22] Boeing is building two satellites – the Autonomous Space Transport Robotic Operations satellite (ASTRO) and a surrogate next generation serviceable satellite (NEXTSat) – for an on-orbit demonstration of autonomous satellite servicing set for launch in March 2006.[23] DARPA is spending $56.6 million in FY 2005 on its Orbital Express program. Boeing’s contract for ASTRO and NEXTSat are valued at $113 million.
There may be other research into autonomous proximity operations at the classified level. At least one Air Force classified small- or micro-satellite is schedule to launch on a Minotaur launch vehicle in 2005; its function is unknown.[24]
Although none of these satellites is a dedicated anti-satellite system, each has that capability. As the head of the Air Force XSS program told Space News: “You can’t closely inspect a vehicle – say, one with an on-orbit malfunction – without getting ‘close’ and approaching from the right angle. To refuel, obviously you’d have to get more than close, and ‘dock’ with the vehicle.”[25]
The three programs are already contributing to an innocuous “anti-satellite” mission of sorts: NASA is planning to launch an autonomous “space tug” in 2006, using technology from DART, XSS and ASTRO, to deorbit the Hubble Space Telescope. “We actually think that having three programs that are funded right now to look at aspects of this issue are really going to be a great help,” noted one NASA official.[26] The same might be said by Air Force Officials, one of whom told Space News that the “XSS-11 can be used as an ASAT weapon.”[27] In fact, the “single strongest recommendation” of the Air Force’s 1999 Microsatellite Technology and Requirements Study, was “the deployment, as rapidly as possible, of XSS-10-based satellites to intercept, image and, if needed, take action against a target satellite” based on technology from the Army’s Kinetic Energy Anti-Satellite program. The XSS-11 is a pathfinder for the notional “microsat payload imager,” outlined in the Air Force Space Command Strategic Master Plan FY02 and Beyond, and the “flexible orbit counterspace microsat” to “neutralize [an] adversary’s use of space.”[28]
Given growing suspicion about motives of other space faring states, an unannounced proximity operation might lead to a serious incident in space. One recent operation involving a relatively innocuous micro-satellite test demonstrates the level of mistrust and confusion inherent in unregulated micro-satellite programs.
In 2000, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL), a British company affiliated with the University of Surrey, launched two satellites: The first, TsinghuaSat- 1, was built by SSTL and a group of scientists at Tsinghua (Qinghua) University in Beijing; it contained a multi-spectral camera with 40 meter resolution, which SSTL hoped to use as a demonstration of the possible applications of a constellation of remote sensing micro-satellites for natural disaster monitoring and mitigation.[29] The second satellite, SNAP-1, built by SSTL alone, was designed to conduct a proximity operations near TsinghuaSat-1. SNAP-1 successfully maneuvered to within 9 meters of the Chinese satellite, transmitting a digital image.[30]
Despite the innocuous mission and relatively limited capabilities of TsinghuaSat-1, the DoD identified it as evidence that China is developing “parasitic microsatellites” for use as anti-satellite weapons.[31] In addition to concern that the Chinese were developing micro-satellites, the DoD may also have been concerned about Chinese affiliation with a project involving proximity maneuvers; the launch of a Chinese micro-satellite with the capability of SNAP-1, let alone the XSS-11 or DART, would generate intense concern in many quarters of the United States. If the Chinese were to conduct a proximity maneuver near a US satellite, the reaction would be apoplectic.
Absent a legal regime to establish ground-rules for inspections and other proximity operations, serious incidents are possible: In July 1993, the US Navy stopped and inspected a Chinese ship, the Yinhe, which the CIA claimed was carrying chemical weapons precursors to Iran. The inspection found no chemical weapons precursors, but the incident was, briefly, a serious issue in the US-China relationship. Is an Yinhe-type incident possible in outer space? Already, some proponents of micro-satellites are proposing that the United States develop a micro-satellite “space guard” force, analogous to the Coast Guard, to patrol low earth and geostationary orbit.[32] Although proponents point to the stabilizing effect of the US Navy in combating piracy, there is a plausible case to be made that such efforts may stimulate other states to pursue micro-satellites and other antisatellite capabilities – since a spaceguard force could just as easily be used to deny other states the ability to operate in outer space.
Conclusion
Regulating space-based ABM interceptors and micro-satellite proximity operations will be difficult. The Bush Administration, in abandoning the ABM Treaty, clearly stated that it desires the freedom of action to develop an open-ended missile defense architecture that will eventually include space-based elements. Micro-satellites are inherently dual-use, greatly complicating any anticipated restrictions. At the same time, many members of Congress, including many moderate Republicans, are uncomfortable about space-based ABM and anti-satellite capabilities. It was, in fact, a Republican Congress that substantially reduced funding for space-based interceptors. Perhaps one solution is to focus on operational restrictions to prevent provocative maneuvers in orbit or military activities that create debris. Michael Krepon has suggested an “Incidents in Space” (INCSPACE) agreement modeled on the 1972 Incidents at Sea Agreement.[33] Others have suggested similar “rules of the road” agreements for space operations.
An INCSPACE agreement, or a set of “rules of the road,” may be more politically palatable in the United States than an agreement designed explicitly to constrain US military capabilities. Recently, the United States Congress approved a pilot program to sell US satellite tracking data to foreign and commercial entities, “consistent with the best interests of national security.” An agreement about “rules of the road” would, in my view, provide a more comprehensive definition of the United States’ national interest – a definition that encompasses the common interest of all countries in preserving the orbital environment and promoting international cooperation in preserving the interest of all states in the use of outer space for peaceful purposes.
The author would like to thank the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for its generous support.
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