After the Gulf War: Balancing Spacepower’s Development

Early military applications of space-based assets bore little resemblance to their successful use in “the first information war.” The US developed most of its early space systems to serve the Cold War nuclear deterrence strategy. The need to protect space sources and methods resulted ina high degree of secrecy and organizational compartmentalization. As a result, when Desert Shield began the highly fragmented leadership of the space community lacked coherent doctrine, operated with an inherited top-down “technology push” for system requirements, and had little spacepower experience. Spacepower was simply unprepared to support the theater Commander-in-Chief in other than the Cold War strategic role.The experiences of the Persian Gulf War confirmed these characteristics–the majority of the documented lessons concerned a lack of doctrine or a lack of space literacy/experience. In the development of spacepower, doctrine and experience have evolved much more slowly than the pace of technology. In the interim, have the US participants redressed the imbalance that existed in the development of spacepower as witnessed in Operation Desert Shield/Storm? At issue for space policy makers is the question of whether or not reforms in technology, experience, or doctrine will move the US Military Space Program toward a more robust warfighting capability.