Future of Space

The world has reaped unprecedented economic and scientific benefits from humankind's venture into outer space. Technological advancements from space exploration also have had spin-offs into the military arena, some of which have enhanced international security. Early-warning and verification systems designed to regulate military activities, for example, made possible by advances in satellite technologies, help to promote national and international confidence, predictability and stability globally.

But technological change has also increased the importance of space as a component of war-fighting strategies. The Space Age has provided the military with a new technological tool to modernize and enhance the conduct of military operations through advances in command, control, communication and intelligence (C3I) systems. As demonstrated in the NATO military campaign in Kosovo and now in the US operation in Afghanistan, nominally benign signals from GPS (Global Positioning System) satellites, operated by the US Air Force and currently serving numerous civilian users around the globe, have empowered military forces with increased accuracy in guiding munitions to targets anywhere on the earth. Undoubtedly, the real virtue of these space-supported capabilities and their role in the post-Cold War security framework will remain the subject of serious debates and continuing concerns.

Recent calls for the direct deployment of weapons in space to "conduct defensive and offensive counterspace operations,"* intended to protect the country's valuable space assets or for a potential missile defense system, clearly belong to a different category.

Currently there are only a few international treaties that regulate the military uses of space. With the end of the ABM Treaty, however, none of these actually prohibit conventional weaponization or the use of lasers and other dual-use technologies for military ends. The US administration's decision to withdraw from the 30 year old ABM Treaty has thus removed one of the few legal foundations upon which previous norms governing the use of space had been based, while at the same time these preexisting norms are being strained by our increasing demand for the advantages that space can provide and by our growing capability to achieve them. As the rapid growth in the number of commercial and military space users continues, the need for a new consensus is greater than ever.

The goals of The Eisenhower Institute's Project, The Future of Space: The Next Strategic Frontier are to:

• Bring about the emergence of a new voice in the political discourse over the future use of space-that of individuals who have served as directors of national space agencies and managed major space operations
• Create an ongoing dialogue between decision makers and the practitioner-stakeholders in space, including representatives from industry and the US military, as well as various other international constituencies;
• Delineate between those military uses of outer space necessary for national defense and international security and those which could be detrimental for global stability;
• Provide a substantive, politically viable and technically feasible draft framework around which future debate can take place;
• Raise the space issue to a position of prominence within the agendas of world leaders; and
• Facilitate the process of reaching a new global agreement on space security.

* United States Space Command Long Range Plan, Executive Summary, March 1998, p. 17

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