NASA Announcer: "Lift off. We have a lift off 32 minutes past the hour. Liftoff on Apollo 11."

NARRATOR: Humans have always looked to the heavens for inspiration, for a sense of wonder and adventure.

Astronaut NEIL ARMSTRONG: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

NARRATOR: Into the blackness of space, we have projected our dreams and our nightmares.

JOHN PIKE: The original idea behind MILSTAR was that it would enable the president to talk to our nuclear forces. He really wouldn't have very much to say beyond "Go bomb Moscow."

Senator DALE BUMPERS (D-AR): But when you consider the fact that here is a system that's already seven years late, already cost $9 billion, going to cost an additional $22 billion, every dime of it borrowed money. My great, great grandchildren will be paying interest on this money. When you consider the fact it has no justification, no military validity, at a cost as staggering as that, it just drives me right up the wall.

Announcer at Launch: "One, two, three. We have liftoff."

NARRATOR: MILSTAR, a military satellite communications systems, conceived to survive a six-month nuclear war, is having trouble staying alive in the budget battles of the post-Cold War era.

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense (March 9, 1994 before Senate Budget Committee):

"We looked rather extensively at the MILSTAR program, thinking that it might be an area of considerable savings here. We did not reach that conclusion."

NARRATOR: MILSTAR will be the most expensive communications satellite system ever built. Does our security depend on it? Or, is MILSTAR a Millstone from the Cold War?

["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.]

Admiral EUGENE CARROLL, Jr.: Many costly weapons systems in production today were originally justified by the Pentagon as necessary to fight a major war against the Soviet Union. Now that threat is gone, but the Pentagon still wants the same weapons to fight regional wars against smaller, weaker opponents.

One such system is the MILSTAR satellite, and we're going to take a hard look at it today. You will hear authorities come down on both sides of the question: Is the MILSTAR a relic of the Cold War or do we really need it to fight these regional wars? As much as $20 billion may be riding on the answer that Congress gives to that question.

President JOHN F. KENNEDY: "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade, and..."

NARRATOR: Though the exploration of space was born in the spirit of Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, the most promising space programs have centered on peaceful applications: Exploring the solar system for hints of our own origins, assessing crop yields to help meet our planet's food gap, monitoring the toll we have taken on nature to help make the case for environmental protection. Space has also become home to scores of satellites that provide us the means to forecast the weather and communicate with the world.

But there's still a darker side to space, and it lies in humankind's obsession with war to resolve conflict. The military has discovered space in a big way.

Perhaps the most stirring call to look to the heavens for military salvation came from Ronald Reagan, who raised the possibility of a "Star Wars" peace shield to protect the nation from nuclear war.

President RONALD REAGAN: "I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."

NARRATOR: Though not trumpeted with the same fanfare as Star Wars, the MILSTAR satellite communications system was a not so distant cousin in the family of nuclear war systems.

Mr. PIKE: MILSTAR originated in the late 1970s, when it was called STRATSAT, intended to provide a highly survivable, very secure communications between the commander-in-chief, the president, and our nuclear forces, missiles, bombers, and submarines.

NARRATOR: Jonathan Pike, a prominent analyst of Pentagon space programs for the Federation of American Scientists, has followed MILSTAR from its nuclear warfighting days.

Mr. PIKE: Under the Reagan administration, the program was changed to MILSTAR, its current name, and was part of the Reagan administration's strategy of being able to fight a protracted nuclear war. MILSTAR was intended to survive nuclear combat for a period of up to six months and, as a result, the satellite has absolutely heroic survivability measures, including hardened against nuclear weapons, laser weapons, an ability to manuever away from an anti-satellite weapon that might be launched against it.

NARRATOR: Leaving aside the question of whether MILSTAR could perform as heroically as it was designed to, critics of the system have wondered about the rationality of preparing to fight a protracted nuclear war.

Mr. PIKE: Even if MILSTAR itself might be able to survive several months of nuclear combat, it's very difficult to imagine that there would be anything left here on earth for it to talk to.

NARRATOR: From humankind's earliest experience with danger and conflict, there has been an age-old need for communication, starting perhaps with a simple yell to warn of an attacking animal, to the use of drums to signal an advancing war party, the use of communication in conflict situations evolved in swifter and more sophisticated ways.

The forces fighting for America's independence took advantage of a revolutionary form of communication created by military surgeon Albert J. Mayer, whose knowledge of hand signals for the deaf led him to use flags for battlefield messages.

Up until the mid-1800s, couriers on horseback remained the primary form of military communication. During the Civil War, communication took a great leap forward with the development of the telegraph. Bad weather might stop messengers on horseback, but not the dots and dashes sent over wires.

In World War I, thousands of miles of wire were stretched across Europe, allowing phone contact between men at the front and the leaders at the rear. Pigeons also served their country.

NARRATOR of Newsreel: "Off into the sky. The worst weather will seldom stop the pigeon's straight, swift flight to his loft."

NARRATOR: And flew in the face of the enemy to deliver their messages.

In World War II, soldiers used radar, bouncing radio waves off of moving targets to detect the approach of enemy planes. Radio communications also allowed combatants to send large amounts of information rapidly. Radio could be used to warn, inspire, or both.

General MaCARTHUR: "This is the voice of freedom, General MacArthur speaking. People of the Philippines, I have returned."

NARRATOR: Radio communications became more sophisticated and with the advent of the space age, the ability to relay information into wartime took a great leap upward.

The United States began using satellites for military communications in the Vietnam War. From the high ground of space, satellites could cover the world and convey military information to everyone from the president to submarine commanders.

Long-distance communications have served a number of different military functions: From providing an early warning system of worldwide military activity, to ocean surveillance and navigation, and spy photographs.

From NORAD film: "Quick alert!... Quick alert!... First alert!... This is warning, the storm is quick alert... This side appears to be... Roger, understand, a launch from the Soviet Union..."

NARRATOR: As the weapons of war became more deadly, a need was seen for communications systems that could survive even in the midst of a nuclear war.

MILSTAR was born of the desire for an indestructible central nervous system that could transmit messages to bombers, missiles and submarines. MILSTAR, or "Military Strategic, Tactical and Relay System," was seen as a giant switchboard to be used primarily for sending emergency messages to US forces during an enemy attack.

Mr. PIKE: The original idea behind MILSTAR was that it would enable the president to talk to our nuclear forces. He really wouldn't have very much to say beyond, "Go bomb Moscow."

NARRATOR: Though the MILSTAR program was initiated in 1981, the first satellite was not launched until February of 1994. A satellite designed to fight in a nuclear war was launched into a very different world. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the need for MILSTAR as originally conceived also collapsed.

In 1990, four years before the launch of the first MILSTAR satellite, Congress had already decided that with the end of the Cold War, we no longer needed a space-based brain to fight a six-month nuclear war. The wars of the future would likely be fought with conventional weapons in regional hot spots. The military's communication needs had changed.

Congressional concerns about MILSTAR's high costs, its unnecessary nuclear war-fighting capability, and the inadequate communication support it would provide to tactical forces on the ground forced a revaluation of the system. The Department of Defense was given a choice.

Lou Rodriguez has followed MILSTAR for the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

LOU RODRIGUEZ: Congress gave them the option of either stopping MILSTAR as we then we knew it and starting a whole new program, with the primary emphasis on the tactical uses, or restructuring the existing MILSTAR program.

Lt. General PETER KIND: MILSTAR was designed originally for nuclear war. But we, at the end of the Cold War, re-looked at our requirement, we looked at what was expected of us.

NARRATOR: Lieutenant General Peter Kind is the Army's Director of Information Systems for Command, Control, Communications and Computers.

General KIND: And so, we looked at where we would be deployed and the means to get there, and redesigned accordingly. MILSTAR gives us a capability of assured communications on short notice to any of the places in the world that we needed to go.

NARRATOR: MILSTAR was originally conceived to consist of a constellation of up to ten satellites, orbiting the earth and communicating with aircraft, ships, submarines and ground forces, or what are referred to as "terminals."

In January 1991, the Department of Defense reported back to Congress their plans to restructure the MILSTAR system for conventional wars, rather than develop a new satellite communications system. But some members of Congress remain unconvinced.

Senator KENT CONRAD (D-ND) (Senate Budget Committee):

"I have visited with top defense officials who tell me it is a Cold War dinosaur. It is way over-built, over-engineered for what we need for the future. As a result, it costs far too much and delivers too little in terms of communications capability."

Secretary PERRY (Feb. 7, 1994, congressional hearing):

"Some people consider MILSTAR a Cold War relic. We have totally -- beginning already with the Bush administration and continuing on to this administration -- completely reconfigured that system, so that many of the factors which made it so expensive, which is its ability to withstand nuclear blasts and so on, those features no longer exist in MILSTAR.

"What does exist in MILSTAR is the ability to connect our tactical units worldwide with high quality, high resolution digital data, so that they can pass commands back and forth, so that they can pass targeting data, so they can pass intelligence information. And it does it in such a way which is highly resistent to interference, such as jamming."

General KIND: MILSTAR is driven by our requirement to be able to go anyplace in the world, to fight anywhere and win decisively.

NARRATOR: The most important shift in military communication needs is from the brief emergency messages envisioned during nuclear war -- what analysts refer to as "low data rate service" -- to the more complex information flow needed during continuing conventional battles, or what is known as "medium and high data rate service."

Mr. RODRIGUEZ: And that's really where their emphasis was, to provide significantly more of what's called "through-put" the -- numbers of calls you could have at any given point, the pages of facsimiles you could transmit at any given point, the numbers of listeners at any given point, and all those types of features -- to increase that substantially so you could make it available to all these people on the ground.

NARRATOR: For those who ponder the military's need to communicate during the heat of battle, the ability to convey more complex messages must be accompanied by the assurance that the enemy cannot stop the messages from getting through. A satellite's ability to resist jamming is the second important link in the communications chain.

Mr. PIKE: Jamming of any communications system, or particularly a satellite communications system, is primarily accomplished by beaming a stronger signal to the satellite than it would normally be receiving by an authorized user. That stronger signal would simply drown out the authorized user's signal and no communications would take place.

NARRATOR: Both critics and proponents of MILSTAR point to the logic of having a military communications system that can transmit necessary information without outside interference. The question comes down to: Is MILSTAR that system?

General KIND: The need for MILSTAR is clearly established and clearly supported by those who are in the business of fighting our nation's wars.

Senator BUMPERS: It just so happens that it is probably the most egregious waste of money that I could find. Number two, it is also about the most money for one weapons systems that has absolutely no justification. The New York Times called it "the modern pterodactyl." It is a dinosaur. It is a Cold War relic, conjured up back in 1980, and has long since ceased to have any justification whatever.

NARRATOR: Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas has been a leading opponent of MILSTAR in Congress, and introduced legislation to terminate funding for the satellite system.

Senator BUMPERS: But when you consider the fact that here is a system that's already seven years late, already cost $9 billion, going to cost an additional $22 billion, every dime of it borrowed money -- My great, great grandchildren will be paying interest on this money. When you consider the fact that it has no justification, no military validity, at a cost as staggering as that, it just drives me right up the wall.

Mr. PIKE: Each of the MILSTAR satellites cost approximately a billion dollars to build and about a third of a billion dollars to launch. These are extremely expensive satellites by any standards, about five times more expensive than other military or commercial communication satellites.

VOICE at Launch: "T minus 9, 8, 7, 6..."

NARRATOR: The first MILSTAR satellite, referred to as MILSTAR I, was launched in February 1994.

VOICE at Launch: "We have liftoff. The Titan IV carrying the first MILSTAR satellite."

NARRATOR: MILSTAR I is the same satellite that was specifically designed for communication during a nuclear war.

Mr. RODRIGUEZ: Because it is so large, it requires the use of a Titan IV launcher, which is the most expensive satellite launcher, or the most expensive launch vehicle in our inventory.

Senator BUMPERS: It obviously is not what they want. They're putting it up simply because they already had them paid for, so why not.

NARRATOR: Current plans call for another MILSTAR I satellite to be launched in 1995, followed by four redesigned satellites called MILSTAR II, launched between 1999 and 2002.

John Pike finds the redesigned MILSTAR more like a very expensive after-thought.

Mr. PIKE: MILSTAR is a 10,000 pound satellite and 8000 pounds of that is hardware that we launch into orbit is the same MILSTAR that was designed to fight and win World War III back during the Cold War. The remaining 2000 pounds, dedicated to supporting combat troops out in the field, could be put into orbit on a much smaller satellite at a fraction of the price, if we decided that we needed it.

General KIND: There are other alternatives proposed, but they're largely still in the state of xerox engineering. It's easy to make the proposal, but what we have right now has been derived as the result of the best efforts. It stood the test of the Bottom-Up Review, where we went through in great detail over each of the aspects, and the schedule that we have right now is the best capability with the given state of art that we know of.

NARRATOR: With a push from Congress, the Department of Defense is currently planning to replace the MILSTAR II satellite design with MILSTAR III in the year 2006. MILSTAR III will be a smaller satellite that will be able to be launched by a smaller, less expensive rocket.

The General Accounting Office has weighed in with an alternative that calls for moving more quickly to a follow-on satellite in the year 2003.

Mr. RODRIGUEZ: They plan to move to MILSTAR III after the sixth MILSTAR satellite, and they plan to do that with a launch in the year 2006. All we're saying is that you could move that advance of that MILSTAR III satellite up to 2003 and, therefore, avoid having to buy MILSTARs V and VI. And, yes, you'd have a slight gap in your period of time in which you'd get that full constellation of MILSTAR up, but you would have two fully capable MILSTAR IIs on orbit, and that provides you quite a bit of coverage.

NARRATOR: The General Accounting Office says their plan would save taxpayers upwards of $2 billion. Using the GAO report, Senator Dale Bumpers offered an amemendment to cut off funding for MILSTARs Five and Six as a way to get the Pentagon to deploy a smaller, cheaper satellite sooner than currently planned. While the amendment was voted down in the Senate, Senator Bumpers plans to offer it again during debate on next year's military budget.

Senator BUMPERS: I have no objection to a new satellite technology. What I object to is one that's as costly as this to fight a six-months nuclear war, which is absurd on the face of it, when we have a follow-on technology that could be deployed by the year this thing is finally kaput that would be much better and cost a lot less money. There's absolutely no reason for MILSTAR.

NARRATOR: Jonathan Pike believes the answer to our military communication needs is even closer at hand: In satellites already existing, as part of the Defense Satellite Communications System, of DSCS.

Mr. PIKE: I think that, basically, the military today needs communications that has some resistance to jamming, even though the Iraqis made no effort to jam our satellites during Desert Storm, and are also capable of being supported by small terminals that you can drive around in the back of a truck. Fortunately, it turns out that we have a lot of satellites in orbit right now that have that capability, notably the Defense Satellite Communications System, which has an anti-jam capability and can be supported with small terminals.

General KIND: Well, the DSCS system, the satellite that we use principally today, and the other commercial systems are quite alike in a lot of ways. What they don't meet for us is, number one, the satellite systems themselves are not very sophisticated in terms of what they do for us. And so, we have to carry large ground terminals. If we want any degree of assuredness of communications, we have to add additional modems on them to make sure they'll work through in case of jamming or other interference.

Senator BUMPERS: Nobody has ever tried to jam a system that we have in space. Nobody has tried to jam any of our communications systems. The DSCS system which we have in place right now and which we used during Desert Storm and everything, nobody ever tried to jam that system. The only reason that system began to falter is because of routine traffic out of the Pentagon, using it for purposes for which it was not intended and creating a sort of a log jam.

Mr. PIKE: So, during Desert Storm, only 10 percent of the capacity of that satellite was available to support our troops in the field. If we could offload a lot of that routine administrative, bureaucratic traffic on to commercial communications satellites, we'd have much more communications capacity to support our combatant forces at a fraction of the price that we would get from MILSTAR.

General KIND: We have a need for much greater capacity, us and the other services, than MILSTAR is planned to provide. We're only looking for it to provide that basic combat commander's need of communications. But in order to do all of the things that it requires to support our forces, we will use DSCS and commercial satellites and other programs within the services to their fullest extent. We've done that before and we'll continue to do it.

NARRATOR: While the fate of MILSTAR is being debated in the halls of Congress, critics of the program point to it as an example of a larger problem: The business-as-usual mentality that rules the military budget, even in the absence of an adversary as formidable as was the former Soviet Union.

Mr. PIKE: Unfortunately, everything that you can say about MILSTAR, you can say about most of today's defense budget. We're continuing to spend a quarter of a trillion dollars a year, the amount that we were spending back in the 1970s, at a time when there's simply no foreseeable adversary anywhere on the planet that would justify that level of expenditure either for MILSTAR, in particular, or for much of the Defense Department, in general.

Senator BUMPERS: If I were to go back and list all the systems that I had talked about, from retrofitting battleships -- think about how stupid that was -- to the building of the B-2 bomber, all of those things are now proving to be true. The MILSTAR system -- as certain as I'm sitting here talking to you, the MILSTAR system will be considered, ten years from now, a colossal waste of money. But it's just very difficult to stop it.

General KIND: So, we have great confidence that we've done the right thing. We've distilled it to the right requirement and that this is the answer that will help America win its battles decisively early-on and with low loss of life.

Mr. PIKE: I think, unfortunately, a lot of the congressional support for MILSTAR, in particular, and for much of the defense budget is that our national security establishment has basically become a white-collar welfare program. So many members of Congress are concerned about jobs in their district or jobs for corporations that have given them campaign contributions that much of our military decision-making, certainly in the case of MILSTAR, is no longer being driven by national security requirements, but simply by the interests of the contractors.

Senator BUMPERS: You look at the charts on where they have let contracts, you look at how many states are involved in building a piece of MILSTAR. And so a senator says, 'Well, you know, I've got $10 million of this in my state,' or 'I've got 500 jobs in my state on this project.' That's the reason why we have a $4 trillion national debt.

NARRATOR: A MILSTAR map of the United States would show nine major defense contractors involved in building the satellite system. The contractors are, in turn, supported by over 1300 suppliers in 35 states, who supply components of the system or other services. More than half of the suppliers are located in military contract-dependent California.

The Department of Defense reports that nearly 8000 people are either employed directly by defense contractors working on MILSTAR or by their subcontractors and suppliers.

Mr. PIKE: The real question is whether we intend to give them jobs that are not productive and are simply make-work, like MILSTAR, or whether we take up that obligation to find them productive jobs that are going to actually contribute to the wellbeing of our society. And that's the direction I think we need to be going, to convert the military-industrial complex to something that's going to make all of Americans better off.

NARRATOR: While the MILSTAR satellite system rose from the ashes of the Cold War, its future is still up in the air. But MILSTAR supporters and critics have one thing in common: they know there's a lot at stake. Potentially $22 billion in future military costs.

General KIND: The only alternative that we see as feasible right now to get that thin rod of steel, that assured response in the weight and the flexibility capability is the MILSTAR alternative.

Senator BUMPERS: And the one thing the Pentagon knows how to do is come up with new justifications, new rationales for spending money for whatever they happen to want.

[End of broadcast.]