LOTTMAN: In what ways is our national security enhanced through the use of space?

SMITH: Well, space is very much a part of what we do in America. We have weather satellites, communications satellites, and we have spy satellites, as you know. And there are a lot of issues here.

Number one, we have to be prepared to make sure that we can incapacitate anybody else's satellites, that could do us damage. That's a defensive action, though you could say it's an offensive action against a satellite that might be out there, that could spy on us, or in some way utilize information from communications, or weather, or whatever, that could impact negatively upon our troops in the field.

So, in addition, because those capabilities are out there, we have to be prepared to deal with those capabilities. It runs the whole gamut, from missiles, the strong proliferation of missiles around the world today, and the technology moving very, very quickly, so we have to be able to protect ourselves.

Traditionally, in military action, the high ground has always been the best ground. Go all the way back to the days of the Revolutionary War, or even before that, you're trying to take this hill or that hill, why? Because you have a better observation post when you're at a higher level.

And obviously, it's true in space. If you're up there with those communications satellites, or other types of satellites, you have the opportunity to gather information on your enemy. And we saw this come to pass in the Persian Gulf War with Saddam Hussein. Had we not been able to detect the firing of those missiles as early as we did, we would not have been able to stop him. He didn't have the capacity to spy on us from space. If he had, he could have had a different result, or it could have been a different result in the war.

LOTTMAN: From where we are today, where do we need to go? What development programs, what missions need more support and more focus?

SMITH: Well, certainly, a program I have long advocated, which the Administration has long opposed—for the last seven years they've tried to eliminate the funding for it, including the line-item veto—for the past seven years, I've put it back in, almost single-handedly. And that's kinetic energy ASAT. Anti-satellite technology. That is, being able to incapacitate a satellite up there that can do damage to us. Spying on us, communicating information that could hurt our troops in the field, in the theater, or at home.

And so, incapacitating the satellites—some would say that's an offensive action. It is defensive, really, because you want to incapacitate that satellite that's going to bring damage to your troops.

So that's one area, in other words, looking at somebody else's assets in space, and being able to incapacitate those assets—one of those programs is kinetic energy ASAT, which incapacitates that satellite, either destroys it or incapacitates it in some way.

The second area would be the area of National Missile Defense. As I indicated earlier, there's a tremendous proliferation now of weapons of mass destruction around the world.

Some people use the argument, well, they could bring them in a suitcase, why are we worried about a rocket in space or some weapon coming at us from space? Well, the answer to that question is, yes, they could come in by suitcase, and we should defend against that, and we are doing our best to try to combat terrorism in that way.

But the second point, which is overlooked, is it also can be delivered via a missile to the United States of America, or to our allies. It is not one versus the other. It's both that we have to defend against.

We know now that the Chinese, North Korea, Libya, the Iraqis, the Iranians, to name just a few, have the capacity... to, if they wanted to, to inflict damage upon us. Some more than others. As Colin Powell used to say, you can't deal with what somebody's motives are. You have to deal with somebody's capabilities are. So, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, I need to understand and be prepared to react to the capability of another nation to inflict damage on us, not the motives.

I'm not using any motive. I think some of those countries might have stronger motives than others in order to inflict damage. So we need a National Missile Defense system. And we need a theater missile defense system. It's a very complex system. You can have a small umbrella, and put it over your head, and you're protected from the rain. If you want to climb under a tent, then you've got a bigger umbrella, then you don't need your little umbrella. And if you wanna have something larger, a building for example, that's larger than a tent, then you're protected.

That's basically what missile defense is. It's a series of layered systems that protects you closest to where you are in the field, to a bigger system, until we finally get to the point where we can have a national system, with space assets, that protects us, that inflicts damage upon the enemy. When he fires his missile, we want to incapacitate or destroy that missile over the enemy's homeland, not over our land. In the Persian Gulf, it would be the equivalent of a fly ball being hit into the outfield, and the outfielder catches it on the way down.

LOTTMAN: So, a threat is a threat.

SMITH: Well, a threat is a threat. The capability is out there to hurt us, and I think that motives change. And my responsibility as a member of this committee, and as a United States Senator, is to protect and defend the United States of America.

I think it's pretty obvious that countries like North Korea, Iraq, Iran, perhaps China, but I think more the former nations at the moment, would, if given the opportunity, I think it's reasonable to assume they might want to do damage to us by a missile. They are producing them, they are trading the technology, they are buying the technology, they are stealing the technology, and they are building the technology.

And we saw a three-stage missile fired out of North Korea. A lot of people don't understand the significance of that. That is, if the third stage of that missile had fired, it could have hit San Francisco. Now, was there a warhead on it? No there wasn't a warhead, it was a test missile. But suppose that that empty warhead had landed on San Francisco, or Oakland, or perhaps LA. The only thing—it misfired. The third stage—it didn't, it basically malfunctioned. But we didn't even know, our intelligence community didn't even know they had a third stage rocket.

So, we have to be prepared, we're, we have to understand what reality is. Reality is, in spite of the fact that a lot of people are pretty fuzzy-headed, don't want to accept that premise. We have to accept the reality, people are out there building missiles, with weapons of mass destruction on the end of them. They have the capability to build them, and to deliver them. As long as they do that, we have to protect against it.

Look, the way I look at it, somebody's gonna control space. And it's either gonna be a benevolent nation, like the United States, that will use it to protect itself, not to harm, not to be offensive, in terms of aggression against other nations, or it can be an aggressor. And I'd rather have it be the United States than an aggressor who has control. And hopefully, by controlling space, we can say to a country like Iran, go ahead and build your missile, go ahead and fire it, and we'll destroy it over your homeland with the warhead on it, so go ahead and waste your money if you want to.

So, those who say we're wasting money by building these systems are wrong. Because A, we'll save money, and B, we'll save lives, which is more important.

LOTTMAN: I want to get back to the issue of space control but before I do that, you mentioned the boost-phase intercept capability—of the technologies, or the operational concepts that are out there, how would we do that? What technologies would be involved?

SMITH: Well, there are lots of technologies that are moving very quickly. I visited the production areas of most of these technologies, including National Missile Defense, as well as the Airborne Laser, the Space-Based Laser.

The Airborne laser is probably the nearest term, which would basically through an aircraft in the theater be able to fire a laser that would knock out a missile in its boost phase. The Space-Based laser could do it quicker once we develop that—that's the next phase, again taking it out over the homeland.

Or a national or theater system with space-based assets that would cue off of the missile when it's fired, and to be able to have the technology, again, to fire our own missile, to hit that missile in the boost phase, before it comes over our homeland or our theater of operations.

LOTTMAN: You said, or at least I heard, that some nation is going to have control or advantage in outer space. Could that take place in a multinational context. You mentioned some of the threats, some of the reasons we need to build up space power. What sort of cooperative measures or efforts could be pursued, A to make that confrontation less likely, and B to make control of space a joint, multinational endeavor?

SMITH: At first blink, you could say well, when you're using space assets to defend yourself, the world looks pretty small down there, and the lines between nations are pretty blurred. That's the first look. But in reality, we must never do anything, in terms of international cooperation, that would threaten our own sovereignty or our own national security.

Now, having said that, there are ample opportunities, there have been ample opportunities and there will be in the future, have been in the past, for cooperation in space. The Russians and the United States are cooperating in the space station for example. There's cooperation with the French and the British and others, on a lot of aerospace activities and a lot of activities that involve space technology.

But when it comes to protecting yourself as a nation, through a national missile defense system or some other technology—as long as we're very careful about how we share that technology, I don't object to.... Reagan said the same thing. He didn't object to the sharing of the use of it, but I think we have to be very careful about who has access to how we build it, and the secrets of building it.

But in terms of cooperative efforts to protect our allies, protect each other, I think that's good and that's healthy, but we must never do anything that would in any way negatively impact our ability to protect our nation, our own sovereignty, our own national security, by compromising it by providing weapons or secrets to what might be potentially an enemy.

LOTTMAN: Russia and China have been vocal about their concern about America's designs on outer space, the potential for weapons being based in outer space. Those two countries are leading a campaign for what they call a new legal instrument, a new code of conduct for outer space. They want to try to prevent that. How do we go about addressing the concerns of those two countries, and what would be the merits or demerits of engaging in this dialogue or perhaps formulating a new treaty for outer space.

SMITH: It's interesting in using the Chinese example of saying they are concerned about some dialogue about how the United States might exploit, or some other nation might exploit the space—outer space. Well, for goodness sakes, they are selling, as I said before, selling, trading, buying, stealing, and providing technology to some of the worst terrorist, rogue states in the world.

North Korea, the Chinese are dealing with them, they are dealing with Libya, they are dealing with Iran, Iraq. They are the biggest proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and the capability to deliver them, of any nation in the world. The Chinese are. So, I'm not real interested in what they have to say. I'm more interested in what they are doing.

And, dialogue is fine, I'm not against dialogue. The Russians and the Chinese, as was the case with Gorbachev and Reagan, in the summit when Gorbachev bluffed, and Reagan bluffed. Reagan basically indicated to Gorbachev that he had a system developed, which he didn't have developed, but Gorbachev thought he did. And Gorbachev didn't want to escalate the arms race into space.

The truth is, nations now are moving into space, with missiles, with communications technology, with weather satellites. Any of these things could be used for military application. If you know there's going to be a storm in a given area, because of a weather satellite, that can be a tremendous asset to your battle plans, for example.

So, again, I think the issue that you're probably getting at there would be the ABM treaty, which has massive restrictions in it. The ABM treaty was signed between the United States and the Soviet Union, not Russia. The Soviet Union is no longer around, Now, Russia is the nation. So we could make a case that the treaty is now invalid.

But leaving that academic or legal argument out, for a moment, the point is that the ABM treaty restricts our ability to be able to intercept missiles. Because right now the difference between a theater wide missile, which is a lesser-range missile, and a national missile, which is a strategic missile, is bordered. And it's a very complicated system of how fast you can, the treaty restricts how fast you can fire to intercept that missile. It also restricts how fast that missile can go that you fire, and if you have nations that are violating the treaty, then you are on the defensive.

And again, no treaty should ever block the United States' capacity to protect itself and defend itself against any military action, whether it be missiles, or what. So, it's serious business here.

LOTTMAN: Would you apply that critique to the Outer Space treaty as well, the UN treaty? Because, I think, talking specifically about outer space, I think that Russia and China are thinking as much of that treaty as the ABM treaty. That treaty is very broad, I don't have the exact language, but it's something to the effect that outer space belongs to everyone. Their claim is that there is a danger of violating the spirit of that treaty with this.

SMITH: Well, again, treaties aren't worth the paper they are written on if people don't abide by the treaties. We've seen plenty of evidence the Soviet Union and China and other nations down through the years didn't pay any attention to the treaties they signed. And if you do, and they don't, then you immediately become on the defensive.

The Russians, for example, in signing the ABM treaty, pledged not to build any—you were only allowed to protect one city, and not your missile sites. So, the so-called mutual assured destruction concept, that says, 'if you fire, we fire, therefore nobody fires, because everybody dies.' Well, we were lucky. That was a stupid strategy. We were lucky that we didn't have a Saddam Hussein or somebody. Kruschev looks rational compared to Saddam Hussein.

So the point is, with these treaties, I believe that we cannot sit back and say, 'everything's going to be fine, nobody's going to exploit space in a way that could bring harm upon the United States, or, frankly, any other nation in the world.' I don't think we can say that. Therefore, why not move out there and be the benevolent power. I mean, if we can, we have the assets, I believe, to control space in a way, with our allies, that will be used in a positive way.

There are tremendous things that are gonna come as a result of space. We're gonna, we will be exploring other planets, who knows what minerals we will find, or what other things that benefit to mankind we will find in space, as we colonize and move out. So those are the positive things, the scientific research that comes from what we find in space, or the weightlessness environment. There are all kinds of positive things from doing that.

So as we move out there, those assets have to be protected, and we're not talking about Star Wars. That's the liberal definition of what national missile defense is. Star Wars—you think of planes shooting at each other in space. We're trying to avoid that. I think the way to avoid that is to say, to have the technology. If we're up there with the systems that say, 'if you're gonna use space in a negative way, to harm any country—especially America or its allies—we're gonna shoot your missile down over your own homeland before you do it. And we will shoot down any technology you have to get weapons of mass destruction in space that could wreak harm.'

So, I want the benevolent nations to control space, not the aggressors—not the Irans and the Iraqs and the Chinese and the North Koreans. At least today. Maybe tomorrow, we'll have a different situation. But again, you have to focus on not on motive but on capability. And the capability is there for these nations to move aggressively into space, to put nuclear weapons into space, and to bring those nuclear weapons right down upon the United States of America. We would be totally remiss in our responsibility to let that happen. And I don't think...

Critics say that we're militarizing space. Space is already militarized, unfortunately, or fortunately, however you want to look at it, we have weapons up there that can bring—these satellites can be used to inflict damage on the United States. So we have to have the ability to incapacitate those satellites, and the ability to shoot down anything that goes into space that can harm us. I don't view that as “Star Wars.” I view that as a defensive obligation that we have to defend ourselves.

LOTTMAN: OK, I had one more question, and you've brought me right up to it. What you are talking about are really astounding military capabilities. I think of the example of something like an ICBM, which has tremendous offensive capability, but look at what its strategic role, or practical use is, as a deterrent. Would you say that the situation with space power is analogous to that? Because you're talking about dazzling potentially offensive capabilities—basing things in outer space. But is this primarily a deterrent for the kinds of misbehavior you are talking about?

SMITH: I think it can be a deterrent if we get out in front, early enough on the technology, and don't get into a catch-up race where somebody's out there ahead of us, and they are motivated to continue.

With the old ICBMs, again, the only reason why they weren't fired is because they knew it would invite their own destruction. But if we cannot shoot down their missiles, and they can shoot ours down, then if they decide to fire one, we lose.

It's a different world now. I think some people are still back in the mutual assured destruction phase. A lot of people are still back there. The truth is, under mutual assured destruction, we had the capacity to hit the Soviets or the Chinese, they had the capacity to hit us. They couldn't stop us from firing, and we couldn't stop them from firing. They couldn't intercept our missile, we couldn't intercept theirs. So they knew, if they fired, they were gonna get hit. It was a question of who is left standing when it's all over. That was the concept, and that's why nothing happened.

But we were lucky, because we didn't have somebody that was irrational enough, whether it was Kruschev, or Brezhnev, or any of the old Soviet leaders, they all, for whatever reason you want decided that it wasn't worth it to have Russia destroyed, the Soviet Union destroyed, perhaps the world destroyed, in return, to inflict damage on the United States. But now, what we're talking about is different.

We are now talking about a system, whether we like it or not, which says, pick any nation, the Chinese for example, who could fire a missile, and hit the United States, and today we cannot stop that missile. We could not intercept that missile. We have no capacity to intercept it. Thus, NMD. National Missile Defense comes into play. Let's get a system to intercept that missile. A lot of people think we can shoot it down. We can not shoot it down. Nor can they shoot ours down.

So, the point is, as long as they are moving, along with other nations, to produce these missiles, and have the capacity to fire them, they are going to be encouraged to fire them if they know that we... if they develop the technology to shoot ours down, and we don't develop the technologies to shoot theirs down. That's why this is a very high-stakes game.

So, I believe that taking the high ground quickly, as you would in any battle, get the hill, get the cliffs. The whole battle of Vicksburg was based on access to the cliffs and controlling the high ground. And bunker hill. It's always the high ground. And as long as you control that high ground, you control the battle. And when you lose the high ground, when they take the hill from you, you lose the fight. And so, it's very simple. It's not a complex system.

Regretfully, we have people, nations in the world, who do not have positive designs on the United States of America. We have terrorist nations such as Syria, or Iraq, or Iran, who probably wouldn't hesitate. Well, you say, well they won't do that. We say, well, are you sure? I'm not sure. So, therefore I need to protect myself. I have to be willing to protect what I know the capability of that nation is.

LOTTMAN: So as long as those developments are going on, you feel that them calling our space program provocative—is it a pot and kettle situation?

SMITH: That's nonsense. Look. The Soviets said that, and what happened? The Soviets gave up. And it is because of what Reagan did.

When the Soviets realized that they could be destroyed by the United States of America and they couldn't respond back, because Reagan made them, convinced them that we had this technology, they basically threw into the towel, and the Soviet Union fell on the ashbin of history. And we're hopefully, now, hopefully going to see Democracy rise from those ashes in Russia.

So, what they are saying is provocative because they, they know what it's going to cost them to produce these weapons, and respond to what we are doing. Now, as long as they are realizing that we're committed to do it, maybe they throw in the towel, and we don't have a space race.

Again, it's benevolence, and deterrence, against aggression. And negative designs, or warlike designs on us. That's the difference. Those are the options. I'd rather have the benevolence and the deterrence and the capability.

LOTTMAN: Throwing in the towel? What sort of form does that take?

SMITH: I think when we develop the National Missile Defense system, and the theater system, and it becomes perfectly obvious to these nations, any nation in the world that may have unfriendly designs toward America, that anything they fire is going to be blown up instantly, over their own homeland—put a nuclear tip on a missile, and we'll blow it up over your city, and see how you like that. I think once that becomes obvious, the issue is going to be, hey, let's make peace here. We've gotta make friends with these guys.

They know that we're not going to attack them. These nations know that. So, they, I believe, are gonna be, then, forced to turn away from the space, the military application of space, and work more cooperatively in the positive aspects of space.

And there are people who will say, you're wrong, Smith, because what's gonna happen is it's going to escalate, because they're gonna continue to do it. But that didn't happen with Gorbachev. It didn't happen with the Soviet Union. So the proof is out there. There's a precedent. It's not happening. And if it does happen, we have to be prepared to stop it.

And the benefits of having cooperative efforts in non-military application of space, such as space aircraft—low level orbit, which you can fly from Washington to Japan in about 20 minutes—I mean, there's a lot of great, positive things that can come out of space technology. There could be negative things. They could put a bomb on that plane.

Well, if we're producing it, and we're controlling it, we have the technology to shoot down the space plane if we think the Iraqis or somebody's going to put a bomb on it, and hit America with it, then they won't build it, because they know they're gonna lose and they're wasting their money. I mean, you just don't waste your money when you know you can't win. So I think there'll be more of an effort cooperatively.

We have the high ground, we need to hold the high ground. We've always had the moral high ground as well as the technological high ground. And there's no difference here in space....

Some of the people never want to move to the next level of weapons. I mean, we'd still be back using covered wagons to protect ourselves from Indian attacks, if some of these people had their way. You have to move, as we move along.

Weapons—we went from covered wagons to Gatling guns and machine guns and planes and bombs and nuclear bombs, and space technology. I mean, it's an evolutionary thing, and you've got to be ahead of the curve.

If you think about it, World War II, there was a very fine line between losing that war and winning that war. Hitler was six months away from producing nuclear rockets. Then he could have taken out England and France and the whole, and the United States, frankly. We stopped him, and it was close, and we don't wanna see it ever come that close again.