Plowshares and Power: The Military Use of Civil Space

Since the wall dividing the Germanies came down, symbolically marking the end of the Cold War, three new movements have become clear in the strategic planning of the more powerful nations: (1) regional issues are supplanting global ones; (2) roles and missions for the armed forces are changing; (3) the balance between military and economic strength is shifting toward the economic. The United States is experiencing major changes in all three areas. With the third area in particular, U.S. planners urgently need new policies to exploit technological advantages in general, and the military uses of civil space in particular. Plowshares and Power offers a framework for creating such policy alternatives. It examines future possibilities in three military applications of civil space: remote sensing, communication, and navigation. In suggesting a new mix of strategies for each application, it finds a single common basis rooted in the changing balance of strength between the military and the economic-namely, export controls of new technology. It offers a detailed model as a standard for a new technology policy-one that would help create technology advantage, preserve it, and maintain control over technology transfer. Colonel Preston's work cuts through the complexities and uncertainties of the issues he addresses. His vision is to sustain our critical military advantage in advanced space technologies and, by so doing, maintain the powerful economic force of U.S. commercial growth in these technologies. He envisions a controlling strategy in which military power and economic power are not competitive with each other but synergistic. He offers an alternative to a long-standing policy of stringent control of the spread of space technologies through transfer, suggesting instead multilateral approaches that would strengthen the U.S. economy, control proliferation technology, and improve the overall security of the nation. Ervin J. Rokke Lieutenant General, USAF President, National Defense University