Boomshock points us to some interesting moves by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office:
"Beginning next year, NRO will be in charge of the new Offensive Counter-Space program, which will come up with plans to specifically deny the use of near-Earth space to other nations, said Teets.I seem to remember reports that the French and Russians were feeding Iraq satellite data up to and possibly during the war. Looks like the USA is preparing to play hardball if necessary in future.The program will include two components: the Counter Communication System, designed to disrupt other nations' communication networks from space; and the Counter Surveillance Reconnaissance System, formed to prevent other countries from using advanced intelligence-gathering technology in air or space."
It's an interesting strategy, largely because it's double-edged. On the one hand, if the Americans are determined to maintain dominance of space it will be difficult to stop them. On the other hand, no other nation is as militarily dependent on its space assets as the USA.
On the whole, I call this a good strategic move. The Canadian government is upset, but the USA no longer cares what they think. China has some space launch facilities, but any kind of serious countermove will be hideously expensive. Between their social problems and need to modernize their military in other areas, they'll be kept busy. Russia has to sell rides on its rockets to keep its space program going. Japan is depending on American space dominance to help protect it, and certainly will not jepoardize cooperation in the critical field of missile defense by crossing the Americans here. The EU and especially France are the most plausible near-term challengers, but the cost of doing so would remove almost all other military modernization options from their budgets.
The French have thus been placed on the horns of a dilemma: competition here would bankrupt them, but failure to compete makes their Euro-force proposals much less credible and attractive. If the use of space can potentially be denied to this force, it will be much less effective. In addition, the implicit threat represented by this American capability makes other countries more hesitant to annoy Washington by overtly cooperating. The Americans are laying a quiet cornerstone for future diplomacy and leverage here, and it's a more significant move than most people realize.
We'll see a lot of transnational progressivist huffing and puffing over this issue, but very little in the way of serious competition or countermoves if the USA goes ahead with this.
UPDATES: In "Does America Rule the Vacuum?," Transterrestrial Musings offers some excellent analysis of space's importance to the U.S. military. He sees predominance in this area as an extension of and similar to the Naval supremacy on which America's power currently rests. Jeff Medcalf of Caerdroia offers a similar point of view in our Comments section, albeit without all of Rand's great links.
Meanwhile, the normally sensible Defensetech is having a bad day or something. Bad enough that he stoops to silly invective (Noah, do you actually read us here on a regular basis?). But his lame argument that the European Gallileo GPS plans are somehow a reaction to recent U.S. moves, instead of a long-planned EU move made certain by its international vision of itself, is just laughable. Space is too important to modern intelligence, warfighting, and power projection, and all players will use it as a ground of competition.
All those addle-pated twinkies who thought it great sport to poke and pester the giant are going to have to learn that they committed a collosal blunder. The price they will pay is large, but they've only themselves to blame.
Too bad for them!
Momma bear:
I disagree. In fact the American decision to deny near space to any other country might have the opposite effect. It might just spur the countries to undertake the painful reform in order them to allow the resources to have a presence in near space. Some it'll be to spite the Americans. Others because they truly fear the havoc the Americans could do to their legitimate interests with such a monopoly.
In any case, the decision will only reinforce the perception that America will do anything to maintain its dominance and spur a new arms race.
xavier
In any event, there's a current disconnet between what we can do in space, and what this policy would imply. It'll be interesting to see what concrete impact there is on space policy and infrastructure. Will NASA get a boost? Private firms? Will the military create a more independent presence? And if we're denying near earth space to other countries, what impact does that have on development of private launch firms anyway?
I feel a post coming on...
"Spurring a new arms race" is just one of the cliches usually employed to discourage the US from updating military capabilities. The antidemocratic European Union is already tied in a knot trying to salvage an economy- if they invested in an arms race at the expense of their beloved social programs, their citizenry might start acting democratic again and terminate some noble careers. And spiting the Americans is the national sport of lotsa places, it's way safer than spiting the Russians used to be.
Contrary to the received wisdom of the left, the US is not about to colonize the world any time soon, but it's not about to deliberately weaken itself to make some would-be Genghis Khan feel more comfortable, either.
This strikes me as eminently sensible. After all, we rely on our satellites for a lot of our edge - they are a huge force multiplier. We must protect them.
On the other hand, we'd like to deny our enemies the chance to have such a force multiplier. In peacetime, I don't see any changes. In wartime, I suspect we'd continue to buy every bit of commercial footage in our areas of operation in order to deny them to other users. In the case of satellites where we couldn't buy the tasking, and where the satellites were feeding information to the enemy (ahem, FRANCE, ahem), we could take them out with a relatively small cost to us, thus saving the lives of our soldiers.
Interestingly, the best response to this would be to build a capacity to launch microsats (small, cheap) on virtually no notice - which would also be a nice spur to the kinds of capabilities needed for low-cost commercial exploitation of near-Earth space.
Jeff:
Yes and that's what worries me tremendously (I'm unconvincd that the French and Russian fed satellite photos to the Iraqis. No doubt Joe and the other members of the Winds of change will provide me with links. I have in the back of my head 2 scary scenarios:
1) The 1997 ice storm that Quebec suffered. Half the province was without electricity for several weeks. There was a need to coordinate the evacuation and repair procedures.
2) The Albright temptation: what's the point of having all this cool technology if we can use it.
I worry that American could vote another Carter, Clinton or Nixon presidency. Imagine the temptation that some future administration will face. Now inmagine that the U.S. has a dispute with some country (let's say an allied country and decides to teach it a 'lesson' but instead of temporarily disrupting the communications system ends up destroying it. Farfteched? Remember Clinton sent 2 cruise missile to blow up a camel and an aspirin factory.
Insufficetly sensitive:
What about the other countries? Do you really think they'll sit down and permit the Americans to update their capabilities without response?
The world won't trust American intention and won't be complacent while the American develop technologies than can clobber it.
xavier
Joe -
You say you "remember reports that the French and Russians were feeding Iraq satellite data up to and possibly during the war".
I'm sorry, but I'm beginning to doubt most if not all the information my government was giving out before the war. (And this is beginning to make me angry, as it should anyone who remembers the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.)
In any case, up to now LEO has been international space, available to anyone who can get there. If we now start to deny it to whomever we feel like attacking, we're literally taking on the world. We're the biggest kid on the block now, but I think doing this will be disastrous in the long run.
Not that that matters to the war-mongers who are running our country now.
"He who controls space controls the future destiny of mankind."
It is simply logical for America to take control of near-earth space to ensure its dominance of the planet.
Space based weapons are one day going to replace American carrier battle groups as the primary tools of military force projection over the next 50 years.
Point in fact, the wide spread application of fiber optics to long haul telecommunication is removing the primary civilian application in space -- GEO com-sats.
The main paying customer for mobile satellite communications bandwidth in the 3rd world will be the US military because it pays its bills and 3rd world customers cannot be trusted to do that.
People like to talk about "asymetrical strategies." The bottom line is that American deployment of orbital missile defenses and kinetic energy strike weapons in orbit is the ultimate asymetrical strategy in dealing with other nation-states or kleptocracies claiming to control the territories of a nation-state.
My two cents:
We shouldn't forget that we don't exist in a vacumn. Anybody who believes that the Russians, Chinese, and diverse others aren't working on ASAT capabilities is deluding himself.
We're just slightly ahead of the curve, because we have a better tech base. This sort of advantage can be fleeting indeed if not seized; the last world-spanning power very nearly came to a terrible end because they didn't maintain the edge in technologies they had, for the most part, developed.
Steve Stein-
"We're the biggest kid on the block now, but I think doing this will be disastrous in the long run."
I don't agree with you on this, but I believe I see your point. You believe that dominance in orbital weapons by the US will lead to the closing off of space to other nations, thus minimizing a peaceful human presence in space (this interpretation is open to correction, of course)
I'm with Trent and Ray over this. You're distrustful of the government, and to a great extent that's healthy and necessary. However, the US (percieved untrustworthyness notwithstanding) is preferable to the other possible contenders (eg Russia, China, the EU [aka 'Bureaucracy Triumphant']) that can develop such a capacity. I've heard that in politics, "the perfect is the enemy of the good". Not pressing ahead with this really will be disasterous for the US in the long run. Despite your reservations, that can't be what you want.
The thing is, this is no different than maintaining weapons to deny the use of the sea to other nations, including our allies. We already do this. We in fact maintain the world's only credible seagoing area-denial capability: our carrier battle groups. If we decide that a nation is shipping goods to an enemy, we will intercept and if necessary destroy the ships of that nation which are in the war zone. All that this move does is treat space like the oceans: it's international territory - anyone can go there - but we are building the capabilities to ensure that that territory is not used against us, and can be used by us.
I don't see this as a big, worrying development. We have a lot of capabilities, and it's nice to have more. Just because we have it, doesn't mean we'll use it on a whim. I would imagine that any nation would take the destruction or debilitation of one of its satellites as an act of war. We don't wantonly commit acts of war.
Ray,
It is't a matter of "tech-base."
It is a matter of economic capability and political will.
The USA has both. There isn't anyone else even close.
Xavier your write
"Insufficetly sensitive:
What about the other countries? Do you really think they'll sit down and permit the Americans to update their capabilities without response?
The world won't trust American intention and won't be complacent while the American develop technologies than can clobber it."
The thing is.. this has actually been going on for decades (I mean the policey to control space and thats part of what Space Command was setup to do). Other countries have seen what was happening and several times European, Asian, and the UN have actually tried through policy and polotics to control US hegemony in Space but failed.
As for the Wolrd trying to counter US control of space.. they wont do it via technology because they simply can not afford to. They will continue to do what they have before and what has continued to fail which is trying to control US space power via poloitcal means.
You all assume other countries would try to counter a US space denial threat with their own space program. Why bother with that.
Far easier for other countries to supply the Shias with modern weapons and let them take out the US forces in Arabia. Or just give Iran and atom bomb and a ballistic missile with range to Washgington. Job done.
The US only gets away with its Empire building because Europeans let them because it suits them at present. Better US marines get shot at than Europeans just so long as the oil keeps flowing.
The US has at last taken up "The White Mans Burden". Good on 'Em.