New World Vistas: Air and Space Power for the 21st Century. Space Applications Volume.
Abstract
Space is the ultimate high ground. It is substantially different from air, land and sea because operations in space are truly global by nature. Space is fundamental to achieving global presence, global reach, and global force. The challenge in this new age is how to efficiently manage our space assets consistent with rapid commercial technology evolution and limited defense budgets. Modern day thought about the utilization of space stands where our thinking about the airplane stood at the early stages of World War I - as scouts or messengers. We must go back to first principles, to tie this new warfighting medium with its remarkably new, often counter intuitive operating environment into a set of fundamental warfighting principles. The need for information dominance of the battlefield and the critical nature of winning at information warfare leave us no choice. As world population and economic pressures grow, political and market boundaries blur, the information explosion accelerates, capability growth and technological advances in commercial space abound, and supra-national entities take on a growing role on the geopolitical scene, the United States freedom of action to operate in space will be severely constrained. Future military space planning must recognize that access to space will be widespread and adversaries will also use it for their purposes. Extremely capable space systems and their products, until recently protected by strict security and trade restrictions, will be available to all buyers on the commercial market. The producers, owners and operators of these systems will include domestic and foreign governments and corporations as well as alliances and multi-national consortia. We are witnessing a revolution in military affairs.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1995
- Accession Number
- ADA309593