Book Description

At the requests of the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Office of Technology Assessment of the United States Congress undertook an assessment of the opportunities and risks involved in an accelerated program of research on new ballistic missile defense technologies, including those that might lead to deployment of weapons in space. The resulting report, Ballistic Missile Defense Technologies, is being published concurrently with this volume. This report on Anti-Satellite Weapons, Countermeasures, and Arms Control discusses additional implications of the same or similar technologies. Closely related to BMD technology, system survivability, and arms control issues are questions about the development and deployment of anti-satellite weapons. Whether or not the United States decides to deploy BMD systems in space, other military uses of space will continue to grow in importance. How can the United States respond to the potential threat to its military capabilities posed now and in the future both by Soviet military satellites and by Soviet anti-satellite weapons (ASAT)? This report examines U.S. options for countering Soviet military satellite capabilities and explores both unilateral and cooperative measure for limiting the ASAT threat. Possible unilateral steps include active and passive countermeasures as well as deterrence; possible cooperative steps include a variety of arms control agreements. The report examines the pros and cons of several illustrative "arms control regimes" for space weapons, ranging from lesser to greater limitations than now exist. It suggests that some combinations of unilateral and cooperative measures might provide more military security than either type alone. It should be recognized that the relative roles of anti-satellite weapons, countermeasures, and arms control will be strongly affected by the course followed in the development and deployment of space-based BMD systems.