Spacelift Washington: DoD Space Review Looks at Command and Control, Remote Sensing

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s series of defense policy reviews includes a review of U.S. military space policy that will address migrating command and control functions now performed by aircraft to space in the next two decades. The panel will also address increased risk to U.S. national security posed by commercial remote sensing satellites with growing capabilities. While the review is underway, the Rand Corporation think tank has released a new study of commercial remote sensing that will likely be a definitive guide for policymakers during the current round of studies.

Spacelift Washington has learned, however, that no new start programs will be recommended by the Pentagon report, due for completion this summer. Instead the study will urge the Bush administration to look for longer-term space borne solutions to current military applications being provided by more conventional-and somewhat cheaper-means. The report will specifically recommend setting a timetable to migrating AWACs-type functions to a satellite constellation, defining the characteristics for such a constellation, and defining costs for a space capability. The review also looks at advanced early warning and detection functions beyond the current SBIRS series and what additional satellite systems will be needed to connect such a constellation to an anti-satellite fleet in various types of earth orbits. Sources say that the review contains “a virtual wish list of space assets”, none of which are costed out in the report. In addition, we are told that virtually none of the additional $6 billion in DoD spending in FY2002 that will be recommended this summer by the Bush administration will be for new milspace projects. Studies of an accelerated military spaceplane capability, the space maneuver vehicle, will get a sharp $150 million boost in the FY2003 numbers, we are told, but little else in the way of new spending has been identified for FY2003 at this point-with one exception. Space radar constellations are also expected to be high in the FY2003 numbers but thus far have not been fully identified. “You can expect that as a given,” we are told by some who claim to know. And the program may not be called Discoverer II . But don’t expect any proposals for orbiting weapons to come out of those studies. That will be addressed elsewhere and not necessarily in the Pentagon. Do expect more changes in military space and national security space management, however.

New Rand study looks at commercial Remote Sensing

While all of these reviews are underway in Washington, the Rand Corp. has written a new study on the emergence of commercial remote sensing as an industry. The book-length treatment, called Commercial Remote Sensing Satellites: At the Leading Edge of global Transparency, was researched and written by Rand analysts John C. Baker and Kevin M. O’Donnell, as well as Ray A. Williamson, the latter being a research professor with George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute. The report contains 24 chapters, and looks at policy issues involving both U.S. and foreign remote sensing programs and companies. The potential risks of such commercial evolution are also addressed in the report, which features a series of case studies. These include the Dayton accords on Bosnia, nuclear testing by India and Pakistan, and other nonproliferation issues. Williamson is a specialist on the subject and authored a recent GWU SPI study on Earth observation satellites and related security issues (for more see gwis.circ.gwu.edu/~spi).

We’ll give more attention to the issue of commercial remote sensing in a future column.

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