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Arms Race in Space Marko Beljac | April 1, 2008 Editor: Emily Schwartz Greco
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org
When the United States recently shot apart a crippled spy satellite over the Pacific Ocean, it also tested an offensive anti-satellite weapon and the potential for ballistic missile defense. “The shot,” as the Pentagon called the $100 million operation conducted on February 20, came immediately after Russia and China put forward a detailed, but flawed, proposal for a treaty to ban space weapons at the United Nations. In response, the United States immediately reaffirmed its unwillingness to participate in any arms control accord covering space. These developments are just the latest wrinkles in a rapidly unfolding saga that underscores the fact that we’re entering a new strategic era characterized by the weaponization of space. It may sound exciting, but the potential consequences of space weaponization are cataclysmic. “The shot” has important implications for defense planners everywhere. To be sure, as Victoria Samsonreport so eloquently explained, this was an orchestrated operation and didn’t in any way mimic the real-world conditions that would prevail if a missile defense system were to be used to “shield” the U.S. from an enemy-fired weapon. The satellite, after all, was very large and was moving along a predictable trajectory. Of course, all Ballistic Missile Defense tests carried out until now have been highly idealized and largely developmental in nature, as the Government Accountability Office noted in a recent on the topic. Therefore, it would not be too far off the mark to even characterize this highly idealized action as a developmental weapons test. Ground Control In December 2006, the United States successfully placed a reconnaissance satellite, USA 193, into low earth orbit. However, ground control very soon thereafter lost contact with the satellite and therefore the satellite went out of control. U.S. officials recently notified the United Nations and potentially affected countries that USA 193 was to de-orbit by early March 2008. Because the failure of the satellite occurred so early in its planned mission the fuel tank used to maneuver the satellite for intelligence missions remained tanked up on hydrazine rocket fuel. Washington claimed that it was likely that the fuel tank would survive re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere and could well have, albeit the chances were remote, impact on populated areas. It was feared that the rocket fuel could disperse and infect the respiratory system of anybody near the impact zone, perhaps even fatally. Given this alleged possibility, President George W. Bush ordered that the satellite be intercepted by a kinetic energy kill vehicle from an SM-3 missile interceptor launched from an Aegis class Naval vessel in the Pacific Ocean. The plan was for the “kill vehicle” to impact the satellite and hopefully break up the fuel tank leading the fuel to escape before re-entry. In actual fact the Pentagon is 80-90% certain that the kill vehicle made impact on the fuel tank itself. It’s important to also realize that “the shot” didn’t target the actual satellite as a whole, but rather its fuel tank. Hitherto the SM-3 interceptor has been a part of Naval-based Ballistic Missile Defense. The SM-3 is designed to hit warheads from medium range missiles at high altitudes. Minor changes have been made to the system’s software to enable interception against the satellite. It has also been revealed that the telemetry for “the shot” was gathered by Missile Defense systems, according to a Pentagon background briefing, “because this is more like a test.” Also, “the shot” used the Pentagon's space identification, tracking and targeting systems to co-ordinate the destruction of the satellite. Flimsy Rationale It’s important that we understand that the Bush administration’s stated reasons for “the shot” can’t be taken seriously. Given that the fuel tank was most likely not heat shielded it should not have survived re-entry. Even if by remote chance it were to survive re-entry, the pressure and heat of re-entry should have vaporized its hydrazine rocket fuel. Instead, the administration found a convenient way to do what China did last year: test an offensive anti-satellite weapon against its own redundant satellite. We now know that the United States knew that China was going to shoot down one of its own satellites beforehand, but the White House decided not to protest diplomatically before the Chinese test. This puts all the rhetoric directed at Beijing's way following China's anti-satellite test in perspective. The United States is not responding to Chinese space programs. It secretly welcomes them as public justification for its own drive to weaponize space. The Bush administration’s anti-satellite weapon test has obvious implications for Australia. Brendan Nelson (then the Australian defense minister and now the country’s opposition leader in Parliament) last year mandated a Defense Department study, which Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has inherited, of the possibility of equipping the Australian Navy with SM-3 interceptors for Ballistic Missile Defense in Northeast Asia. The Bush administration’s recent demonstrated the offensive capabilities of missile defense in general and of the SM-3 interceptor in particular. Barely a week after “the shot,” the Rudd administration, following the U.S.-Australia "AusMin" defense talks, announced its support for Ballistic Missile Defense and a desire to deepen Australia's participation. This would most likely take the very form proposed by Brendan Nelson. Washington's anti-satellite missile test must complicate matters for strategic planners in Canberra because an Australian SM-3 capability was sold on the basis that it would have no strategic effect on China. But “the shot” has blown apart this rhetoric. Moreover it is also the case that the SM-3 will have more advanced capabilities in future such as a larger kill vehicle and faster boosters which means that it can reach even higher altitudes. Anybody who knows the minutiae of strategic arms control from the Cold War knows that one of the key characteristics of a strategic missile, as opposed to a shorter range missile, is its boost phase velocity. Strategic missiles are faster than their lower range siblings. What is also of interest here is that the USA 193 satellite was in a very low orbit, just near the atmosphere, when impacted and its flight profile resembled the trajectory of a strategic nuclear re-entry vehicle launched from an inter-continental ballistic missile like those in the hands of Russia and China. “The shot” acts as a convenient way to test the interception capabilities of the SM-3 against inter-continental missiles without the appearance of doing so.