Revolution in Military Affairs, Missile Defence and Weapons in Space: The Us Strategic Triad

Abstract

American plans for Missile Defence (MD) and the weaponisation of space should be analysed in the larger framework of the contemporary Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA).1 Soviet military analysts have written about this revolution from as early as the 1970s, but it was the application of information age technology (IT) in the 1991 Gulf War that captured the imagination of military planners and policy makers, especially in the US. The US is actively pursuing an RMA, conceptualised as integrating new IT into weapons systems and integrated command, control, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) and, in turn, doctrinal, operational and organisational change in the military to take advantage of information dominance on the battlefield. This relates to MD and the weaponisation of space in two ways. Firstly, very few countries have the financial and technological capability to modernise their defence forces along the lines of a US-defined RMA, which means that they may resort to so-called asymmetric means to exploit the vulnerabilities or weaknesses of a strong, conventional power. Ballistic missiles (in association with chemical, biological or nuclear payloads) are one of the asymmetrical threats most commonly cited in speeches and military documents of the US and used as justification of MD. Secondly, the RMA increases the US military's reliance on space-based military assets for C4ISR. Placing weapons in space to protect these assets is seen as a logical step to ensure a key aspect of US dominance on the battlefield. This paper a The author would like to express her sincere thanks to Prof Bruce Larkin and Peter Wright for 'musings' on earlier drafts of this article, the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs for providing a forum where earlier drafts were presented, the reviewers and Editor of Scientia Militaria for very useful comments and to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC) for the funding of my graduate research on which this article is partially based. The views expressed are the author's and not attributable to the CSC. 73explores the extent to which the strategic framework of the RMA has a bearing on US MD and space weaponisation arguments.

Revolution in Military Affairs: The United States and Its Big Competitors

“…This is when new technologies like stealth and precision guided munitions thrived, and new operational concepts were developed. It was the beginning of the so-called, network centric warfare, information operations and wider developments of the C4ISR (Pretorius, 2011). A new RMA emerged against weaker enemies.…”

“…The former might not have posed any problems when fighting against terrorists, but according to Wortzel (2008), an adversary such as China could easily disrupt these domains. Moreover, aside from the fact that space enables the current US RMA, it is at the same time seen as an element that increases vulnerability (Pretorius, 2011). Besides, US capabilities have not been yet tested in an all-out war and under no circumstances could it be suggested that the US would easily win a potential war with China and/or Russia due to its technological advantages or its ongoing RMA (Bitzinger, 2017).…”