AFP/Agencies,
New York: The United States may be heading for putting defensive and offensive weapons in space.
The American Air Force, saying it must secure space to protect the nation from attack, is seeking President George W Bush's approval of a national-security directive that could move the US closer to fielding space weapons, the New York Times reported today.
A Presidential directive is expected within weeks, the report added quoting a senior administration official, who, it said, is involved with space policy and insisted he should not be identified because the directive is still under final review and the white house has not disclosed its details.
The Times quoted a senior administration official as saying a new presidential directive would replace a 1996 Clinton administration policy that emphasised a more pacific use of space, including spy satellites' support for military operations, arms control and nonproliferation pacts.
Any deployment of space weapons would face financial, technological, political and diplomatic hurdles, although no treaty or law bans Washington from putting weapons in space, barring weapons of mass destruction, the report said.
Air force officials told the paper that the directive, which is still in draft form, did not call for militarising space.
“The focus of the process is not putting weapons in space,” said Maj Karen Finn, an Air Force spokeswoman, who added that the white house, not the air force, makes national policy. “The focus is having free access in space.”
With little public debate, the paper said, the Pentagon has already spent billions of dollars developing space weapons and preparing plans to deploy them.
“We haven't reached the point of strafing and bombing from space,” Pete Teets, who stepped down last month as the acting secretary of the air force, told a space warfare symposium last year. “Nonetheless, we are thinking about those possibilities.”
In January 2001, a commission led by Donald H Rumsfeld, then the newly nominated Defence Secretary, recommended that the military should “ensure that the president will have the option to deploy weapons in space,” the Times recalled.
It said that “explicit national security guidance and defence policy is needed to direct development of doctrine, concepts of operations and capabilities for space, including weapons systems that operate in space.”
The effort to develop a new policy directive, the times said, reflects three years of work prompted by the report. The white house would not say if all the report's recommendations would be adopted.
In 2002, after weighing the report of the Rumsfeld space commission, bush withdrew from the 30-year-old antiballistic missile treaty, which banned space-based weapons.
Ever since then, the times said, the air force has sought a new presidential policy officially ratifying the concept of seeking American space superiority.
The Air Force believes “we must establish and maintain space superiority,” Gen Lance Lord, who leads the Air Force space command, told Congress recently. “Simply put, it's the American way of fighting.”
