Space invaders

Scarcely noticed, the United States last month deployed its first ground-based missile interceptor at Fort Greely in Alaska. It was a significant step in the Bush administration’s ambitious and hugely expensive missile defence system — a project the Blair administration says it supports but one that, in the view of its many critics, will provoke a new arms race leading to the weaponisation of space, a true ”son of star wars” with profound implications for the rest of the world.

Deployment of the interceptor ”marks the end of an era where we have not been able to defend our country against long-range ballistic missile attacks”, said Major General John Holly, programme director for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defence system.

This has nothing to do with terrorists, repeatedly described by Bush and Blair as the greatest threat to the west. The al-Qaeda network of terrorists may want to get their hands on biological or chemical weapons, or a dirty bomb, but they are unlikely to be able to launch a long-range intercontinental ballistic against the US, or anywhere else.

”This extraordinary emphasis on missile defence represents misplaced priorities,” says the US Union of Concerned Scientists. ”The administration’s top priority should instead be combating the threat of nuclear terrorism.”

Up to five more interceptors are due to be deployed at Fort Greely by the end of this year. By the end of 2005, the US plan is to deploy 10 ship-based intermediate-range interceptors, a sea-based tracking radar and an upgraded radar at Fylingdales in Yorkshire.

Bush wants to spend $10-billion on missile defence in 2005, an increase of nearly $1-billion over this year’s expenditure on the system. His request has yet to be agreed by Congress, where there is a growing belief that the whole project is ideologically driven, a belief fuelled by widespread scepticism among Pentagon officials about whether it will work. That scepticism is not shared by their boss, Donald Rumsfeld, an enthusiastic supporter.

Rumsfeld is also a driving force behind US plans for weapons in space, the next step in America’s still-limited missile defence programme. He has talked about a threat from a ”space Pearl Harbor”. As little-noticed as the missile deployment at Fort Greely, his Missile Defence Agency has now earmarked nearly $70-million for Nfire — the acronym for the near field infrared experiment.

This project, due to have been launched this year but delayed because of rumblings in Congress, involves a series of test satellites in low-Earth orbit carrying infrared sensors. Initially, the idea is to enable the US military to distinguish between the rocket plume, or exhaust, of a missile fired by a potential enemy and the missile itself. But the system is also designed to carry a ”kinetic kill-vehicle” that will intercept a missile after it has been tracked.

Nfire will in effect be the first space weapon. That is the warning in Fighting for Space, a paper written by the Yorkshire Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to be published later this month. While Nfire is ”being marketed as a defensive system playing a part in the missile defence infrastructure, it could also be effectively deployed as an anti-satellite weapon able to destroy the space assets of other countries”, it says. It quotes a recent interview with an anonymous senior US government official who stated: ”We’re crossing the Rubicon into space weaponisation”. Or as the US Space Command noted last year: ”We cannot fully exploit space until we control it”.

CND comments that, ”given the widespread concerns that missile defence won’t work effectively, the statements by the US administration and military about controlling space and the asat [anti-satellite] capabilities of the missile defence system, it is no wonder that many states and individuals believe the system is being developed primarily for offence rather than defence”.

Russia has already developed a basic asat system. The Pentagon has expressed concern that China will be capable of launching asat weapons in two to six years. There are international agreements governing space, notably the 1967 outer space treaty. But these ban only ”weapons of mass destruction” — nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. They would not prohibit the kind of satellite wars now in prospect.

Washington, meanwhile, is determined to push ahead with its missile defence project, with the help of its allies, old and new.

The British American Security Information Council notes that last month during a visit to the UN, Australian defence minister Robert Hill said that Australia planned to help the US develop a missile defence system, although it ”faces no current threat from ballistic missiles”.

The US was last month reported to be negotiating with Poland and the Czech Republic over its missile defence programme and the location of the largest missile defence site outside America. The US also says it wants Japan to jointly develop equipment for missile defence systems.

In Britain, there is little or no debate, although the expanding US satellite ground station at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire will play a key part, along with Fylingdales. Earlier this year, Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, told Lindis Percy, the veteran campaigner against US bases in Britain: ”We are keen to see how the US system evolves … The agreement to the upgrade at Fylingdales and the close links between UK and US industry will give us close access to, and involvement in, the US missile defence programme.”

It is for British MPs to pick up the cudgel. Hoon’s senior military advisers are deeply concerned about the US’s missile defence project and what it could lead to. The issues are far too important for decisions to be allowed to go by default.