Will 'Space' Remain a U.S. Asymmetric Advantage?

Aviation Week & Space Technology 10/25/04
author: William B. Scott

Strategic Space

The asymmetric advantage that "space" affords the U.S. is at risk unless a full spectrum of national security space systems is modernized. However, projected needs exceed anticipated budget allocations, and Congress is increasingly skeptical about the cost and technical feasibility of advanced space systems, according to military space officials.

Consequently, the new U.S. Strategic Command--a melding of the old nuclear-focused Stratcom and the former U.S. Space Command--is faced with leveraging legacy orbital platforms, while sorting out what warfighters absolutely must have in a new military and intelligence space architecture. Getting it wrong could have profound impacts on a nation facing unprecedented threats from global terrorism and rogue states, Stratcom's commander and key milspace community leaders believe.

"WE HAVE MOVED to an enemy that can think, fight and change faster than we do. [He] will change more like Moore's Law than like our industrial way of doing business," U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James E. Cartwright, Stratcom's new chief, told attendees at the Strategic Space 2004 conference here. "And until we figure that out, he's going to stay ahead of us, and he's going to threaten us. We have to find [an] asymmetric advantage to defeat that asymmetric threat. For a lot of years, 'space' has been our asymmetric advantage. The question that we pose [now] is: Will it remain our asymmetric advantage?"