starship-design: The Military Space Service: Why It's Time Has Come

["L. Clayton Parker" <l_parker@cacaphony.net>]

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

 by Franz J. Gayl

 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.