The Moon Was Shining, The Stars Were Bright…
In
Login if you are already registered
(no votes) |
(0 votes) |
Doctor in Political Science, PhD in History, Professor at School of world politics of MSU, RIAC expert
The RAND report’s subtitle is particularly noteworthy: “Past Problems and Future Challenges”. It shows that the authors are trying to bridge the gap between past attempts at studying the militarization of space, the present situation, and modelling future problems. At first glance, the report appears to be a purely technical analysis of the United States’ current programmes to militarize space. In actual fact, however, it contains a layer of information that provokes further thought and reflection.
Acquisition of Space Systems, Volume 7. Past Problems and Future Challenges.
More than a review
The past five years has been a period of stagnation in space policy research. The small number of papers that have been produced centre primarily on the intellectual potential accumulated by American researchers in the middle of the last decade, a period of activity that earned the title of the “Second Space Race” [1]. Today, research into space has once again fallen out of favour. Both Russia and the United States closed their ambitious projects to study deep space in 2011–2012, effectively putting an end to the most recent attempts of the great powers to make a significant breakthrough in the field of space research. There has also been a lack of significant progress in the study of near space following the deployment of the Russian Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) in 2012. Projects to militarize outer space have also been pushed into the background. As recently as 2008–2009 anti-satellite weapons (ASAT) were the focal point of diplomatic squabbles. Now, they are the domain of the odd conference on disarmament.
It is against this background that the special report published by the RAND Corporation entitled “Acquisition of Space Systems” attempts to return to the study of the militarization of outer space. The report’s subtitle is particularly noteworthy: “Past Problems and Future Challenges”. It shows that the authors are trying to bridge the gap between past attempts at studying the militarization of space, the present situation, and modelling future problems. At first glance, the report appears to be a purely technical analysis of the United States’ current programmes to militarize space. In actual fact, however, it contains a layer of information that provokes further thought and reflection.
Acquisition of Space Systems
The purpose of the report, as the RAND experts see it, is to identify systemic issues that could cause difficulties for the study of outer space. The authors of the report set themselves the following tasks: to analyse the performance of selected Department of Defense (DoD) space programmes in terms of cost growth, schedule delays, and satellite on-orbit performance; to characterize the current status of the selected DoD space programmes; and to identify future acquisition challenges that the next-generation space systems might face.
The words “systemic issues” gives the text a special focus. The RAND experts acknowledge the fact that previous programmes to militarize space came up against certain systemic issues (that is, issues that proved almost fatal or, at the very least, extremely difficult to overcome). At the same time, the authors never properly explain what these issues were; however, the very fact that previous programmes were minimally effective is noteworthy. It is essentially an acknowledgement that the military policy of the mid-2000s was a failure. While the authors do not mention this directly in their report, they do recommend that the U.S. government reassess its production base and pricing rates for the relevant orders. The very fact that this is needed proves the ineffectiveness of the previous policy. Why else would it need to be changed? It would seem that the situation really is a complicated one: the Americans do not like having to admit to their own failures.
The authors focus their attention on five DoD space programmes: 1) the Space-Based Infrared System, which is the follow-on of the Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites that were launched in 1971; 2) a modernized version of the Global Positioning System (GPS-II-F); 3) the Advanced Extremely High Frequency Program launched in 1999 to create favourable conditions for the use of a series of strategic and tactical war fighters, including non-nuclear weapons; 4) Wideband Global SATCOM aimed at improving the security of military communications systems, including cyber systems; and 5) the long-term programme to create the next generation of GPS satellites (GPS-III).
The conclusions drawn by the authors are critical in nature. According to them, four of the five programmes selected require increased expenditures and they clearly are not recouping the money already spent on them. Right now, the only programme that shows any promise is GPS III. The experts at RAND see a number of reasons for this: high expectations; using immature technologies that have not been properly developed; and inefficient buying practices. In the long term, the authors see the crisis as having originated in the reduced funding of military space programmes in the 1990s. A promising solution is to optimize costs – that is, to cut projects that have proved ineffective and expand those that are effective.
Low-Intensity Stagnation?
Space prospects: agenda for a hundred years
These facts are just the tip of the iceberg, however. The RAND experts ignore the most interesting aspect. Since 1992, each successive presidential administration of the United States has talked about optimizing costs on military space programmes. For some reason, however, it seems that we have to be reminded about the need to take such steps every five to seven years. There are two possible explanations for this: either the funds earmarked for military space programmes are for some reason spent ineffectively (in which case the powers that be would have to admit to corruption on a grand scale, or that they are simply incompetent) or the programmes themselves do not have the potential for making breakthrough discoveries – that they are merely a group of low-intensity projects. The second explanation is probably the correct one. Not a single military space programme mentioned here has brought any kind of tangible result over the past 40 years, despite the fact that the people implementing the programmes have changed of numerous occasions. The numerous projects to develop “next generation” manned spacecraft have failed (such projects have been culled by successive administrations). The slogan “Victory at Any Cost” that was common during the first space race has been replaced by the revisionist motto, all too familiar to the Russian reader, “The Goal is Nothing, Movement is Everything.”
This change did not happen by accident. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union looked into the possibility of developing a fully functioning “space weapon” on an orbital station that would have been capable of destroying the enemy’s ballistic missiles [2]. Similar discussions took place in the United States during the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative in the mid-1980s [3]. Experts in both countries realized that current technology is not sufficient to create a “space weapon” [4]. Not a single scientific or technological breakthrough has been made in the field over the past 30 years. Military space projects that were once considered “breakthrough” (or at least seemed that way) have been relegated to the status of “small” projects, and rightly so.
Another problem is the fact that the military space programmes that are being carried out are outdated. The authors make a point of saying that the majority of projects in this area date back to the early 1970s. Some of them were updated in the 1990s, but even in this case the fact remains that these projects are at least 16 years old, an eternity in terms of space programmes. There is absolutely no doubt that these programmes are extremely complicated. However, we need only look at what the United States accomplished in the middle of the 20th century to see how big the difference is: the U.S. nuclear programme was developed over the course of three years (1942–1945), and the Apollo programme took seven years from initial design to actually landing on the Moon (1961–1969). The situation began to change in the early 1970s. Manned flights to the Moon were put on hold, as were projects to create orbital stations [5]. And manned missions to Mars, not to mention the other planets in our solar system, remain as much a pipe dream today as they were in 1970. Something very strange must be going on in U.S. military space policy if programmes developed in the 1970s are still at the implementation stage in 2016.
Ksenia Muratshina:
Will There Be New Star Wars in Asia-Pacific?
China's Military Space Program
The authors mention another problem in passing, namely, the deterioration of space equipment. Modern space vehicles are often based on 1970s designs. And there is yet another issue on top of this: research ideas today are themselves founded upon ideas that are 40 years old. As such, they offer nothing in the way of innovation. It is interesting that the only programmes that have delivered any concrete results concern the development of GPS systems (a number of satellites have been created) – the very programmes that the authors say have promise. And whether the programmes prove to be good or bad is another question entirely. The remaining initiatives are little more than a wish list: promising projects that must bring some kind of result that is important for military research.
On the basis of all this, we can offer an interesting observation: modern military space projects represent a failure of the third attempt to create a full-fledged “space weapon”. The first attempt was made in the 1960s, when both the United States and the Soviet Union developed a number of projects for the construction of combat spacecraft, anti-satellite weapons systems and military orbital stations. The second attempt was made in the 1980s with Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which emphasized exotic weapons such as chemical lasers and electromagnetic particle accelerators. The third attempt was made in the mid-2000s, when the George W. Bush administration revisited anti-satellite weapons and missile defence projects. It would seem that the United States has since abandoned its ambitious military space projects. And it will be unlikely to return to them any time soon, as each project requires a major scientific or technological breakthrough at the very least in order to move forward.
Russia behind the Scenes
Over the past 15 years, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) has essentially copied NASA’s programmes.
The experts at RAND do not mention Russia in their report. But this is understandable, as the study is limited to the space policy of the United States. There is food for thought, however, for the Russian reader. Over the past 15 years, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) has essentially copied NASA’s programmes, insofar as budgetary and technological resources have allowed. Russian projects to explore the Moon, Mars and the Sun were, in turn, reactionary projects to those initiated by NASA. GLONASS was created as an alternative to the American GPS. A similar situation can be observed in relation to Russian military space policy. The Russian Aerospace Forces were set up in 2015 after studying the experience of the United States in this sphere.
Right now, Russia and the United States are at about the same level of development in terms of space research. Both countries rely on the technological potential of the 1970s. In near space, the Americans leaned on their Space Shuttle (1981) and GPS (1974–1993) programmes. In deep space, their concerns have been the breakthrough technologies of the Pioneer 10 (1972) and Voyager (1977) automated interplanetary space probes. In the field of military space, existing programmes include the modification of the GPS system and developing the promising ideas on the use of new physical capabilities that were generated during the Nixon administration (1969–1974).
The Russian space programme is similarly dominated by the technical developments of the past, in this case, those that appeared during Soviet times – from the Soyuz spacecraft (1967) to the Strela and Rokot carrier rockets that were developed on the basis of the ICBM SS-19 Stiletto and decommissioned under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START 1) in 1991. Neither the United States nor Russia has made any kind of eye-opening breakthrough.
Russia shut down its ambitious deep space exploration projects at almost exactly the same time as the United States in 2010–2012. The most glaring failures of the Russian space programme in recent years were the CORONAS-Photon satellite (2010) that was designed to investigate the sun, the Phobos-Grunt sample return mission to Mars (2012) and the frozen Luna-Glob Moon exploration programme (2013). The Americans suffered key setbacks at roughly the same time: the loss of the Phoenix station in 2008 and the closure of the Space Shuttle programme in 2011. And this was no coincidence. Russia and the United States followed similar space exploration programmes and, as a result, developed the same kinds of space technology. Russia thus acknowledged that its attempts to explore deep space had been a failure, while the ambitions of the United States in near space had suffered a similar fate.
A similar situation occurred in military space. On January 11, 2001, a Pentagon Commission headed by Donald Rumsfeld delivered a report on the prospects of U.S. military space policy. The report focused on the growing dependence of the United States Armed Forces on space communications and navigation systems. According to the author of the report, this dependence has increased the risk of a preventative strike being launched against U.S. satellites. The need has emerged to develop defensive operations to protect communications centres and regional groupings of the U.S. Armed Forces. In June 2002, RAND Cooperation presented a report on the possibility of using air-based combat lasers, armour-piercing shells and air transport vehicles to protect U.S. spacecraft. As the current RAND report shows, however, there have been minimal results in this area over the past 12 years.
If the Americans are not working on any truly breakthrough projects, and if their projects are plagued with technical difficulties, then is there any reason for Russia to copy them?
It would seem that the “Second Space Race” of the mid-2000s in many ways mimicked the first. This may have been fuelled by a desire on the part of the agencies involved to serve their own interests. And we cannot rule out the fact that the major powers did not have the necessary technical resources to carry out such ambitious projects. Whatever the case may be, all attempts to make a breakthrough in the study of our solar system have resulted in limited success for both sides. Neither the United States nor Russia have come close to repeating the technological achievements of the 1960s. A number of third countries have joined the process (China, India, Japan and possibly Iran and South Korea), concentrating their efforts on the development of unmanned space flight. Their achievements thus far, however, only match those of the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1950s.
***
Until the beginning of this decade, the main aim of Russian research into space was to draw level with the United States. Russian authors lamented, and not without justification, that the country did not have its own version of NASA, that its budget for space research paled in comparison to that of the United States. The report published by the RAND Corporation may offer a fresh perspective on this problem. If the Americans are not working on any truly breakthrough projects, and if their projects are plagued with technical difficulties, then is there any reason for Russia to copy them?
The authors of the RAND report offered little in the way of the reasons why the U.S. space programme is failing in so many areas. A separate study is required to explore them all. Maybe it is down to insufficient scientific and technical knowledge. Maybe it is because both the United States and Russia have moved away from the times when making breakthroughs in space exploration was a major priority, no matter the cost. Long-term planning in military space is practically non-existent – preference is given to ad hoc programmes with uncertain prospects. If this is the case, then the military space industry is doomed to stagnation, even though on the outside it may seem that promising programmes are being implemented. And whether this is a good thing or not really depends on the preferences of the reader and the author.
1. Russia and International Security in Space / Kokoshin, A. A. (editor-in-chief), Bogaturov, A. D. (scientific editor) (editor). Moscow: KomKniga, 2013 (in Russian). For the works of American researchers, see: Moltz J. C. The Politics of Space Security. Strategic Restraint and the Pursuit of National Interests. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008; Freeze J. J. Space as a Strategic Asset. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007; Temple P. Shades Of Gray: National Security And The Evolution Of Space Reconnaissance. Washington: American Institute of Aeronautics, 2004. On the Second Space Race, see: Fenenko, A. V. Competition in Space and International Security // International Processes. 2008. Vol. 6, No. 3 (18), pp. 26–41 (in Russian).
2. Kokoshin, A. A. An “Asymmetrical Response” to the Strategic Defense Initiative as an Example of Strategic Planning in National Security // International Life. 2007, no. 7, pp. 29–42 (in Russian).
3. Oznobishchev, V. Y. How the “Asymmetric Response” to Reagan’s Strategic Defense Imitative was Developed. Vilikhov, Kokoshin et al. Moscow: LENAND, 2008 (in Russian).
4. McNamara, Robert. Blundering into Disaster: Surviving the First Century of the Nuclear Age. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.
5. Skylab has never been seen as a full-fledged orbital station by the United States, as it was developed on the basis of modifications to the upper stage housing of the Saturn 1B rocket. The Americans thus refer to Skylab as a “partial space station”.
(no votes) |
(0 votes) |
