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National Security Space in the Twenty-First Century

Posted on: Thursday, 8 July 2004, 06:00 CDT

FIFTY YEARS AGO, US defense and intelligence experts imagined the benefits possible from space-based surveillance, reconnaissance, communications, mapping, and environmental monitoring. Forty years ago, American ingenuity and industrial prowess made those possibilities a reality. Since then, space systems have brought better intelligence and stronger defenses by enabling the collection of new types of data and information; significantly increasing communications capabilities and capacities; revolutionizing precision navigation and timing; enriching science; establishing new markets; providing safer air, land, and sea transportation; and enabling faster disaster relief as well as more effective civil planning. These benefits and more were the reward of steadfast leadership, a vibrant industrial base, and the energies of talented people.

During the past 10 years, space-based systems have enabled dramatic improvement in military and intelligence operations. Thanks to those systems, our leaders have more accurate and current information on developments, issues, and crises in virtually all parts of the world. Due in large part to space systems, US military forces know more about their adversaries, see the battlefield more clearly, and can strike more quickly and precisely than any other military in history. Space systems are inextricably woven into the fabric of America's national security.

Space Power Is America's Decisive, Asymmetric Advantage

Today, space power represents a decisive, asymmetric advantage for the US government and, in particular, for military and intelligence organizations. The space systems themselves are technologically superior and, when fused with other air-, sea-, and land-based systems, provide the data and information to produce the knowledge and effects needed for successful diplomatic activities, negotiations, deterrence, or warfare.

Our unprecedented global situational awareness, global connectivity, strategic reach, and precision strike are largely enabled by our space systems. Capabilities such as those provided by global positioning system (GPS) satellites and by the military strategic and tactical relay system (MILSTAR)-our most advanced communications constellation currently in orbit-proved vitally critical to the war fighter during recent conflicts. Further, the successful application of space capabilities has enabled significantly changed concepts of power projection, decisive force, overseas presence, strategic agility, and forcible entry. For example, a combat air controller on horseback in Afghanistan used space capabilities to direct bombs on target. The successful application of space power has fundamentally changed our view of the age-old military precepts about mass, movement, fog, and friction.

However, retaining this decisive, asymmetric space advantage is becoming increasingly difficult. Yesterday's highly successful strategies resulted in space systems optimized to enhance the deterrent posture of our strategic forces by providing information about the military and economic status of a closed, hostile superpower. These systems focused on monitoring the long-term strategic posture while guaranteeing strategic warning-they were perfectly suited for knowing what was happening inside the borders of the Soviet Union.

Today's security challenges are more diverse and dispersed. We must still protect Americans and American interests from hostile armies and strategic threats, as well as from new, emerging threats from nonstate actors-particularly those posed by globally organized terrorists who may be fleeting and nearly invisible. These new threats-smaller and scattered globally-may strike anywhere, at any time.

Meanwhile, space is not solely an American domain. Countries worldwide continue vigorous civil, defense, and commercial space programs that provide highly accurate reconnaissance imaging, precision navigation and timing, and near-instantaneous global- communications capabilities. Using the Internet and commercially available products, countries, groups, or individuals may acquire high-quality, space-based products and services, thus reaping the operational benefits without the heavy financial burden of investment. All of this is occurring while the industrial base of American space power has narrowed over the past decade, and its formidable talent pool has shrunk due to corporate mergers, acquisitions, and a decrease in government-funded research and development.

Our challenge lies in shaping a future which will ensure that our space capabilities support tomorrow's successes. To meet that challenge, we will focus on five top priorities: achieving mission success in operations and acquisition, developing and maintaining a team of space professionals, integrating space capabilities for national intelligence and war fighting, producing innovative solutions for the most challenging national security problems, and ensuring freedom of action in space.

Achieving Mission Success in Operations and Acquisition

We will select and develop tomorrow's space systems differently than we do today. Decisions about what we need to acquire will consider not only satellites and all the components needed to make them useful-such as launch vehicles, facilities, communications, and end-user equipment-but also their role as part of a portfolio of systems. Trade-offs will be based on a broad understanding of desired capabilities and effects, as well as the complement of space, air, manned, and unmanned elements needed to achieve them.

To attain the desired capabilities, we must assure that mission success in operations is accompanied by mission success in acquisitions. We have benefited greatly from the recommendations of the Defense Science Board/Air Force Scientific Advisory Board Joint Task Force on Acquisition of National Security Space Programs, led by Mr. A. Thomas Young. One of their recommendations, with which I strongly agree, is that mission success should be the primary driver of a program-not cost and schedule.

As we establish programs, we need to employ strong systems- engineering practices. Management of requirements; early risk- reduction activity; rigorous design discipline; periodic, independent program assessment; and thorough component, subsystem, and system-level test activities need to be built into the program at the onset. Program managers must have unencumbered schedules and financial reserves at their disposal to solve problems that arise during program execution. Most importantly, we will nurture a culture focused on mission success as the prevailing vision.

We will also adopt a system-of-systems approach in our planning, designing, and fielding of new capabilities. Such an approach will require us to increase our investment in integrated solutions that capture the complementary advantages and dependencies of both space and nonspace systems. To further this objective, we will also look to integrate space enterprises wherever possible and continue to integrate space capabilities throughout national security endeavors.

Finally, we will explore new opportunities for cooperative endeavors between national security space and the US civil and commercial space sectors. Internationally, working with our friends and allies, we will seek out opportunities for partnerships that enhance US and coalition space capabilities and operations.

Developing and Maintaining a Team of Space Professionals

In order to preserve our advantage as the leading spacefaring nation, we must ensure that we have a strategy to guarantee availability of the most crucial element of space power-our space professionals. People remain central to our success in space, and meeting the serious challenges of today, as well as the future, requires a Total Force approach. We will continue to develop well- educated, motivated, and competent people skilled in the demands of the space medium.

Operationally, they must understand the tactical environment they support, together with the needed space-unique tactics, techniques, and procedures. Technically, they must be schooled in the acquisition of space systems, the requirements of the vehicles that operate in space, and the development of space-related research, science, and technology. Our space professionals must remain sensitive to the needs of the many and varied end users of space capabilities; further, they must formulate and articulate new space doctrine to fully control and exploit the medium of space in support of our nation's security objectives.

Space professionals must develop new technologies, systems, training methods, concepts of operations, and organizations that will continue to sustain the United States as a world leader in space. The new systems they develop must achieve desirable effects at all levels of conflict. Furthermore, they must see to it that these systems are interoperable with and integrated into architectures that support the creation of lethal and nonlethal effects. The backbone of our joint and interagency space-operations capabilities will continue to consist of individuals of exceptional dedication and ability.

Integrating Space Capabilities for National Intelligence and War Fighting

America's space superiority and the resultant advantages depend oncontinued synergy among strategy, leadership, industry, and the talent of our people. Our space superiority also requires unity of effort among the defense, intelligence, and civil-government communities, as well as collaboration with the US private-sector enterprise.

We must emphasize the integration of capabilities and the production of space systems that help enhance both our long-term global perspective and our near-term understanding of events to shape our responses. Two particular efforts that we are pursuing across the national security space community demand horizontal integration of war-fighter and intelligence community needs and capabilities: space-based radar (SBR) and transformational communications.

SBR will act as the forward eyes for strike platforms and other intelligence assets by detecting surface movers and rapidly imaging stationary targets. With a day/night, all-weather capability, SBR will achieve persistent collection over denied areas, thereby benefiting intelligence collection and the war fighter in ways we are only beginning to recognize.

With space leading the way, we may single out communications as the other area ripe for transformation. The demand for communications bandwidth and access across all sectors of our society continues to increase geometrically. By their very nature, our armed forces operate in exactly those places where no ground- based networks exist-not only remote locations on land, but also on the sea, in the sky, and in space. With transformational communications, we will create an entirely new infrastructure to support future war fighting. We will exploit known technologies such as optical communications, Internet protocol networks, and packetized data switching in new ways to vastly improve our information-dissemination capabilities.

Future war fighting will demand more responsive and integrated operational concepts and the acquisition of flexible, innovative systems and capabilities. Together, these assets will meet the needs of a wide variety of traditional and nontraditional space users quickly and simultaneously-we are on the path to meet those needs.

Producing Innovative Solutions for the Most Challenging National Security Problems

Technological and industrial dominance has remained the prevailing theme in many US victories during the past century. The strategy of using technological and industrial capabilities to redress tactical disadvantages has proved spectacularly successful. This focus on maintaining both the technological edge and the means to nurture innovative approaches must continue.

Innovation defies efforts to reduce it to a recipe, but two factors favor its growth: (1) the existence of an important strategic problem and (2) the sustainment of talent and resources. A new strategic opportunity clearly exists. The reality of the current world situation demands that we provide new means, concepts, and processes to exploit the space medium in better and different ways in order to provide US decision makers the data and information necessary to help solve the toughest military and intelligence problems. We must, therefore, invest in skilled and dedicated people, leading-edge science and technology, and a healthy industrial base as the foundations of producing and delivering national security space capabilities.

Our toughest challenges demand new capabilities to improve and transform our space forces. We seek to create a synergistic and integrated mix of land, sea, air, cyber, and space power that provides additional options: (1) to warn of threats to our homeland and US interests; (2) to deter aggression, dissuade adversaries, and prevent coercion; and (3) to fight and win decisively, as necessary. In particular, we will significantly increase our investment in breakthrough technologies that underpin our transformational space programs-specifically, on-orbit sensors to detect traditional and nontraditional observables; access to and collection of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance that is persistent, undeniable, and deep; and high-capacity, dynamic, high-speed communications.

Sustaining talented people and technical resources presents additional challenges. Not only will we stimulate the industrial base by investing in transformational capabilities, but also we will partner with civil agencies, industry, and academia to form a national science-and-technology program fueled by sufficient investment to encourage innovation. In doing so, we will preserve US leadership in critical technologies and bolster areas of research where the American lead is diminishing. We will also press to fund space programs at a level commensurate with their importance.

Ensuring Freedom of Action in Space

Having come to rely on the unhindered use of space, Americans will demand no less in the future. This reliance demands the continuance of robust capabilities for assured launch and space control. Although the United States supports the peaceful use of space by all countries, prudence demands that we ensure the use of space for us, our allies, and coalition partners, while denying that use to adversaries. To guarantee freedom of action, we will pursue complementary approaches for assured access to space in the near term with two providers of the evolved expendable launch vehicle, as we simultaneously investigate entirely new, operationally responsive space-lift capabilities.

Today's space-surveillance capability must evolve into integrated space situational awareness. Space-control activities-while taking advantage of improvements in such awareness-will emphasize, most importantly, the protection of our national security interests against known vulnerabilities and credible threats. We will also pursue a mix of reversible, nonlethal effects to limit any adversary's ability to deny us free access to space or to use space against us for hostile purposes.

Conclusion: Sustaining Our Space Advantage

Space systems and capabilities are critical components of our national security. Their importance demands that we guarantee a continued and enduring advantage in space. Toward that end, we must apply our most innovative thinking to exploit the inherent advantages of the space medium, enhancing our space capabilities to help solve the national security challenges of today and tomorrow.

HON. PETER B. TEETS

Copyright U.S. Superintendent of Documents Summer 2004

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