Panel Cites U.S. ‘Weakness in Space’ : Urges Greater Military Presence in ‘Critical Battlefield’

WASHINGTON — As President Reagan prepares to endorse a more ambitious civilian space program, a blue-ribbon government panel on long-term strategy has urged a more aggressive military space effort for the rest of the century to compensate for “our weakness in space.”

“In a war with the Soviet Union, we cannot count on space being a sanctuary,” according to the bipartisan Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy, created by the White House and the Pentagon. “More likely it would be a critical battlefield.”

The commission report is the strongest call yet for treating space as a military theater of operations and is in direct contrast to the historical U.S. view that space is an arena for peaceful competition or even cooperation. For example, a cooperative U.S.-Soviet unmanned landing on Mars is being intensively pushed by U.S. academicians.

Early Militarization Cited

“It’s silly to think the commission is calling for the militarization of space,” Albert Wohlstetter, co-chairman of the panel, said in an interview Thursday. “Space has been militarized from the start. The first man-made system (Sputnik) was launched on a Soviet ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile), and both sides have put satellites with military purposes in orbit ever since.

“And the commission does not want to start a space race,” said Wohlstetter, a veteran strategic analyst. “We are just recognizing the reality that space systems, as with other military systems, must be able to function in wartime to deter attack.”

The commission, in a report released earlier this month, argued that the United States and the Soviet Union would rely so heavily on satellites in wartime--including battles short of all-out nuclear exchanges, such as in the first stages of a Soviet invasion of Europe--that each would have major incentives to destroy the other’s “eyes and ears in space.”

The Soviet Union has the advantage, however, because it has designed space systems for use in war. The Soviets, who demonstrated the ability to launch many satellites quickly during the Mideast and Falkland Islands crises, can replace satellites faster and with less cost than the United States.

More Soviet Satellites

In fact, they now have almost twice as many military satellites in orbit--140 compared to 75 for the United States--and conduct space launches five times more frequently than the United States, according to the commission’s report and working papers prepared during its 15 months of study.

To compensate for this imbalance, the panel recommended that the United States develop:

--Lighter, cheaper, shorter-lived satellites for battlefield and other war use. These might survive only weeks rather than years, but they would be easier to produce quickly, protect and replace.

--A quick-launch capability for these “spare” satellites, using missiles fired from submarines and mobile ground-based facilities, to function in war when established launching bases are likely to be destroyed.

--A space-based surveillance network to give early warning of an attack on U.S. satellites. Although it could become part of an anti-missile space defense system, the satellite detection, identification and tracking network should not be delayed until a more demanding and costly anti-missile system is ready, it said.

--A capability to disable hostile satellites at all altitudes and their ground stations with non-nuclear weapons. Tests of a U.S. anti-satellite weapon for use against low-altitude satellites are now prohibited by Congress, the commission complained. In contrast, the Soviets have an operational low-altitude anti-satellite weapon and, “with their pending or even current technologies, they can generate attacks at all altitudes,” it said.

Self-Defense Zones

The panel suggested also that the United States and Soviet Union discuss the possibility of recognizing “self-defense zones” in space into which, much as at sea, intruders can have only hostile intent. Such an arrangement, it said, “would not affect normal, non-threatening satellite operations.”

The 13-man commission, whose mandate was to propose a coherent national security policy for the next two decades, was headed by Wohlstetter and retiring Defense Undersecretary Fred C. Ikle. It included two former presidential national security advisers, Henry A. Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Four retired senior military officers also were on the panel, including John W. Vessey Jr., former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Bernard A. Schriever, a major driving force in the early U.S. space program.

The panel’s recommendations for a greater military space effort are unlikely to have a significant effect on the Pentagon’s plans in this final year of the Reagan Administration, particularly in view of general budget constraints, the Administration’s determination to give high funding priority to its Strategic Defense Initiative anti-missile program and significant congressional opposition to space weaponry.

In addition, potential resources will be drained by an Administration plan for a substantive new commitment to the civilian space program, which it intends to announce in next week’s State of the Union address. President Reagan is expected to endorse a budget increase for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of more than one-third, to $11.5 billion from $8.5 billion, for a new shuttle to help build an orbiting space station and for increased space exploration--all peaceful activities that presume space will remain a non-hostile environment.

Dependency on Satellites

Nevertheless, the commission report, released during a presidential election year, could have significant impact on the programs of future administrations, for it focuses more intensely and with greater detail on the fact that the ever-growing dependence of U.S. national security on satellites has not been balanced by programs to protect the spacecraft and contingency plans for their replacement in times of war.

The panel found that current U.S. military satellites are designed to work primarily in peacetime. Although some are designed to give early warning of the outbreak of cataclysmic nuclear war, many are used to monitor arms agreements and maintain general military surveillance of the Soviet Union and other potentially hostile nations during peace.

This attention to performance when there is peace rather than war was natural, in view of the origins and evolution of the U.S. satellite programs. Initially, the satellites were seen as a successor to the U-2 spy plane program for strategic reconnaissance. When satellites were first launched over the Soviet Union, there was no assurance that the Kremlin would not try to shoot them down. It was far from clear in the 1960s that national sovereignty was limited to the atmosphere.

So U.S. interests were best served by designing satellites with no defenses, assuming space was a benign environment--and, thereby, inviting the Soviets to do the same--and by forgoing development of anti-satellite weapons.

The result is that U.S. satellites are very large, long-lasting and costly--up to 25,000 pounds, with a life span of up to seven years and a cost of between $250 million and $1 billion each. But their size makes them cumbersome and hard to protect and, because they are relatively few in number, they become very inviting targets.

The commission concluded that it would be a mistake to continue designing and deploying satellites on the assumption that the superpowers will treat space as a sanctuary in wartime, whether the war be a regional, non-nuclear conflict or an all-out nuclear exchange that will destroy both countries.

Progress in Defenses

The United States has made “important progress” recently in both passive and active defenses for its satellites, it acknowledged. Passive measures include “hardening” the electronics inside satellite vehicles against laser beams or electromagnetic jamming, small jets to maneuver out of the path of an attacking object and decoys to confuse the attacker.

Active defenses should get more attention, however, the commission said. Among such defenses are schemes for reconnaissance and communication satellites with space-to-space missiles to destroy any approaching enemy vehicle or beams to blind the sensors on enemy anti-satellite weapons.

But satellites are vulnerable not only to anti-satellite weapons like those the Soviets possess and the United States has sought to develop. Various other systems can be used to attack satellites, including medium- and long-range missiles--which are aimed at a spot in orbit rather than a target on the ground--and even other satellites.

One long-standing fear has been that the “space junk” orbiting the Earth includes not only inert debris and rocket casings but “space mines” that are “parked” near sensitive U.S. satellites. In wartime, they could be maneuvered next to the satellites, most of them at geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles high, with little warning time before they explode to destroy themselves and their targets.

Such space mines could weigh only 1,000 pounds, contain non-nuclear explosives, carry short-range attack missiles and cost perhaps $10 million to build and put on station, authorities said. Many could be committed to cost-effectively destroy one scarce $500-million U.S. satellite.