Clinton Legacy Watch # 8: Denying U.S. Military The Ability To Dominate the Next, Critical Theater of Operations

Clinton Legacy Watch # 8:
Denying U.S. Military The Ability To
Dominate the Next, Critical
Theater of Operations — Space

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday,
President Clinton exercised his line-item
veto authority for the first time for
policy reasons and with
potentially devastating consequences for
the national security. With his
excising of three items contained in the
FY1998 Defense Appropriations Act — the
Clementine Microsatellite Technology
Demonstrator (also known as Clementine
II), the Army’s Kinetic-Kill
Anti-Satellite Interceptor and the
Military Space Plane — Mr. Clinton has
terminated technology development
programs whose unavailability as deployed
capabilities may prove disastrous in
future conflicts.

Giving Russia a
Line-Item Veto

The Center for Security Policy has
learned that another factor may be at
work, as well: Russian President
Boris Yeltsin has formally requested new
negotiations leading to a ban on
anti-satellite weapons. In a
letter to President Clinton sent prior to
the 26 September ceremonies marking the
signing of several recent amendments to
existing arms control treaties, Yeltsin
expressed concern about recent U.S.
efforts to test a laser against an
orbiting satellite which he claimed could
pose a threat to Russian early warning
spacecraft, calling into question
assumptions central to his government’s
support for the START II Treaty.

As the Center noted in a recent Decision
Brief concerning this laser
test,⁽¹⁾
negotiations on an ASAT ban
cannot produce a verifiable effective
prohibition on all means of interfering
with or destroying satellites, but can be
safely predicted to hobble vitally needed
U.S. space control capabilities.
The Clinton Administration has,
nonetheless, reportedly responded
favorably to the Russian gambit. Its
first fruits can be seen in the Clinton
line-item vetoes of three programs that
are essential building blocks for
assuring the U.S. military’s future
ability to have reliable access to and
control of space:

Clementine II

Building on the extraordinary
success of the Clementine I satellite —
a program which used technologies
developed under the Strategic Defense
Initiative inexpensively to accomplish
the unprecedented scientific feat of
mapping the entirety of the Moon’s
surface⁽²⁾
— Clementine II would utilize equipment
originally developed for space-based
anti-missile interceptors for asteroid
research. As National Security Council
staffer Robert Bell put it yesterday, it
would involve “orbiting in space a
so-called mother ship that would, on
three separate occasions in 1998 and
1999, launch micro-satellites or homing
vehicles, that would impact three
asteroids that are projected to fly by
near-earth during this two-year
period.”⁽³⁾

The reason the Administration vetoed
Clementine II, however, had nothing
to do with its scientific merit.
Rather, it did so because this
program would validate hardware, software
and concepts relevant to space-based
defenses against ballistic missile attack
and other space control functions.
Fresh evidence of the Clinton-Gore team’s
obsession with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty and its determination not
to build effective — and most especially
space-based — defenses against
long-range ballistic missile attack, was
provided yesterday by Bell:

“The proposed asteroid
intercept tests have not
yet been submitted to the
Pentagon’s Compliance Review
Group or to lawyers in the
relevant national security
agencies for any assessment of
the compliance of such tests with
the ABM Treaty. And
equally important, our own
development program within the
Department of Defense for a
possible national missile defense
deployment option, an option
which we believe could be
exercised as soon as 2003, does
not include space-based weapons
in its architecture. Now, the
Ballistic Missile Defense Office
(BMDO) is carrying out some
advanced R&D on possible
space-based interceptor
technologies involving both
lasers and rockets. But that is
the kind of very advanced
research that is permitted
under the ABM Treaty.”

Interestingly, the Clementine I program
planned on conducting an asteroid
intercept, which was approved as
consistent with the ABM Treaty by the
Clinton Administration’s Compliance
Review Group. As it happened, the
satellite ceased to operate prior to the
point at which such an intercept would
have occurred. The Clementine II test
received a preliminary approval from the
same panel; in an ironic Catch-22, a
final okay awaited congressional funding
of the mission.

Importantly, this
action comes on the heels of — and
compounds the damage done by — the
Clinton Administration’s bid to
“strengthen the ABM Treaty” by
prohibiting the development, testing and
deployment of space-based interceptors or
other weapons to shoot down theater
ballistic missiles.⁽⁴⁾

The Army’s Kinetic Kill
Anti-Satellite Weapon

In recent weeks, the Clinton
Administration has announced its
intention to use the Mid-Infrared
Advanced Chemical Laser (MIRACL) in a
test to determine its ability to
neutralize or otherwise degrade orbiting
satellites. Such a test was deemed
essential by the Defense Department — and
approved by the Clinton White House —
in light of the emerging danger posed to
U.S. terrestrial forces by hostile
reconnaissance and other space platforms.

Interestingly, in explaining why the
President had line-item vetoed the
congressionally supported kinetic-kill
anti-satellite program, Bell seemed to be
saying that the Nation has no need for any
ASAT capability:

“We simply do not believe
that this ASAT capability is
required, at least based on the
threat as it now exists and is
projected to evolve over the next
decade or two. To be sure, there
are potential adversaries such as
North Korea or Iraq which could
try to employ space-based assets
against our forces in a possible
war, including for
communications, navigation,
targeting or surveillance
missions. But we are
confident that alternatives exist
to negate or disrupt such
efforts, including destroying
ground stations linked to the
satellite or jamming the links
themselves.”

Legislators all-too-familiar with cynical
Clinton-Gore machinations concerning
controversial military programs⁽⁵⁾
might be forgiven for wondering whether the
Army ASAT program is now being sacrificed
to appease the Russians and domestic arms
controllers opposed to the MIRACL test.
If so, the Nation may wind up with the
worst of both worlds: no
kinetic kill anti-satellite system and no
proven laser ASAT capability in light of
the MIRACL’s inability to date
(apparently due to weather and technical
problems) to be tested against the
decaying Miniature Sensor Technology
Integration (MSTI-3) satellite.

America’s armed forces are likely, therefore, to be
left facing the same reality that
prompted the Pentagon to seek the MIRACL
test in the first place — namely, the
unacceptability from a national security
point of view of relying upon
“destroying ground stations⁽⁶⁾
linked to the satellite or jamming the
links themselves” to prevent
potential adversaries from using space
assets to monitor and perhaps even
ultimately to attack U.S. terrestrial
forces.

The Military Space Plane

A third congressional initiative of
direct relevance to the Pentagon’s future
ability to operate in and through the
pivotal theater of outer space — the
Military Space Plane — was surely
killed by the President on policy grounds,
even though his spokesmen did not
identify it as such. OMB Director
Franklin Raines gave the following
abbreviated explanation for vetoing this
program: “…Next…is a $10-million
project for a Military Space Plane. It
would have provided research funds for
hypersonic technologies and is intended
to complement a NASA program. However,
the Department of Defense — this does
not meet a Department of Defense
requirement and, therefore, it is being
canceled by the President today.”

In fact, the Air Force has recently
issued a doctrine for operations in both
the air and space that clearly
contemplates capabilities that could only
be provided by a space plane configured
for and dedicated to military missions.
Specifically, space control (assuring
U.S. access to and use of outer space
and, if necessary, denying the use of
space to adversaries) will require the
United States to have a flexible vehicle
like the Military Space Plane.

In the relatively near-term, such a
vehicle would be capable of launching
payloads into orbit and on ballistic
trajectories virtually on demand. Over
time, it could serve as a means of
operating in and from space that may be
indispensable to successful American
combat operations on and above the earth
in the future.

In the final analysis, the
problem with the Military Space Plane —
like Clementine II and the Army ASAT
system — is not that such a system is
irrelevant to national security. Rather,
these programs fall afoul of a core
belief of those like Vice President Al
Gore, his National Security Advisor, Leon
Fuerth, Bob Bell and other arms control
zealots, namely that space is not now and
must not be “militarized.”
In the face of abundant evidence to the
contrary, they insist on preventing the
United States from developing and
fielding systems that will enable it to
dominate what is likely to be the
future’s most important theater of
operations. They demand that U.S.
security be based instead on demonstrably
unverifiable and ineffective arms control
agreements.

The Bottom Line

In a statement issued to the press
yesterday, President Clinton said,
“I have been assured by the
Secretary of Defense that none of the
cancellations would undercut our national
security or adversely affect the
readiness of our forces or their
operations in defense of our
nation.” At least with respect to
the three policy-driven cancellations, this
proposition is so manifestly untenable as
to demand congressional hearings aimed at
exploring the basis for such a conclusion
and an immediate effort aimed at
overriding the President’s line-item
vetoes.

The prospect that such an initiative
might fall short of the two-thirds
majority required in both houses to
override an expected veto of a resolution
of disapproval (which could be adopted
with simple majorities) adds fresh
urgency to a step that is in order in any
event. The Administration’s determination
to subordinate vital and growing national
security concerns to the dictates of the
Russians and/or domestic arms control
theologians — explicitly in the case of
the Clementine II program in deference to
the ABM Treaty and preemptively in the
case of the Army ASAT and the Military
Space Plane, systems that are not
governed by existing accords — demands an
early effort by the Senate to defeat the
amendments intended to “breathe new
life into the ABM Treaty.”

By so doing, a mere thirty-four
Senators could not only free the United
States to begin providing the sorts of
effective and affordable ballistic
missile defenses that are so clearly
required — including space-based
components.⁽⁷⁾
They could also enable the Pentagon and
the American people to give unfettered
consideration to: the vital role
control of space will play in the
Nation’s future security, the
unacceptability of any anti-satellite
arms control treaty and the
need urgently to pursue programs like the
Clementine II, the Army Kinetic-Kill ASAT
and Military Space Plane that will
contribute greatly to U.S. space control
capabilities.

– 30 –

1. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Test the MIRACL
Laser Against A Satellite: The Outcome of
the Next War May Turn On A Proven
American A.S.A.T. Capability
(No. 97-D-122,
2 September 1997).

2. It is worth
nothing that Clementine I has won
numerous awards for its accomplishments
and gave concrete form to “faster,
better, cheaper” which is supposed
to be the leit motif for NASA
Administrator Daniel Goldin.

3. In fact, this
characterization of the Clementine II
program is out-of-date by several years.
The current plan called for a single
asteroid rendez-vous and impact in the
1999-2000 timeframe.

4. See the Second
Agreed Statement relating to the ABM
Treaty that was signed in New York on 26
September 1997.

5. See, for
example, the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Too
Clever By Half: Bob Bell’s Sophistry Must
Not Be Allowed To Jeopardize U.S.
Military’s Ability To Use Landmines
(No. 97-D 142,
24 September 1997).

6. For example,
satellite ground stations are
increasingly being made mobile by
potential adversaries, precisely for the
purpose of reducing their vulnerability
to attack in wartime.

7. See A
Day That Will Live In Infamy: 25th
Anniversary Of The A.B.M. Treaty’s
Ratification Should Be Its Last
(No. 97-D 144,
29 September 1997) and Validation
of the Aegis Option: Successful Test Is
First Step From Promising Concept To
Global Anti-Missile Capability
(No. 97-D 17,
29 January 1997).