The United States should agree to negotiate a global ban on weapons in space and the use of anti-satellite weapons, because erecting a military shield to defend satellites would be technologically daunting and far too costly, academics argued today.
But they concede that such a ban would not prevent any nation that wished to attack a satellite from doing so.
Their comments came at an afternoon forum on Capitol Hill organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science which published “Reconsidering the Rules for Space Security,” by Nancy Gallagher and John D. Steinbruner, of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland.
The United States, by declining to have its freedom of action in space circumscribed, causes other nations to worry about U.S. intentions, so these nations feel impelled to increase their offensive space capabilities, according to Gallagher and Steinbruner.
“Would U.S. military dominance be desirable?” Gallagher asked. “Well, clearly not in the eyes of other countries.” And, she continued, Americans share that view. “Most Americans don’t want … their country being the policeman of the universe,” she said.
Their presentation comes after China early last year used a ground-based missile to obliterate one of its own aging weather satellites in orbit, creating an enormous cloud of lethal space debris in what the United States and other nations condemned as an act of reckless and colossal irresponsibility.
Also, China used a ground-based laser to disable a U.S. military satellite.
China might use these anti-satellite capabilities to damage or destroy U.S. satellites if China launches its long-threatened invasion of Taiwan, so as to blind the U.S. military operating in the region, some military analysts predict.
That has caused Pentagon officials to say the United States must examine ways of defending its satellites, and at the very least it must have space situational awareness, in which U.S. armed forces are aware, instantly, of any hostile action against an American satellite.
At this point, however, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has no mandate to protect U.S. military and civilian satellites against attack. Rather, MDA is charged only with developing systems to defend the United States, its allies and interests against enemy missile attacks.
But Gallagher said attempting any such defense against aggression by hostile states in space would be prohibitively expensive. “Even though military [spending, including in space programs] increased sharply, it is not possible” for the United States to afford such a space defense, she said, and all the needed capabilities wouldn’t be provided.
The result, she said, would be a vast increase in spending, programs far behind schedule and capabilities not delivered. Such a system would require “many, many more satellites than even the United States could afford.”
Rather, she said, the United States should negotiate a ban on use of weapons in space, and “rely on a behavioral rule.”
If space surveillance and awareness is to be instituted, it should be done with an international coalition, rather than unilaterally, she said.
“Attempts to impose stability [in the space realm] through brute force would be ruinously expensive,” she said.
Asked whether it would be true that their proposal for a negotiated ban on weapons and activities in space, including anti-satellite strikes, wouldn’t prevent any nation from ignoring the ban and attacking, Steinbruner agreed that is true.
To prevent any such attack “is not possible,” he said. But the Chinese would be willing to agree to a non-interference in space treaty. The United States “can sign them up.”
To read their 87-page treatise in full, please go to http://www.amacad.org/publications/space_security.pdf on the Web.