A wake-up call
The document predicts that the potential for threats to the U.S. in and from space will increase as spacefaring nations become more numerous, and as their technologies continue to advance. It concludes that the U.S. has become so reliant on military, civil, and commercial space assets that they now constitute "an economic and military center of gravity—a vulnerability" for the nation.

A case in point was the May 1998 failure of the commercial communications satellite Galaxy 4 in geosynchronous orbit over the U.S. A malfunctioning on-board processor caused the satellite to lose its clock, blacking out most of the nation’s 45 million personal pagers and disrupting the flow of data on which many thousands of businesses, including banks, retail establishments, and news organizations, relied.

"That was a wake-up call," declares Brig. Gen. Michael A. Hamel, director of space operations and integration on the air staff at the Pentagon. "It made us aware of some vulnerabilities and dependencies in space that we hadn’t fully appreciated."

Hostile action against even a single U.S. satellite could cause chaos. Space control, states the paper, will therefore become "a required capability," one that "will be achieved by maintaining our situational awareness throughout the aerospace continuum, protecting our ability to use space, preventing adversaries from exploiting U.S. or allied space capabilities, and negating the ability of potential adversaries to exploit their own space capabilities."

Integration drivers
Much of the impetus for air and space integration comes from the air staff under the direction of Gen. Michael Ryan, USAF chief of staff, and his deputy chief of staff for air and space operations, or XO, Lt. Gen. Robert Foglesong. The XO shop has a big say in setting Air Force operational requirements and in formulating the plans, programs, and budgets to fulfill them. Thus the office plays a major role in forming a fully integrated aerospace force. Hamel, a career space officer, is the point man in that effort.

Ryan had foreshadowed the Air Force’s adoption of the "aerospace force" designation: In 1997 he noted that he preferred it to "air and space force," the name then in favor, because it more accurately denoted the seamless integration of air and space. Ryan described aerospace as "the vertical dimension" in which "military operations are blended and interdependent." He declared, "We are an aerospace force so interlocked that you cannot pull it apart. Separating air and space is like separating mountains from valleys. It just does not make any operational, tactical, or strategic sense."

Foglesong, a former fighter pilot and fighter wing commander, observes that the Air Force has long understood and appreciated the military value of space assets. "We have integrated space into air operations," he declares. "We have nothing to apologize for in that regard. But we can always do better. We are full-time operators in space. Our operational tempo in space is very high. Now we need to take air and space integration to the next level, and we’re doing that."

	Pre- and poststrike bomb damage assessment photographs of the Novi Sad Radio Relay & TV-FM Broadcast Station in Serbia, were used during a press briefing on NATO Operation Allied Force in the Pentagon on June 1, 1999.

Learning from recent conflicts
The white paper notes that Operation Desert Storm—the Persian Gulf War of early 1991—awakened the Air Force to the importance of space in modern warfare, and that the serv-ice has been working to integrate air and space ever since. U.S. space systems never fired a shot, dropped a bomb, or launched a missile in Desert Storm, but they might as well have. Their contributions in communications, navigation, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting, weather forecasting, and missile warning were central to the ability of U.S.-led combat forces to outgun and outmaneuver the enemy in the air and on the ground.

"The gulf war galvanized us," Hamel says. "It showed how important it was for us to integrate space all through the Air Force, from acquisition to logistics, from mobility forces to special operations forces, everywhere."

Ever since Desert Storm, the Air Force "has been bringing air and space closer together," the white paper says. The service has thus developed "new capabilities in navigation, precision strike, intelligence, and communications" and "innovative ways of fusing information." These post-Desert Storm initiatives to integrate air and space are said to have paid off handsomely in the Bosnia campaign of 1996.

That campaign led to "Global Engagement: A Vision for the 21st Century." This statement, issued by the Air Force in 1997, is "based on a new understanding of what air and space power mean to the nation—the ability to hit an adversary’s strategic centers of gravity directly, as well as prevail at the operational and tactical levels of warfare," to provide global situational awareness, and to "bring intense firepower to bear over global distances within hours to days." With this document, the Air Force "made a major commitment to the role of space in our future," Ryan later observed.

Operation Allied Force—the Kosovo campaign of 1999—took space support of combat forces to new heights. The operation marked a major advance in the integration of air and space capabilities—those of satellites and of manned and unmanned aircraft. It also "underscored our view of the seamless operational medium," notes the aerospace power document.

"For the first time," the paper said, "we were able to calculate the precise coordinates required by our satellite-guided weapons for targets that were identified [by] a Predator unmanned aerial vehicle video camera….In less than one minute, Predator video data was combined with three-dimensional terrain data derived from national satellites, then linked via satellite and radio to the cockpits of aircraft that were flying over Kosovo and Serbia."

In addition, U-2 spy planes flying over Kosovo and Serbia relayed their data in real time via satellite to imagery analysts in the U.S. The air and space linkage expedited the process of transforming the data into finished information for dissemination back to U.S. and allied joint-force combat commanders in Europe, who were able to use it in selecting ground targets for air strikes while the time was ripe.

The Kosovo campaign also demonstrated the great value of direct satellite communications links to airborne attack aircraft. This real-time-into-the-cockpit capability, a prime example of integrated air and space intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, enabled the air crews to switch to targets of opportunity while on the fly, and to avoid or elude newly perceived antiaircraft threats. The "flex targeting" technique was used for the first time over Kosovo and Serbia.

Integration challenges
The Air Force emphasizes that much remains to be accomplished by way of air-space integration. "Many of today’s air and space systems were not designed to be compatible in a system-of-systems construct," the service observes. "Tomorrow’s air, space, aerospace, and ground systems will be designed to operate together without regard for [each] system’s operating environment." Moreover, the products of such systems "will be exploited through systematic data fusion and analysis to produce timely and accurate information."

There is a downside to the U.S. military’s successful utilization of space: This success is not lost on prospective enemies, and may compel them to attack or disrupt U.S. space systems as a first priority. This makes it all the more urgent that the Air Force become capable of controlling space in defense of those assets, officials claim.

By integrating its air and space components and proclaiming itself an aerospace force, the Air Force hopes to mollify critics who accuse it of skimping on space to gain additional funding for air. Some warn that the U.S. may be forced to create a separate armed service, a space force, to assume full responsibility for space. Prominent among them is Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.), who has accused the Air Force of failing to move fast enough in developing combat spacecraft for power projection in and from space.

Smith is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which took the Dept. of Defense to task in a 1999 report, declaring: "For the most part, DOD tends to treat space as an information medium to support existing air, land, and sea forces, rather than the strategic high ground from which to project power….The committee believes that the United States must begin to take steps to exploit more fully space as a natural power center."

The Air Force contends that it is doing just that. Its white paper portrays space as a potential combat arena, and the Air Force as a potential space combatant. The service will complement its long-established capability to control the air with "an equally robust capability to control space," thus protecting U.S. space assets and "negating the ability of potential adversaries to use their own space capabilities," says the document.

Space defense…and offense
Space control is not necessarily synonymous with a shooting war in space. It could involve, among other things, air strikes on enemy launch facilities and space communications facilities and jamming of satellite communications. U.S. space systems have made it possible for an aerospace force to conduct such space-control operations with "breathtaking speed" and great accuracy, the white paper claims. Satellites operated or utilized by an enemy would be destroyed only as a last resort, officials agree.

"For space control, one leading concern is the proliferation of ballistic missile technology," the Air Force document notes. "The integration of airborne and space-based detection systems with directed-energy weapon systems such as the airborne laser and the future space-based laser are key to countering this threat." The paper calls space surveillance "the first step in space control," and predicts that the Space Based Infrared System, now in development, will greatly enhance U.S. space surveillance capabilities.

The Dept. of Defense is developing some weapons for possible future deployment in space, such as high-energy lasers and hit-to-kill ballistic missile interceptors, which are currently banned from space by international convention. Others in that category are weapons of mass destruction and weapons considered harmful to the terrestrial environment.

While space control is widely regarded as defensive in nature, and as a valid and justifiable mission, force projection from space is something else again. It is seen as an offensive mission, and national policy currently forbids it. Changing that policy would be a matter for the White House and Congress, not the Air Force, to decide.

Withal, the Air Force white paper states that the service must make all possible preparations to apply force from space, given the growing threats of long-range missiles, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism around the world. The integration of air and space "will present new opportunities for aerospace forces to maneuver within the entire vertical dimension and provide an array of long-range air and space capabilities," the document predicts.

This is why the Air Force is exploring technologies, doctrines, and concepts for the potential future application of combat power from space. Hamel says these include "the operation of reusable maneuver vehicles that could respond quickly, go into orbit, and deliver conventional munitions any place on the globe." Technologies for such vehicles were developed in previous programs—examples include propulsion, materials, thermal protection, systems integration, and avionics technologies for the national aerospace plane (NASP) program of the 1980s. NASP never came into being, because the Air Force concluded that its priority was too low and its cost too high to warrant full-scale development. Its contractors lost focus and stepped away.

The spaceplane concept remained alluring, however. In the mid-1990s, a space-launch modernization panel headed by Gen. Thomas Moorman, former head of the U.S. Space Command and Air Force Space Command, concluded that the nation should upgrade its expendable launch vehicles and also persist in developing the technologies for launch vehicles capable of returning to Earth from space. One outcome of that study was the X-33 program, viewed as a big step toward the eventual development of a fully reusable space launch system.

The Air Force embarked on another spaceplane design and development program several years ago, but set it aside for the time being to concentrate on higher priority programs for air and space. Meanwhile, the service continues to explore technologies for a wide range of transatmospheric vehicles.

"We want to make sure we’re doing the underlying long-lead-time technology for anything from weapons in orbit to long-range strategic reconnaissance and surveillance," Hamel says. "We need to develop and deliver the capabilities to counter a threat in space. If there’s a combat event in space, we need to be able to respond."

Shift in advanced programs
Two years ago, the Air Force Research Laboratory began reorienting its advanced technology programs and budgets more to space and less to air. This was seen as an historic shift, one in keeping with the emergence of an aerospace force in more than name only.

"We’re spending a much higher percentage today on space-related modernization than we did 10 years ago," Hamel asserts. He notes that nearly one-third of the Air Force modernization budget—for procurement and R&D—is devoted to space programs, and that all major space systems are being upgraded.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Space Command, spearheaded by its Air Force component command, has devised a long-range plan to institute a full-fledged space warfighting system by 2020. The plan describes the capabilities and concepts, rather than specific weapon systems, that are expected to be required for space control and for the application of military power from space into the atmosphere and onto Earth. The planning document notes, however, that the U.S. "will need to develop national policies supporting space warfare, weapons development and employment, and rules of engagement" before much more can be done to extend aerospace power into space.

Building the aerospace force that would extend such power will require "thoughtful changes to our personnel, organization, employment concepts, equipment, support for the joint team, and role in the broader aerospace community," the service says.

A new mindset
Over the next few years, the Air Force expects to develop "an aerospace mindset" in its personnel, largely by reorienting its training, education, and career development patterns. It plans to assign many more air officers to duty in space operations, and vice versa. Its goal is to develop future aerospace leaders who "will understand the capabilities and limitations of air and space platforms, as well as the synergies they bring to the battlespace," and who "will demonstrate the new operational concepts aerospace power provides," the white paper says. "These people," adds the paper, "will lead the full-spectrum aerospace force of the 21st century."

It may take some doing to instill this mindset throughout the Air Force. Some of the service’s air power champions have resisted the integration of air and space in the belief that it would lessen the relative importance of, and the rightful emphasis on, air power. Conversely, some space advocates resist integration because of fears that space will always remain secondary to air in the Air Force, no matter what, and that space can come into its own only at the hands of a separate service. These viewpoints, now seen as extremist, are on the wane, officials claim.

As a practical matter, the Air Force has set out to integrate all air and space weapon systems and information systems and to make them interoperable. "The result," predicts its white paper, "will be an aerospace force with more compelling capabilities, fewer vulnerabilities, and acceptable overall costs." The "systematic combination of air and space capabilities" will enable aerospace leaders to "make resource decisions based on capabilities that produce the desired military effects—regardless of where platforms fly, orbit, or reside." Acquisition officers will be trained to evaluate systems in this way, using newly standardized measures of performance.

In the operational world, the Air Force will assign space specialists to its forward-deployed aerospace operations centers. There they will team with air specialists in advising joint-forces commanders on how to make the best use of space assets in air operations. Space tasking orders will be integrated with air tasking orders.

The Air Force will also broaden the training of its JFACC (Joint Force Aerospace Component Commanders) to include aerospace education and field experience in aerospace operations. It will field a data fusion system to support Air Operations Centers by blending the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance data gathered by all types of sensors and feeding them into battle management systems in near real time. This should give the commanders a comprehensive view of their combat arenas and greatly improve their situational awareness, service leaders believe.

Space assets and capabilities will be factored more thoroughly into war games, simulated training and mission training, and air-combat exercises such as the renowned Red Flag activity at Nellis AFB, Nev. In such exercises, newly formed space aggressor squadrons will try to deny the participating aerospace forces the use of space systems.

"Our space people will go through weapons training just as our air and electronics warfare people do," Hamel explains. "It will be highly intensive, with lots of live flying. They’ll be on the leading edge of devising tactics and procedures for the aerospace force. The space aggressors will challenge our satellite operators and communications operators to work out procedures to deal with any kind of threat to our space systems."

How far might these aggressors go? "The aggressors will attempt to temporarily disrupt satellite operations to test the ability of operators and procedures to detect and respond to attack," Hamel explains.

The Air Force defends its stewardship of space by pointing out that it "fields the majority of both [fixed-wing] air and space capabilities within the Department of Defense," and that its share of the DOD space element exceeds its share of the air element in four principal categories:

Personnel: 90% of space, 82% of air

Budget: 85% of space, 73% of air

Assets: 86% of space, 75% of air

Infrastructure: 90% of space, 78% of air

The Air Force white paper on air and space integration notes that the service is "not America’s only operator in air and space," and that it does not have an exclusive claim on operations in space and the use of space.

Even so, states the document, "We are responsible for providing the full measure of efficient, effective, and interoperable aerospace capabilities to the joint team….The Air Force is uniquely trained and equipped to maintain aerospace forces and to understand the full range of applications those forces can provide."

Space commission urges Air Force realignment
The U.S. has no immediate requirement for a new military department with exclusive responsibility for space. The Air Force should be able to continue fulfilling that responsibility, if it is reorganized to refocus more sharply on space programs and operations and is given greater authority over them. In the future, however, as space continues to grow in importance, the national interest may require that a separate space force be established.

These are among the observations of the Commission to Assess U.S. National Security Space Management and Organization, a panel of civilian and military leaders appointed by Congress. The commission was chaired by Donald Rumsfeld before he became the Bush administration’s secretary of defense.

In its report earlier this year, the commission asserted: "The national security of the U.S. depends on its ability to operate successfully in space. If the U.S. is to avoid a ‘space Pearl Harbor,’ it needs to take seriously the possibility of a successful attack on space systems."

The increasing importance and vulnerability of U.S. space systems demand "that our national security space interests be elevated among our top national security priorities," and require the formulation of "a deterrence strategy for space," said the report.

"Space capabilities are not funded at a level commensurate with their relative importance," the commission declared. It called for heftier funding of programs in such areas as space launch, Earth surveillance, space defense, homeland defense, and "power projection in, from, and through space." It also proposed "a more robust science and technology program for developing and deploying space-based radar, space-based lasers, hyperspectral sensors, and reusable launch vehicle technology."

The Dept. of Defense "must develop the military capabilities for defending space systems and applying military power in and from space," the panel said. This will require "space systems that can be employed in independent operations or in support of air, land, and sea forces to deter and defend against hostile actions directed at the interests" of the U.S.

"In the long term, a [new] military department for space may best meet this requirement. In the nearer term, among the services, a realigned, rechartered Air Force is best suited to organize, train, and equip space forces," the commission observed.

The report expressed some dissatisfaction with Air Force stewardship of space: "Despite official doctrine that calls for the integration of space and air capabilities, the Air Force does not treat the two equally. The commission has heard testimony that there is a lack of confidence that the Air Force will fully address the requirement to provide space capabilities for all the [military] services.

"Many believe that the Air Force treats space as a supporting capability that enhances the primary mission of the Air Force, which is to conduct offensive and defensive air operations. As with air operations, the Air Force must take steps to create a culture within the service dedicated to developing new space system concepts and doctrine."

In this vein, the commission recommended that the Air Force realign headquarters and field commands, consolidating in Air Force Space Command all organizations responsible for space requirements, R&D, acquisition, and operations. This "would create a strong center of advocacy for space and an environment in which to develop a cadre of space professionals." The Army and the Navy would continue to establish requirements for, and develop and deploy, space systems unique to their needs, the panel noted.

The secretary of defense should designate the Air Force as "the executive agent for space within DOD," the commission declared. It proposed the appointment of "a single individual within the Air Force with authority for the acquisition of space systems for the Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office, based on the ‘best practices’ of each organization."