The race of the space warriors

UNITED STATES - At 10.23 on September 1, the United States Air Force launched a target missile from Kodiak Island in Alaska. Sixteen minutes later an interceptor missile, carrying a 155lb kill vehicle, streaked from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. At 10.46 the missiles collided in space over the Pacific. The target was destroyed.

"This is about as good as it gets," said Air Force Lieutenant General Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defence Agency (MDA), after the latest episode in America's 20-year quest to defend itself from missile attack.

The test was hailed as important because it marked the start of using US-based interceptors and radar, plus a redesigned kill vehicle, against a target that resembled a North Korean missile.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, an ardent MDA advocate, promised "even more challenging" tests.

The test was carefully orchestrated. The Air Force knew their target's position. And no countermeasures were used. The MDA is unlikely to enjoy this advantage in war.

The test will not quell critics who believe the quixotic quest for National Missile Defence, which dates to President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative, aka Star Wars, in 1983, is a waste of money.

"The current system will always be a lemon," said Stephen Young, senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. Lasers mounted on a 747, multiple-kill vehicles and other ideas may be used to defeat countermeasures, but nothing will disperse fears that MDA is a Trojan Horse being used by the US to put weapons into space.

This may seem fantasy, given that the US is unable to defeat low-tech insurgencies in Iraq or Afghanistan. But the notion that he who controls the high ground controls the world is an obsession among space warriors in Washington.

"While this test was about a ground-based system, the MDA has plans for a space-based system to augment the ground," said Teresa Hitchens, director of the Centre for Defence Information. "And this is all in the context of the US and China. MDA's most virulent supporters think China is the next enemy and if MDA ever works it would neutralise China's nuclear arsenal."

As China intends to put a man on the moon and build a space station by 2020, the Bush Administration, committed to pre-emptive war and military supremacy, is fired by a sense of urgency. Its desire to dominate space involves fantastic weaponry, major geopolitical stakes, and big bucks.

In some respects space is already full of the military. The heavens are stocked with spy and communications satellites that can be used in warfare. The US can identify targets using Global Positioning Satellites. Technically, this hardware does not violate the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which bans military bases on planets or the deployment of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

MDA dreams date from World War II, when Hitler fired V1 and V2 rockets at Britain. In the early 1970s the US deployed the Safeguard System to destroy Soviet Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) with US nuclear missiles. Congress closed it down within weeks. Crucially, America's Son of Star Wars programme is ground-based.

But this may soon change. In 2002 the US withdrew from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), which banned space-based weapons. Next February the MDA is expected to ask Congress to fund satellite-based interceptors, able to launch offensive weapons from space, possibly by 2011-12.

"The Administration has said they want to build a layered system that can shoot down missiles of any range - short, medium, long, ICBMs - from land, sea, air and space," said Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's former chief of evaluation during the first Bush and the Clinton eras. "Currently there are no attack weapons - shooters if you will - in space. But if we're going to put that kind of capacity in space, the first way it will likely happen will be because of MDA."

Given that it costs US$22,000 ($33,200) to send a kilogram into space, this is an expensive undertaking. Analysts expect the MDA will ask Congress for US$45 million for interceptors. This is mere seed money, a fraction of the US$441.5 billion US defence budget.

The big question is if the MDA's request will trigger a public debate about weapons in space.

"The Bush Administration has received a free pass from Congress on missile defence since 9/11," said Wade Boese, research director with the Arms Control Association. "If they went to space I think that changes it. This is a line many in Congress and the American public are reluctant to cross."

Nonetheless, advocates dream of having futuristic space weapons straight out of Flash Gordon. In its Transformation Flight Plan of November 2003 - which reveals what sort of weapons might be deployed in the future - the Air Force introduced Rods From God, a hypersonic cruise vehicle that would fire uranium, titanium or tungsten cylinders at targets at 11,585km/h, a vision that defies physics.

Other weapons systems would involve huge mirrors suspended from satellites to direct laser beams at targets. And military space planes could, theoretically, strike any target on Earth within 45 minutes.

In January 2001 Rumsfeld warned of a Pearl Harbour in space and said warfare there was a certainty. He recommended the Pentagon made sure the President had the option to deploy weapons in space.

Even if Rods From God is a fantasy, anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons are not. In 1985 a missile fired by an F-15 fighter destroyed a US Solwind satellite. The Air Force is also pursuing ground-based lasers. And the MDA may raise the ASAT bar by asking Congress to fund space-based interceptors.

In the context of pre-emptive warfare this creates an alarming prospect where space weapons may be part of a continuum that stretches from Special Forces into the twilight zone. The latest missile defence test suggests capability to destroy satellites orbiting on a fixed trajectory.

Apart from the risk of debris hitting Earth (titanium fuel tanks may survive re-entry), or damaging other satellites, this raises the spectre of a counter-strike from a foe that fears a satellite hit is the prelude to a nuclear attack - which was why the ABM Treaty banned attacks on satellites.

There are also geopolitical consequences. "If the US starts to weaponise space, or even develop hard capabilities to destroy satellites, then not just China, but any country that wants the potential to threaten the US will have to respond," said Young. "That's inevitable."

That would mean an arms race. Thus, China, which has 20 ICBMs able to reach the US, might boost its nuclear arsenal so it could overwhelm US missile defence - Russia can already do so. It may also fuel a space-arms race.

The Bush Administration, backed only by Israel, has refused to entertain UN proposals to discuss space weapons.

Hitchens fears bellicose US rhetoric provides political cover for others to violate a four-decade old unofficial moratorium on space weapons and says Israel is a potential space warrior.

Ironically, the hawks' desire for US hegemony on earth and in space could fuel an arms race that erodes American supremacy.

It will be hard to put the genie back in the bottle if interceptors are funded.