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The space industry and US supremacy
By Loring Wirbel
(With
permission from Foreign
Policy in Focus)
Key points
*
During the 1990s, the United States' commercial space
industry flourished and ties to the military lessened.
* Recent disasters, cost overruns industry shifts in
technology, and post-September 11 security measures have
increased military ties to civilian space programs.
*
Foreign competitors represent only a minor challenge to
the US space program.
The mid-1990s were heady
years for the commercial space industry. Space buffs had
been promoting the privatization of space applications
for some time, so the satellite industry could lessen if
not sever its ties to the military. When manned
planetary exploration fell victim to spiraling cost
overruns, advocates of space privatization looked to the
proliferation of satellites in near-earth space,
particularly to personal communication technology. Just
as investors in the 1990s considered anything
Internet-related as an instant gold mine, space
advocates viewed the success of small low-earth-orbit
(LEO) communication satellites as a litmus test for the
commercialization of space.
On the balance
sheet, this strategy appeared to pay off. The commercial
satellite industry posted double-digit growth trends to
yield an industry aggregate in 2001 of $97.7 billion in
revenue worldwide. This total includes $42 billion in
satellite services, $17 billion in satellite
manufacturing, $18 billion in ground stations, and $9
billion in launch services and vehicle manufacturing.
These numbers do not convey, however, the crisis
in the satellite industry. Several recent disasters,
including the simultaneous loss of 12 Globalstar
satellites in Kazakhstan, have rocked investor
confidence. Cost overruns imperil key projects. In
perhaps the most significant blow, the
telecommunications industry pulled the rug out from
under the commercial satellite industry by turning to
cellular networks based on the ground rather than in
space. Throughout most of the 1990s, the average number
of satellite launches per year was 90, but in 2001 the
number shrunk to 60, of which only 15 were true
commercial satellite launches.
Because of these
problems, the United States' commercial space industry
remains dependent on the military for technology and
capital infusions. LEO networks have depended on
technology developed by the National Reconnaissance
Office (NRO); without technology transfers and handouts
from the military, networks like Iridium never would
have made it past the design stage. With the help of the
military, the space industry in the US remains the
strongest in the world. There are some competitors. The
European Space Agency (ESA) is still sending up Ariane
satellites from the Kourou launch facility in French
Guiana. The European Union (EU) still supports the
Galileo navigation network, despite intense US pressure
to cancel the program. And China is on the verge of
introducing an ambitious manned-mission and satellite
program. But these foreign competitors represent only a
minor challenge to the US space program.
Although the melding of the US Space Command
into the Strategic Command appears to have placed space
dominance in limbo, efforts to maintain unilateral
control of space are as strong as ever, implemented by
the enlarged Strategic Command and the new Northern
Command, which has taken over the facilities of the
former Space Command in Colorado Springs. The directors
of the Strategic Command and of the NRO have argued
forcefully in public for using existing strategic assets
against any nation, any terror group, any drug dealer,
to help reinforce US invulnerability.
After the
September 11 tragedy, even the so-called civilian
programs within the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) began serving the government in a
more explicit fashion. For example, NASA satellite
systems like Sea-Wide Field Studies (Sea-WiFS) played a
critical role in spotting Taliban forces during the
Afghan War. And ties between NASA and the intelligence
community are about to become even closer; the NRO
announced in September 2002 the opening of a
Transformational Communications Office to link Pentagon,
NASA, and NRO communication networks in space.
Satellites and satellite launches are an
integral part of the US government’s vision of achieving
control over space for both military and economic
purposes. The Space Command’s 1996 document, Vision for
2020, talks of controlling planetary space in order to
protect the current global division between economic
haves and have-nots. In the 1990s, the notion of
preserving “permanent preeminence”, as defense analyst
Michael Klare calls Washington’s unspoken assumption of
undisputed planetary hegemony, found unanimous favor as
a philosophical baseline in almost all sectors of the
Democratic and Republican parties. When the Bush
administration took power in early 2001, this
unilateralism and its application in space became an
element of pride rather than merely a quiet reality as
had been practiced by the Democrats.
Problems
with current US policy
Key
problems
* Ever since low-earth-orbit
telecommunication satellite plans proved infeasible,
civilian launch platform and satellite efforts have
faltered, and the growth of the space industry has
hinged upon Pentagon ambitions.
* Globalization of
the space industry directly serves Pentagon efforts to
control planetary space for purposes of political and
military power projection.
* “Globalization” of
space has facilitated the consolidation of space control
under Lockheed-Martin, Northrop-Grumman/TRW, Boeing, and
Raytheon.
The US government is committed to
achieving military supremacy in space and maintaining
dominant market share in the satellite industry for US
corporations. The mission of space supremacy did not
suddenly appear when George W Bush took office in 2001.
It evolved from infrastructures that were borrowed from
intelligence and weapons networks and were developed
over 40 years as part of the Cold War. After the Cold
War ended, the US sought a space-based, 24-hour
reconnaissance network and the construction of a
national missile defense (NMD) system to extend its
economic might. Although the aerospace industry is not
powerful enough to set the agenda for US-based
transnationals at large, New York Times columnist Thomas
Friedman has consistently stressed that the
implementation of global free markets serving large
corporations would not be possible without the “hidden
iron fist” of the military, which is led by the
aerospace sector.
As an indication of the
central role space dominance continues to play - and the
intimate connection between commerce and the military -
consider the many hats worn by Peter Teets, former chief
operating officer at Lockheed-Martin. Teets now serves
as the director of the National Reconnaissance Office
(NRO), undersecretary of the Air Force, and chief
procurement officer for all of military space,
controlling a budget in excess of $65 billion, a figure
that includes $8 billion a year for missile defense and
$7 billion annually for NRO spying. Teets is a firm
believer in the conclusions of the Rumsfeld Commission’s
January 2001 report on the military in space, which
warns of a “space Pearl Harbor” if the US does not
thoroughly dominate all aspects of space. In addition,
key lobbyists for Lockheed-Martin, Bruce Jackson and
Stephen Hadley, played central roles in developing space
policy, and Hadley later took a post within the
Pentagon.
To underpin NMD and space supremacy,
the US uses multiple space systems, and the Pentagon is
spending billions to update each of these. Space-based
intelligence collection is dominated by gargantuan
geosynchronous satellite networks that represent
windfall profits for prime contractors and have
generated significant cost overruns. These systems range
from satellite launchers to different tiers of
satellites circling the earth.
From its
inception in 1998, the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle
(EELV) was designed to reduce the cost to the US
government of imaging and signals-intelligence satellite
launches. Large rockets like Titan-4 cost more than $1
billion dollars each, but the Atlas-5 and Delta-IV EELVs
use streamlined designs and cheaper components to reduce
launch costs by as much as 80 percent. Although the NRO
heavily promoted the commercial spin-off possibilities
of EELVs, the commercial prospects for the new launchers
now appear minimal. Contractors see it as a potential
bailout program for their cost overruns. The public may
never learn how much the government has spent on EELVs.
The NRO worked with contractors to insure that most
information remains “vendor proprietary” - even if the
information is declassified, it can remain secret to
meet the wishes of the vendor. To date, it is believed
that the NRO has provided slightly more than $500
million each to Lockheed Martin and Boeing, but even
Defense Department inspector general auditor studies on
EELV expenditures are classified.
The Global
Positioning System (GPS) can provide precision targeting
for military missions, while civilian customers use less
accurate frequencies as navigational aids. Newer
military enhancements to the GPS provide support for
what the Pentagon calls “Navwar”. Warning of impending
missile launches has been the domain of an aging
infrared satellite system called Defense Support Program
(DSP). A critical part of the missile defense program
involves the replacement of DSP satellites with a
two-tiered network of satellites called the Space-Based
Infrared System, deployed in two portions called
SBIRS-High and SBIRS-Low. SBIRS-Low is still in its
early phases, but SBIRS-High, managed by
Lockheed-Martin, is facing a congressional review due to
cost overruns exceeding $4 billion.
Intelligence
distribution is a function of the Global Broadcast
System (GBS). During the war in Afghanistan, the GBS
provided “instant situational awareness” to troops and
pilots by integrating intelligence from satellites,
unmanned aerial vehicle flights, and ground signals
intelligence stations. Imaging satellites will be
replaced by Boeing’s 8X Future Imagery Architecture, a
satellite project with total procurement costs in the
tens of billions of dollars. The signals-intelligence
equivalent is the Intruder, a program that has amassed
significant cost overruns.
As contractors retool
international defense programs for missions serving the
homeland defense duties of the Northern Command, the
four consolidated defense contractors will increasingly
develop dual-use capabilities. To cite but one example
of the blurring of public and private sectors, the NRO
and the National Security Agency (NSA) elected to
outsource to Raytheon much of the intelligence
processing for Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado, the
largest electronic intelligence downlink base in North
America. In 2001, Raytheon announced that it would set
up secure-hosted Web services for corporate America in
the same massive classified facility in which it
performs intelligence processing. In August 2002,
Raytheon announced a billion-dollar expansion at the
same site to develop ground systems for the National
Polar-Orbit Operational Environmental Satellite, a joint
weather-satellite program of the Defense Department,
NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. Raytheon’s multitasking may represent
the norm in a system dominated by US-based defense
contractors.
Toward a new foreign policy
Key recommendations
* It is important
to have a space industry outside Pentagon control. *
Besides being ineffective, achieving nonproliferation
through tighter export control, as advocated by some
arms control groups, allows the current “keeper of the
keys” to determine the legitimacy of foreign space
projects.
* A uniform rule should apply to both the
US and to other nations: No nation should weaponize
space, and no nation should use military platforms in
space in ways that encourage or reinforce power
projection.
In the Clinton era, some efforts at
controlling the proliferation of space technology were
made through international bodies such as the Missile
Technology Control Regime (MTCR). When such agencies
participate directly in preventing the export of
multistage rockets from a nation like North Korea or
Iraq to emerging states, the mission appears to be a
legitimate one. But arms control advocates sometimes put
too much faith in false multilateral agencies that do
not confront existing inequities. In the same way that
small nations object to the Non-Proliferation Treaty
because of the inaction of the major states in
eliminating nuclear weapons, arms control professionals
must be wary when the current “keepers of the keys”
promote technology limitation that serves the interests
of unilateral supremacy. The NSA should not be in the
position of single-handedly determining encryption and
security technology for the world, and the NRO should
play no direct role in determining which nations are
“allowed” to have a given level of space technology.
Since the advent of the Bush administration,
multilateral bodies like the MTCR have become almost
irrelevant. A truly independent and peace-oriented space
program needs multiple centers of gravity, though that
is not necessarily easy to attain. Just as David
Ricardo’s rules of “comparative advantage” make it all
but impossible to return to an era of tariffs and
national commerce, the economies of scale in the space
industry make it unlikely that scores of space programs
in other countries will survive.
European
institutions are an important counterweight to Pentagon
dominance, whether through ESA or EU funding of large
European space conglomerates, but European programs are
not wholly independent. For example, German activists
have exposed the role of some ESA radar programs in
aiding forward-based missions of NATO and the EU Rapid
Reaction Force.
In examining space-based
communication and intelligence systems, whether funded
by military or commercial interests, citizens should
ask: Does this system serve multilateral or unilateral
interests, and will its further development increase or
decrease stability? Any system failing the
multilateralist or stability test should be opposed
without compromise. Citizens can also accelerate and
expand opposition to militarization of space by
highlighting the hazards of unilateralism within the
United States. As the Department of Homeland Security
introduces surveillance tools that infringe upon the
civil rights of US citizens, it will have to rely on
defense contractors to bolster space supremacy networks.
Legal challenges to the USA Patriot Act and
related Justice Department executive orders should
specify limits on aerospace corporations that ply their
wares for domestic surveillance. Boeing and Raytheon,
for example, have developed analytical tools for the
space intelligence community that will be applied to new
airport security and border security systems. Oracle, a
private software company tightly linked to the CIA and
NSA, is working with top defense contractors on unified
databases for civilian profiling. Although groups like
the American Civil Liberties Union quickly grasped the
dangers of the USA Patriot Act and the Homeland Security
Department, few civil libertarians realize that many of
the tools of domestic repression were perfected when the
intelligence systems developed for the Cold War were
retargeted in the mid-1990s.
A technology base
involving several national governments and corporations
of various sizes, divorced from US military interests,
may take five years or more to emerge. Relying on a
unilateralist and empire-building US military as a
transitional source of funds for commercial ventures in
space, however, may place space proponents in the
Faustian position of supporting preemptive warfare
technologies.
The overwhelming role played by
large US corporations in building space systems that
only the US government is permitted to use represents
the backbone of US unilateralism in space. Though it is
true that European defense contractors can’t keep up
with Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman/TRW, and
Raytheon, US transnationals are not providing the
impetus. Instead, the supremacist tail of unilateral
policy is wagging the globalist corporate dog.
Loring Wirbel is
editorial director at CMP Media LLC, a member of the
board of directors of the Global Network Against Weapons
and Nuclear Power in Space, and a member of Colorado
Springs-based Citizens for Peace in Space.
(Copyright Foreign Policy in Focus. Reposted
with permission from FPIF)
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