Bob Brewin reported on a House Armed Services Committee hearing held on Wednesday during which a consultant with the Council on Foreign Relations said the United States should pursue anti-satellite weapons that could disable foreign-operated satellites.
In the article, Bruce MacDonald, who served as assistant director for national security at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and as senior director for science and technology on the National Security Council staff from 1995 to 1999, said the United States must develop offensive systems in such a way as to not lead to a space arms race.
From the article:
If the United States acquires offensive space capabilities, it must do so "in a manner that other nations view as unthreatening as possible," he said. "Otherwise, we could create a self-fulfilling prophecy: As nations like China or Russia see evidence of U.S. attempted space hegemony, they would accelerate their own efforts, just as we would if the roles were reversed."
I'm really not sure how this can be done. Foreign nations will view any attempt to develop anti-satellite weapons as a pursuit of space hegemony and as threatening. After all, MacDonald says the United States would view it this way "if the roles were reversed."
Anyone have any idea as to how the United States could avoid a space arms race?
COMMENTS
Space-based platforms for navigation, communications, and intelligence represent our Achilles’ heel. We must have redundant terrestrial methods to supplement those fixed above. Imagine the impact to our country should we lose most of the GPS satellites. Commercial aircraft would have extreme difficulties navigating (LORAN-C is going away) and our smart-bombs would revert to dumb-ordinance. The failure of the US to adhere to the principle of Defense in Depth (or Defense in Height?) creates vulnerabilities that are sure to be pursued by our adversaries once they have the technological know how to reach-out and touch our space-based assets. It is only a matter of time. In the past we have had some success in preventing nuclear proliferation, but we will not be so successful in quashing the spread of technology with the capability to disrupt, disable, or destroy (Triple-D Threat) our satellites.
Sean M. Price 03/24/09 11:36 am ET