Will The National Defense Panel Save The Most Decisive Factor In Determining The Future National Defense — Space Control?

(Washington, D.C.): On 1 December, the National Defense Panel (NDP) is scheduled to issue its
long-awaited report on the United States’ future military requirements and the implications for
out-year Pentagon budgets. In chartering this blue-ribbon commission, the Congress wanted a
“second opinion” to use in evaluating the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review and
the Clinton Administration’s Future Years Defense Plan.

While the NDP may make many suggestions that are controversial, noteworthy or useful,
nowhere is a “second opinion” more urgently needed — and more likely to make a
strategically enormous contribution — than in the area of space control. The National
Defense Panel simply must emphasize the critical importance of space dominance to the U.S.
military’s future terrestrial operations and urge the prompt reversal of President Clinton’s recent
line-item vetoes that threaten to deny the United States this essential capability.

As the Center for Security Policy observed on 6 November⁽¹⁾, there is not a moment to lose for
such a course-correction:

“In the wake of the first exercise of the line-item veto by President Clinton on ‘policy’
grounds for the purpose of eliminating three programs essential to future U.S.
capabilities to exercise control of space as a theater of military operations⁽²⁾ — the Air
Force is frantically rewriting its doctrines, mission requirements and budget requests to
delete references to the need for such capabilities. What was proudly described as
recently as a month ago to be the visionary ‘Air and Space Force’ for the 21^st Century
is rapidly mutating into an Air and No Space Force.

“The impetus behind the Administration’s policy initiative appears to be its desire
to be responsive to a proposal from Russian President Boris Yeltsin to initiate
negotiations leading toward a series of anti-satellite bans. While such negotiations
will do nothing to enhance the security of U.S. space assets, it can reliably be
expected to preclude the United States from developing and fielding virtually all
systems relevant to space control.”

The Bottom Line

The National Defense Panel should take further encouragement for a forceful argument against
the present policy from recent expressions of strong support for the space control mission from
leading Members of Congress. In letters sent on 7 November 1997 to President Clinton, and
to Secretary of Defense William Cohen, a bipartisan group of nineteen members of
the U.S. House of Representatives urged that funding for technology developments critical to
space control be provided in future budgets.

It can only be hoped that the National Defense Panel takes to heart these strong and bipartisan
expressions of congressional support for space control programs and ensures that the Clinton
decision to terminate them — one of the most recklessly irresponsible of this Presidency — is
urgently reversed.

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1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Well Done, Weldon: Senior Legislator Refuses to
Accept Factually Incorrect ‘Political Correctness’ From Gen. Lyles (No. 97-D 167, 6
November 1997).

2. The three programs in question are the Clementine II astrophysics experiment, the Army’s
Kinetic Kill Anti-Satellite Weapon and the Military Space Plane. For more on the implications of
these systems’ cancellation, see Clinton Watch # 8: Denying U.S. Military the Ability To
Dominate The Next, Critical Theater of Operations — Space (No. 97-D 153, 15 October 1997).