Senator Inhofe Engages Pentagon on Space Control: Will U.S. Military Leaders Affirm They Can't Live Without It?

(Washington, D.C.): Tomorrow, one of the Senate’s most stalwart leaders on national
security
matters — Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) — will chair the second of two hearings
his Armed
Services Readiness Subcommittee is conducting this week to examine the military’s preparedness
to fight the Nation’s wars. Chairman Inhofe takes his responsibilities seriously and has laid the
groundwork for this important inquiry by conducting fact-finding missions to Bosnia, training
installations in California and other locations where American troops are stationed.

As a result, the Subcommittee is certain to lay bare the dangerous hollowing out of the United
States armed forces that has occurred in recent years. As the Center has previously warned, href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾ the
cumulative effect of 13 years of declining investment has meant that the military is grappling with:
a force structure that is too small to meet present and projected requirements
(the current build-up in the Gulf, which is leaving other vital areas uncovered, is a
case in point); the attendant
loss of many of the uniformed services most talented personnel due to exhausting
overseas
deployments and other, unnecessarily acute hardships; and the failure to perform the
necessary
maintenance and timely modernization of the Pentagon’s combat equipment.

The witnesses for tomorrow morning’s hearing are extremely well-equipped to illuminate
these
problems. They include each of the Service’s Vice Chiefs of Staff and the
commanding
officers of the Army’s V Corps, the Navy’s 6^th
Fleet, the Air Force’s 21^st Air Force and the
Marines’ 1 Marine Expeditionary Force. It can only be hoped that, when these
distinguished
officers are asked for their best professional military judgments about the current
condition and
future prospects of the forces under their respective commands, they will speak as forthrightly as
General Edward C. “Shy” Meyer did in 1978 when, as Jimmy Carter’s Army Chief of Staff, he
testified that the United States had a “hollow army.”

There Will be No Preparedness Without Control of Space

The value of this hearing would be especially great if it served as an opportunity to explore
with
these military leaders a line of questioning begun by Senator Inhofe on 3 February with Secretary
of Defense William Cohen and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton — and elaborated upon
in a letter the Senator sent the former the next day (see the attached
reproduction). After all, few
things will have a more direct and deleterious impact on the warfighting capabilities and
readiness of America’s armed forces than an inability to use outer space for military
purposes and to deny such use to potential adversaries. href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

As Sen. Inhofe’s letter makes clear, thanks to President Clinton’s line-item veto last October
of
three technology development programs of direct relevance to space control, it is not
clear that
the United States will have reliable, prompt access to outer space or be able to dominate it
as a theater of military operations. More troubling still is the fact that the vetoes of two
of
these programs — the Brilliant Pebbles-derived Clementine II asteroid intercept experiment and
the Army’s Kinetic-Energy Anti-Satellite (KE ASAT) Weapon — were justified at the time on
“policy grounds,”⁽³⁾ moreover, suggests that
the Clinton Administration will preclude any
other space control-relevant technology from being brought to fruition.

Fortunately, in the wake of Sen. Inhofe’s oral and written inquiries to Secretary Cohen and
General Shelton, the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Space Command, General Howell
Estes
(USAF), wrote Gen. Shelton on 10 February in support of these three programs and a policy of
space dominance that they would make possible. His letter said, in part:

I consider these programs very important. They further our efforts in two key
areas: assured access and space control. Because of their contributions to these
growing military responsibilities, we must continue to support them.

“Military Space Plane (Assured Access to Space): The military space
plane was envisioned
as a reusable launch vehicle for military-specific missions: such as, defensive counterspace,
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Capabilities such as a launch-on-demand, rapid
turnaround, and high sortie rates strengthen our assured access [to space]….

“Clementine II (Space Control): Clementine II will demonstrate
low-cost, space-based,
micro-satellite technology applicable to space control missions by “homing in” on space targets
and operating autonomously….

“KE ASAT (Space Control): This ground-launched interceptor will
provide a limited strike
capability against hostile satellites. In essence, KE ASAT provides a near-term space control
capability to comply with the National Space Policy direction to exploit space in the interests
of national security. FY98 funding was programmed to validate the concept of ground
launching a rocket, deploying an exo-atmospheric hit-to-kill interceptor, and destroying a
simulated satellite target via kinetic energy. While not the most elegant or efficient satellite
negation solution, KE ASAT is the nearest-term space control answer with the least risk….

“I believe all three programs are important. We should realign our efforts and
recapture their essence through our on-going initiatives. In addition, although
Congress has consistently included funding for these programs, to ensure their viability,
we need to include them as line items in our budget….”

The Bottom Line

The Nation owes Senator Inhofe a debt of gratitude for his determination to assess the true
condition of the U.S. military’s preparedness for future combat. It will be doubly indebted if,
thanks to his efforts, the executive and legislative branches are induced to correct a singularly
egregious shortfall in that preparedness — the ability to exercise effective control of outer space.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Clinton Legacy Watch #17: Dangers of a ‘Hollow
Military’ (No. 98-D 23, 5 February 1998).

2. See in this connection an Open Letter to President Clinton signed
by 43 retired general officers
advocating a U.S. posture of space dominance and the summary of a symposium on the subject in
which many of them participated. Respectively, they are: 43 of the Nation’s Most
Eminent
Military Leaders Insist That the U.S. Must Be Able — And Allowed — To Dominate Outer
Space (No. 98-P 07, 15 January 1997) and
Required Reading: Center Issues Summary of
Roundtable Discussion on the U.S. Requirement for Space Dominance ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-P_16″>No. 98-P 16, 23
January 1998).

3. The veto of the third program, the Military Space Plane, was not
justified on these grounds but
would, as Sen. Inhofe observed, almost certainly fall afoul of such policies, as well.