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Alexandra Svoboda
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Peace Propaganda

StratCom Conference Sells Space Dominance

(And Whoever Controls Space Controls the Earth)

Frank Cordaro & Frances Mendenhall

The greeting for corporate and military delegates to the Strategic Space and Defense 2006 conference in mid-October was chilly in more ways than one. As rain and cold gusts of wind greeted the conference attendees at opening ceremonies October 10, activists with “Speak Out at StratCom” held up a banner warning that the Command’s new “Global Strike” mission is “offensive” and handed out prescriptions for “More Talk. Less Terror.” Representatives from the Space Foundation were quick to tell local media that the conference at Omaha’s Qwest Center had “nothing to do with nuclear weapons,” a particularly sensitive subject in the aftermath of North Korea’s alleged nuclear test the day before. The claim was only partially true, as U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base, which is at the heart of the conference, jointly manages nuclear and conventional weapons in the post-Cold-War environment, in ways that actually increase the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used.

But in any event, members of the Green Party and Nebraskans for Peace weren’t there just to challenge StratCom on its nuclear policies. Instead, the groups were protesting the widened missions of StratCom, the same missions that the conference was glorifying.

‘Lab for Future Wars’

“StratCom is a laboratory for the future of warfare,” Space Foundation Chairman Robert Walker said at the opening of the conference.

Since 2002, StratCom has new “Functional Component Command” missions such as space control, global strike, C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance), missile defense, and net warfare. The fourth annual “Strategic Space and Defense” conference claimed that these missions were critical to protecting the homeland. Opponents argued that these missions put StratCom in the central position of ensuring planetary dominance by the United States.

‘Space Policy’ Updated

Four days before the conference opened, the White House “Office of Science and Technology Policy” officially released its first new “National Space Policy” in a decade. (The update had originally been slated to be released last year, but was delayed when the New York Times leaked excerpts in May of 2005, which suggested the U.S. was ready to take war into space.) This document was discussed at length in the Omaha conference.

The refurbished document (an unclassified version is available at www.ostp.gov/ html/US%20National%20 Space%20 Policy.pdf ) tries to use diplomatic language in its opening paragraphs. But burrowing further into the policy goals reveals that the United States wants to preserve fair and peaceful access to space, provided a nation is willing to concede the U.S. absolute space supremacy. If a nation does not do so, it is considered an adversary.

This kind of subtle semantic shifting was prevalent throughout the conference. Given the new activity of North Korea, the Army’s role in managing ballistic missile defense was touted as a positive by Lt. Gen. Larry Dodgen, commander of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command. He explained how well the new missile-defense infrastructure in Fort Greely, Alaska and Vandenburg Air Force Base tracked a North Korean Taepodong missile last July. But then went on to say that ‘going global’ with new space capabilities meant erasing geography around the world. With the new fast-assault vehicles sought by the Air Force, missile defense walks hand in hand with global strike.

Faster attacks, Global attacks, Attacking satellites

The conference had special panels on “operationally responsive space,” referring to fast and global attack from space, and on global strike missions. This is why the Washington, D.C.-based Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) efforts to ban weapons in space solve only half the problem. The main goal for StratCom these days is to militarize space, to use it as a ‘force multiplier’ by making better use of navigation and intelligence and communications satellites and thereby improve war operations globally, particularly in first-strike scenarios.

In fact, Lt. Gen. William Shelton, the new StratCom functional component commander for space, said he sees true space warfare as a very unlikely final step in a struggle for space. The biggest threat StratCom anticipates in the near future is radio jamming of satellites. Jamming and many other threats could be solved by bombing or taking out a ground station for a satellite, Shelton said, though StratCom must be prepared to use anti-satellite or other space weapons if necessary.

There is a perception in Washington that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would like to take more money out of hightech space projects in the Air Force and National Reconnaissance Office, and shift that money to Army ground operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result of the whispers that space warfare may be ‘gold-plated,’ StratCom made special efforts to bring representatives from the Army, Navy, and Marines, in addition to its own Air Force officers, to make the case that precision space satellites are absolutely necessary to fight 21st century war.

A Navy representative from the National Reconnaissance Office, the nation’s largest intelligence agency that works on spy satellites, talked about two NRO programs that could help in land and sea battles. A new program called “Quickbolt” puts receivers for spy satellites on board the High-Speed Anti-radiation Missiles, or HARM missiles, regularly used on the battlefield. Perhaps more ominously, the NRO started a special program in late summer to put as many space receivers as possible on the USS Eisenhower, the aircraft carrier that was ‘called up’ in mid- September for Persian Gulf service. While no one said so out loud at the conference, it is possible this electro-enhanced USS Eisenhower would be at the forefront of possible naval assaults on Iran nuclear sites.

The “Operationally Responsive Space” (ORS) mission of StratCom will focus on small satellites, and many private companies are expected to provide prototype mini- and micro-satellites to compete with the government satellites that come from every agency from the NRO to a cadet-led program at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Undersecretary of the Air Force Ron Sega told the conference that the Space and Missile Systems Center in California has opened a new Space Development and Test Wing—across the street from the Air Force Weapons Lab at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque—which will test small satellites to prepare for an eventual “ORS SmallSat Squadron.”

Corporate involvement in space dominance was evident everywhere on the show floor, spanning from large players like Lockheed-Martin and Boeing, to innovative space startups who might have begun as commercial players, but quickly realized where the purse-strings were controlled. For example, representatives of the commercial communication- satellite companies Americom and Intelsat were at the conference. Since the National Security Agency built special bases in Yakima, Washington and Sugar Grove, Virginia, to intercept the commercial traffic of these satellites, one would think that corporate leaders might complain about such sneaky behavior.

Bellying Up to the Trough

Instead, corporate executives like Intelsat vice president Kay Sears and Americom chief executive David Helfgott complained they weren’t being offered the kind of deals in working with the Defense Department that commercial imaging satellite companies were offered. The NRO now gets 30 percent of its images from space from commercial satellite companies instead of its own spy satellites, and Intelsat and Americom wonder why more Defense Department space communications can’t be outsourced. Sears said that her company has eight satellites going up before the Defense Department and NRO finish work on the first satellite of the “Multi-User Objective System.” Intelsat would be happy to provide ‘surge capacity’ channels for the warfighter, she said, if the Defense Department would only let companies know in advance of its needs.

In short, the corporate and military leaders at Strategic Space and Defense were all singing from the same song sheet. All of the Defense Department’s outsourcing partners accept the role of StratCom as the global enforcer of a dominant hegemony led by the U.S. And it falls to those of us outside the confines of the conference—and outside the gates of Offutt—to let the warfighters know that their mission is not in synch with the goals of democracy.