Missile-defense goals encompass space

"This is rocket science, and it is difficult, but not impossible," says Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, head of the Defense Department's missile-defense program. "We are now on the threshold of acquiring and deploying missile defenses, not just conducting research. We are, in fact, crossing over from rhetoric to reality, from scientific theory to engineering fact to deployed systems."

Current planning is moving beyond the limited, ground-based missile-defense system financed by the Clinton administration to a "layered defense," including the Navy's Aegis battle-management system soon to be deployed on cruisers and destroyers, airborne lasers, and eventually space-based elements.

Daniel Goure, a Rumsfeld adviser and senior defense analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., suggests that "the United States should consider pursuing an aerospace-centered strategy" of national defense.

"Aerospace power, deployed on land, at sea, and in space, provides a unique set of operational advantages," Dr. Goure asserts in a recent issue of National Defense magazine. "A revolution in aerospace power is in the offing."

Critics in Congress

The new administration faces congressional critics on missile defense, particularly space-based elements. "We fear that the president may be buying a lemon here," says Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. "I don't know how you support the deployment of a program that doesn't work."

But the administration also has supporters on Capitol Hill who advocate increased US superiority in space. "To those who say we can't militarize space, I must say, do you want somebody else to do it?" says Sen. Robert Smith (R) of New Hampshire.

"If we intend to maintain our information superiority, we need a strong space-control program to protect our assets and to deny our adversaries the use of their own systems," Senator Smith told a recent seminar at the Center for Security Policy in Washington.

The extent to which Rumsfeld will follow his apparent inclinations toward the militarization of space in the name of protecting the homeland is unclear. In addition to technological uncertainties, expense will certainly be a factor. Cost estimates for full layered missile defenses range as high as $240 billion - a breathtaking figure to many people.

"Even the limited, land-based system supported by the Clinton administration was going to cost at least $60 billion to develop," says Alise Frye, a national-security expert at Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington.

"A much larger, layered system as anticipated by the current Bush administration will multiply that cost many times over, without increasing the likelihood that it will ever in fact work."

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor

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