Inside the Army September 30, 2002
ARMY STICKS WITH EXISTING MASTER PLAN TO DEFEND SPACE-BASED ASSETS
Emily Hsu
Until the Defense Department provides more detail on its developing space control strategy, the Army will continue to pursue its own space control priorities laid out in its 1994 Space Master Plan, according to Army space and missile defense officials.
DOD is drafting an overall space control strategy aimed at bolstering the protection of military space assets, including satellites, ground-based systems and associated terminals and receivers. The strategy was slated for completion by the summer of 2002, but a Sept. 23 General Accounting Office report said it will probably be delayed until next year.
The report examined the challenges facing DOD's space control initiatives.
A February 2001 draft of the space control strategy has already drawn criticism from Army, Navy and Air Force officials because they said it is lacking in details and specific milestones needed to "provide stronger leadership and accountability" for a coherent space program, according to the report.
Because of these ambiguities, Army officials said they are following the priorities established in the 1994 Space Master Plan, which identified future operational capabilities for space control, including the Space Based Laser, Airborne Laser and the Kinetic Energy Anti-Satellite capability, according to the GAO report. The Air Force is doing the same in its Strategic Master Plan.
The DOD draft includes "only a rough 20-year time frame for achieving a 'robust and wholly integrated suite of capabilities in space' . . . [and is] not specific enough in terms of what [the services'] responsibilities are going to be and what DOD's priorities are going to be," the report states.
Army space officials declined to comment further on the issue.
One military space expert said the current friction between the services and defense-wide strategies probably stems from the fact that the Bush administration has indicated it wants a new approach to space control, yet has not "figured out what that different approach is.
"Frankly, it's puzzling that Bush's first term is nearly half over and they still don't appear to have come up with anything," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington, DC-based policy think tank. "There was certainly the expectation after the Rumsfeld Space Commission report that there were going to be some major initiatives in this field. But at least as of the writing of this GAO report, these major initiatives don't appear to have been forthcoming."
Pike was referring to the work of a high-level congressionally mandated space commission chaired by Rumsfeld until December 2000, when he was nominated for defense secretary. Once in office, he set about implementing 10 of the commission's 13 recommendations, including consolidating activities, changing chains of command, and modifying policies to improve responsibility and accountability.
The services, meanwhile, are stuck in a kind of limbo, juggling the existing space control strategies established during the Clinton administration with the imminent policy from the Bush administration, Pike said.
One Army program affected by this uncertainty is the KE-ASAT program, which has been kept alive through congressional largesse for years despite steady DOD opposition to it.
Proponents have "managed to get just enough money to pay for the artwork, not enough to act do anything and the Army is trying to figure out what it's supposed to do with this unfunded mandate," Pike said. "You've got all these various bits and pieces that have gotten into various plans at one point or another, and so it's basically trying to figure how much of this stuff is real and how much of it is just artwork."
Initially tasked to complete the DOD space control strategy, U.S. Space Command would not comment on reasons for the delay.
DOD wants to align the strategy with the broader National Security Space Plan, which is under development by the Air Force.
Pike questioned why the administration has not yet established a policy governing a space initiative that received a lot of "fanfare" when President Bush began his term. "It seems to me the entire Rumsfeld military space initiative started slow and petered out fast . . . and all they've got to show for are incomplete studies," he said.
According to the GAO report, DOD has tried to bolster space control by improving coordination among department components, visibility and accountability of funding and the interoperability among systems.
GAO made two recommendations to address the challenges that face DOD in these efforts.
First, the defense secretary should align the development of the integrated space control strategy with the overall goals and objectives of the National Security Space Plan.
The following factors should be considered in finalizing the strategy:
* The roles and responsibilities of the services and other DOD entities for space control activities;
* The priorities for meeting essential warfighting requirements;
* Milestones for meeting established priorities; and
* "End states" for future military goals in space control.
Second, GAO recommends the development of an overall investment plan to guide the development of the services' budget submissions and increase funding visibility and accountability.
DOD concurred on both points.
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