The Center for Defense Information
Center for Defense Information
1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW * Washington, DC 20036
(202)332-0600 * Fax (202)462-4559 * www.cdi.org
| December 16, 1999 |
| December 16, 1999 |
Editor's Note: Due to the Holidays, "The Weekly Defense Monitor" will not be published the weeks of December 20 and December 27. Normal publication will resume on January 6.
Our Nation's Future in Space
Jeffrey Mason, Research Analyst/Librarian, jmason@cdi.org
With the advent of a new century, dare the world hope for a future free of orbiting battle stations and an unending buildup of space and ground-based weapons?
There is evidence that the serious split between Russia and the U.S. over NATO's recent military action in Kosovo may heal. The recent announcement that U.S. and Russian negotiators will being working toward START III, a new round of reductions in strategic nuclear weapons arsenals, is a positive step. And although in July 1999 President Clinton signed the National Missile Defense Act committing the United States to make a decision on deploying ballistic missile defenses in June 2000, the President also made it clear that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty remains the "cornerstone" of strategic relations with Russia. In reaffirming the Administration's position "that our missile defense policy must take into account our arms control and nuclear nonproliferation objectives," the President indicated his deep aversion for any action (such as accelerating the rebirth of "Star Wars") that would reignite the Cold War.
America's future economic health will rely more and more on developments in the civil satellite market. Recent projections suggest that some 300 military satellites valued at over $35 billion will be launched worldwide in the next decade. But in the same period, more than a thousand commercial satellites valued at over $50 billion will also be launched. While U.S. industry continues to lead the world in commercial satellite building, its lead in space launch services is declining in the face of renewed competition from Russian and European aerospace companies.
A recent string of six U.S. launch failures (from August 1998 to May 1999) created additional concern that the United States is putting too many eggs in one basket -- the International Space Station (ISS) -- while neglecting critical government support of commercial launch systems.
The ISS, being built over the next five years by the U.S., Japan, Canada, the European Space Agency, and Russia, will cost the United States almost $96 billion, according to a May 1998 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office. This figure represents the total program cost to develop, assemble and operate the station through the year 2014, including $53.4 billion for space shuttle launch support. Critics argue too much money is being spent on the ISS and not enough -- only $3 billion annually -- on subsidizing the U.S. commercial launch industry.
The Clinton Administration insists it is doing enough. An October 1998 White House Fact Sheet announced that government and industry will form a partnership to develop and fly two families of Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (EELVs). Funded by an investment of $3 billion from government and $2 billion from private sources, this partnership promises to "reduce launch costs by 25-50 percent over the next twenty years." Administration supporters note that both the U.S. military and NASA are working to develop reusable launch platforms such as the experimental Boeing X-37, one of several planned NASA Future-X Pathfinder orbital space vehicles, as a follow-on to the space shuttle.
With billions being spent annually on space programs, critics are concerned about priorities. They point to the proposed ten percent reduction in NASA's space budget by House appropriators in August 1999 as not only a "knock" against pure science (the reduction severely impacts NASA's ambitious "faster, better, cheaper" unmanned rover missions to the planet Mars) but as a harbinger of future budgetary trends that favor military exploitation of space at the expense of civilian research and development. Not only is there no suggestion that military space funding will suffer a similar ten percent reduction, in the period 1995-1998 annual military space spending increased from 44.7 to 48.6 percent of the total space budget (military + civilian + "other" space spending) while NASA's funding decreased from 52.7 to 48.6 percent. (For a representative breakout of U.S. Space Funding from 1960-1998, see Part 4 of the full article on "Space: Battleground or Frontier of the 21st Century" on CDI's website.
In the 21st Century the U.S. military may become engaged in building up a space-based strike force while other nations begin exploiting the riches of the solar system by building giant orbital solar power stations, mining the moon and asteroid belt, pioneering new space propulsion and environmental protection technologies, and sending humans on manned missions to Mars and other celestial bodies. Such a scenario would relegate the United States to a dead-end future much like that of 15th and 16th century Portugal. This maritime nation pioneered great sea voyages of discovery to Africa and India but, in failing to exploit its early successes, became a second rate economic power while Spain, France, and England became the economic superpowers of the era.
A good model for multinational, nonmilitary use of and cooperation in is the Antarctic Treaty of 1959. For forty years the world has witnessed peaceful scientific cooperation in the exploration of this "final frontier" on Earth. There is no reason why the exploration and use of space could not replicate this success.
One such multilateral cooperative space project might tackle the threat from space debris. In the forty plus years of the space age, the thousands of satellites sent into space have benefitted humanity through improved communications, weather forecasting, navigation, and earth resource planning. These advances are now taken for granted, but there is an as yet unacknowledged future cost of unknown proportions. Amid the several hundred active satellites currently in orbit, there are thousands of pieces of space garbage. From spent rocket stages that never reentered the atmosphere to particles of propellant and corrosive byproducts of satellites, low Earth orbit has become a space "garbage heap." Most of the objects orbit from 120 to 1,200 miles above the Earth. There are currently over 10,000 orbital objects larger than 4 inches (10 centimeters) in diameter that can be tracked by radar and optical telescopes. Of these over 8,500 are catalogued by U.S. Space Command. Only five percent are operational spacecraft; the rest is space debris. Moreover, there are also tens or even hundreds of thousands of objects from 1 to 10 centimeters in size (half an inch to four inches) which are virtually impossible to track. Since these objects travel at tens of thousands of miles per hour, they represent a threat to active satellites and manned spacecraft. The space shuttle has had to change course several times in recent years to avoid collisions with space garbage, and the ISS is being equipped with special shielding to reduce the effects of impacts from these orbital objects.
A stepped-up international effort to improve detection and plot trajectories of this space debris with the aim to mitigate the dangers and one day eliminate the threat would represent an excellent multinational cooperative space project.
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- Do We Mean It?
Oscar Lurie, Research Associate
Despite the intensive media coverage of the disagreement between the Clinton administration and Senatorial conservatives over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the public has been left uninformed about the government's plan to circumvent the Treaty if it is ever ratified.
In 1993, anticipating the Treaty, Congress directed the Department of Energy (DoE) to start what it innocently called the "stockpile stewardship program." The purpose of the program was to assure that the existing stocks of nuclear weapons could be stored and transported safely and would be reliably able to perform their military mission in the event of a nuclear war.
With DoE's three nuclear laboratories starved for work and money, they were re-invigorated by this program which quickly grew to a $4.5 billion annual effort expected to last for 15 years or more. DoE has launched a highly complex "virtual testing" scheme, which strains the state of the art, to replace the role of actual detonations. The heart of the scheme is a trio of the world's fastest computers powered by thousands of microprocessors (like those used in PCs) programmed to run together and in parallel with the capability of two trillion calculations per second.
By 2005 DoE plans to have an array 100 times faster. This array will be surrounded by a large variety of new experimental facilities located in above-ground laboratories, one of which will cost $1.7 billion when completed sometime after 2005.
Well before DoE ramped up for these complex and expensive virtual tests, it had established that safety, portability, and undiminished explosive power could be determined without such tests. The possibility of accidental detonation is a function of the design itself; it does not increase with age. Neither do the chemicals which trigger the massive explosion of the warhead's nuclear elements suffer increased sensitivity with age. The electrical circuitry can be tested and replaced without simulated detonations.
Moreover, in the period when DoE was conducting real explosions, less than one percent of the 830 defects found in stockpiled weapons were disclosed by these tests. Indeed, DoE was satisfied to devote only 11 of its 387 tests to weapons reliability.
What, then, is the point of virtual testing? It is obviously to enhance U.S. capabilities for nuclear weapons design. With the world's most powerful stock of nuclear weapons, the U.S. hardly needs to improve them. If resources are to be devoted to nuclear weapons at all, they should be used to assist in and reward other nuclear weapons powers for reducing and destroying their own nuclear assets.
There is also the question of what is U.S. policy? In 1997, Congress created the "Commission on Maintaining U.S. Nuclear Weapons Expertise." The Commission reviewed DoE's efforts to attract and retain scientific, engineering, and technical personnel whom it viewed as "vital" to the security of the nation and provided ideas to improve personnel retention. The Commission also recommended a higher priority for production and improvement of replacement nuclear weapons components. On the other hand, DoE is giving Moscow millions of dollars in an effort to create non-defense jobs for 30,000 to 50,000 Russian weapons experts with the same types of skills DoE and the Commission consider so vital for the U.S. effort.
Pushing others to get out of the nuclear weapons game while the U.S. works to strengthen its own program is a contradiction that political leaders of other countries cannot ignore. They will see that, even if America ratifies the CTBT, it is conducting an end run around the CTBT restrictions. These countries, lacking the scientific and financial capacity to do their own virtual testing, will find it difficult to resist pressures to conduct real atomic detonations, a move that can easily restart proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The U.S. has two policies in direct conflict: a rhetorical one urging non-proliferation and reducing nuclear "assets," and a de facto policy of maintaining and enhancing America's lead in nuclear warfare. There should be only one policy. America should practice what it preaches.
Africa at the End of the Century
By Rachel Stohl, Research Analyst, rstohl@cdi.org
The 20th century has been called the bloodiest century in human history and the late 1990s have contributed to the toll. Even as peace agreements are implemented in Northern Ireland and Kosovo, there is renewed violence on battlegrounds in Angola and Chechnya. The media reports Russian attacks on the people of Chechnya, but the plight of Africans is, as usual, largely ignored by the American public and media.
The Clinton Administration seems more interested in helping undo the damage caused by years of neglect. President Clinton and Madeline Albright have traveled to Africa recently, and last week U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke visited Angola, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, among others. Holbrooke's visited prompted his announcement that when the United States takes over the presidency of the Security Council it will sponsor "the month of Africa."
What this means is not immediately evident, but while in Africa Holbrooke said that Angola will be the focus of U.S. activity. The government of Angola, led by President Jose Eduardo do Santos, has been fighting UNITA, a rebel group led by Jonas Savimbi, for over 20 years. Although the two sides have negotiated four peace agreements in the past, they are fighting yet again. The carnage is fueled by profits from oil and diamonds, with ordinary Angolans paying the price of having to live in a country without a viable infrastructure. During the Cold War, the United States sided with UNITA, but now the United States is supporting the Angolan government.
While Angola's return to war has been discouraging, significant strides have been taken in the last month to end other long and tragic conflicts. In Sierra Leone, the first UN peacekeepers have arrived, to oversee implementation of the July peace agreement by restoring some level of law and order. The death of former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere in October had left the Burundi peace process in flux. Now, former South African President Nelson Mandela has been appointed to mediate peace talks in Burundi. Many see Mandela's appointment as a sign that the six-year civil conflict may be resolved peacefully. To date 200,000 have died and 300,000 have been displaced by this war. In a surprise to many, the governments of Sudan and Uganda signed a peace agreement, brokered by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, in which both sides agree to restore diplomatic ties and vow "to stop supporting rebel groups trying to topple the government of the other."
As 2000 begins, the United States and the world must not abandon Africa. The positive advances that have been made by the leaders and peoples of many countries therein must be championed and supported. The U.S. cannot dictate the conditions for and circumstances of peace, but must listen carefully to the needs of Africans. Although Holboroke has declared that U.S. will not participate in an African peacekeeping mission, this does not preclude U.S. assistance to peacekeeping efforts.
Assistance to Africa might mean significant financial aid. The U.S. must invest in Africa, in Africans, and in the peace process to see real change. Holbrooke himself said that"peacekeeping requires far more than just words, more than paper agreements." Although he was talking about the Lusaka Protocols, which conditioned the cease-fire in Angola, the point is universal. U.S. involvement in Africa requires more than visits of high-ranking administration officials and pledges of conditioned financial assistance.
New Zealand May Try to Finesse F-16 Lease Deal with the U.S. -- Prime Minister-elect Helen Clark campaigned in opposition to last summer's deal to lease 28 F-16s, an agreement with the U.S. signed by the outgoing National Party government of Jenny Shipley. Clark's Labour-Alliance coalition government will scrap the deal if the "cost isn't too high," reported the current issue of Jane's Defense Weekly. CDI has learned that one option being considered by the incoming government is to instead offer to order 8 C-130J transports, an aircraft also produced by Lockeed Martin. C-130s would be more appropriate to the military posture favored by the new government which emphasizes peacekeeping and humanitarian operations requiring an expanded airlift capability. This offer would likely also be very attractive to Lockheed Martin, which faces a possible shutdown of its C-130J assembly line as a result of insufficient Pentagon orders (see following story). New Zealand's long-range procurement plan actually included eight C-130Js, but the order had to be postponed because the F-16 lease exhausted the available funds.
Air Force: C-130J Not a Near-term Requirement -- According to Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters, the service will not need to purchase the updated C-130J for another decade. While the Air Force plans to buy as many as 150 of the aircraft starting in 2002, lack of an immediate requirement and a demand for funds for higher priority programs have the Air Force looking at delaying the start of procurement. Earlier this year Lockheed Martin, the aircraft's manufacturer, stated that any delay would likely result in a shutdown of the production line, adding costs not only to the C-130J program, but also to the F-22, which will be produced at the same facility.
Boeing, Lockheed Martin Advance JSF Programs -- Both teams competing for the Joint Strike Fighter hit milestones this week. Lockheed Martin installed its first flight engine, produced by Pratt & Whitney, in its X-35 demonstrator. Meanwhile, Boeing unveiled its X-32A JSF, and in a surprise, its X-32B. The X-32A variant is the conventional take-off and landing model being developed for the Air Force, while the X-32B, which was started three months after the X-32A, is the short take-off and landing variant under development for the Navy, Marine Corps and Britain's Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.
DoD Faces $100 Billion Annual Shortfall -- According to a study released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) the modernization program envisioned in the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) will create a budgetary shortfall of as much as $100 billion annually between 2001 and 2005. The CSIS report, "Averting the Defense Train Wreck in the New Millennium," estimates that it will take $368 billion in FY'01 to fully fund the QDR force, and $573 billion more than is currently planned over the FY'01-05 period.
This week on America's Defense Monitor: "Colombia in Crisis"
U.S. weapons manufacturers relish the opening of the Latin America market to sophisticated armaments, including hi-tech fighter jets like the F-16. Why was the embargo against selling weapons to Latin America lifted? Many countries in the region are threatened more by intractable poverty than military threats. The introduction of costly and very lethal technology runs the risk of starting a regional arms race that could boomerang back at the U.S.
Airs in Washington, DC on Sunday, December 19 at 10:30 AM on Channel 32.
Airs in NYC on Friday, December 24 on Channel 25 at 8:30 PM, and on
Saturday, December 25 at 7:00 AM on Channel 13.
For air dates in other cities, check your local listings.
Visit our website for transcripts, CDI resources, and related links.
E-mail adminfo@cdi.org with "subscribe" in the subject line for
updates on new videos.
Regular Price: $39 each
INTERNET PRICE: $29
Order at 800-CDI-3334, or on the web.