Browsing by Author "Lewis, Jeffrey"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Arms Race in Space? U.S. Air Force Quietly Focuses on Space Control
    (2003-09-01) Hitchens, Theresa; Lewis, Jeffrey; CISSM
    While the U.S. Congress was debating the defense budget this summer, Air Force officials were downplaying their efforts to develop small, orbiting weapons to disrupt or destroy enemy satellites. In a June 24 meeting with reporters at the Pentagon, Peter Teets, Air Force undersecretary, denied the Air Force was working on radio-frequency or laser jamming microsatellites. A June 30 article in Space News quoted an Air Force spokesman as saying that the service had "dropped" work on such satellites because the "technology was deemed too immature." Both statements are true, in a narrow sense. Efforts to build attack satellites are currently taking a back seat to ground-based technologies that disrupt enemy space assets and protect our own - what the Air Force calls "space control" and "counterspace operations." But the shift in research priorities does not mean the Air Force has given up plans to put these weapons in space. The service's "Strategic Master Plan for FY 04 and Beyond" makes it abundantly clear that officials intend to deploy a variety of space weapons eventually. The Master Plan calls for development of "defensive and offensive counterspace" capabilities during the next two decades that will produce "active on-orbit protection" and "space-based counterspace" systems between 2016 and 2028. And despite its acknowledgement that the technology is not yet ready, the Air Force continues to pursue the development of microsatellite weapons. The service's 2004 budget request gives a program called Advanced Spacecraft Technology $14.4 million to develop and test a microsatellite "to demonstrate ... operations around a non-cooperative resident space object." The program also contains $14.8 million to "develop microsatellite (10-100 kilogram) technologies ... [that] could enable applications such as space protection, [and] counterspace capabilities." These efforts are part of several microsatellite technology programs, including the Experimental Satellite Series (XSS). Launched Jan. 29, the 28-kilogram XSS-10 successfully demonstrated its ability to move closely around another object to take images. The contract to build its successor, XSS-11, and its more specific sensor payload already has been awarded.
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    Autonomous Proximity: A Coming Collision in Orbit?
    (2004-12-01) Lewis, Jeffrey; CISSM
    As satellites become smaller and smarter, they will become increasingly capable of sophisticated operations in orbit. One class of operations "autonomous proximity operations" would allow satellites to inspect other satellites, diagnose malfunctions and provide on-orbit servicing. Such satellites could also provide sophisticated surveillance in space and would make excellent anti-satellite weapons. The rapid development of satellites capable of conducting close maneuvers to one another, in-orbit, may increase tension "suggesting that now may be the time to consider "rules of the road" for such operations. The Defense Technology Area Plan (2000) called for "the development of micro-satellite vehicles with significant capability" including the ability to "conduct missions such as diagnostic inspection of malfunctioning satellites through autonomous guidance, rendezvous, and even docking techniques."1 These missions "generally referred to as autonomous proximity operations"are being pursued by NASA, DARPA and the Air Force, each of which intends to launch demonstrators in coming years Jeffrey Lewis is a Graduate Research Fellow at the Center for International Security Studies at Maryland.
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    Engage China, Engage the World
    (2005-04-01) Lewis, Jeffrey; CISSM
    In congressional reports and testimony, the Pentagon suggested in 2003 that China may be developing a "parasite microsatellite" a small satellite, weighing less than 100 kilograms, that would secretly attach to an American satellite and destroy it on command.1 The claim was picked up by the press including the online news outlets Space Daily and Space.com, the latter noting that "China appears to be sharpening its war fighting space skills" and then devoting a third of the story to the "parasite microsatellite." In the end, it turned out to be all a hoax. Although the Pentagon noted that the claim was being evaluated, the Pentagon never actually looked into the assertion. A pair of scholars recently discovered the story and more than 70 others like it in Chinese sources appear to have originated on a single Internet bulletin board maintained by a self-described "space enthusiast" from a small town in Anhui province. How could the Pentagon be so gullible? The story contained the smallest kernels of truth: China"s Tsinghua University along with groups in Algeria, China, Nigeria, Thailand and Turkey is working with the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom to launch a constellation of microsatellites for disaster monitoring. These satellites, however, are incapable of performing the function of "parasite microsatellites." Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is a research fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park
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    Lift-Off for Space Weapons? Implications of the Department of Defense"s 2004 Budget Request for Space Weaponization
    (2003-07-23) Lewis, Jeffrey; CISSM
    This document is the second of two papers that consider current plans by the United States to expand military activities in outer space. The first paper addressed the international reaction to such deployments, in particular the objections by the Chinese Mission to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. This paper describes and documents the allocation of funds in the FY04 budget request to three areas: Force projection and space control ("Enhancing Space Operations"), Space-based elements of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) System, and Space-based command, control, and intelligence ("Integrated Focused Surveillance"). The Command of United Strategic Command (STRATCOM), James O. Ellis, testified before Congress that the new space-based force application capabilities alluded to in the Strategic Master Plan will allow U.S. policy-makers to employ strategic forces in a much wider array of contingencies: Space capabilities will dramatically enhance US Strategic Command"s newly assigned global strike mission, which extends our long-standing and globally focused deterrent capabilities to the broader spectrum of conflict. The incorporation of advanced conventional, nonkinetic, and special operations capabilities into a full-spectrum contingency arsenal will enable the command to deliberately and adaptively plan for and deliver rapid, limited-duration, extended-range combat power anywhere in the world Jeffrey Lewis is a Graduate Research Fellow at the Center for International Security Studies at Maryland.
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    Minimum Means of Reprisal: China's Search for Security in the Nuclear Age
    (2004-09-20) Lewis, Jeffrey; Steinbruner, John D; Public Affairs; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Among the 5 states authorized under the NPT to possess nuclear weapons, China has the most restrained pattern of deployment: The People's Republic of China (PRC) operationally deploys about 80 nuclear warheads exclusively for use with land-based ballistic missiles. Its declaratory doctrine rejects the initiation of nuclear war under any circumstance. The PRC does not maintain tactical nuclear forces of any kind, and its strategic forces are kept off alert, with warheads in storage. This posture has been sustained over time and changes in threat perception, suggesting restraint is the result of choice and not expediency. The apparent implication of the sustained pattern of Chinese restraint implies a distinctly different strategic assessment from that developed by Russia and the US to justify and direct their larger and more actively deployed forces. As articulated in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, the United States seeks credible options for the preventive use of strategic forces. Such options will presumably undermine confidence among Chinese leaders that a small strategic force provides adequate deterrence, and that vulnerability to preemption poses a less significant risk than the loss of control over alert forces. There is no evidence yet of a fundamental revision in the traditional deployment pattern of Chinese strategic forces, perhaps because China is likely to preserve a modest capability sufficient for its minimalist conception of deterrence. If China were subjected to a level of preemptive threat that Beijing judged intolerable, Chinese leaders would likely to reject, at least initially, the systematic emulation of US deployment patterns. Although the inner deliberations of China's leadership are only barely perceptible, patterns in Chinese defense investments, strategic force deployments, and arms control behavior suggest China would consider asymmetric responses that targeted the vulnerable command, control and intelligence (C2I) systems essential to preventive operations. This dissertation attempts a systematic examination of Chinese policy statements and diplomatic actions for two purposes: 1. To test the plausibility of China's apparent strategic logic against the conflicting expectations of prevailing US assessments. 2. To provide guidance for shaping both the specific security relationship with China and global security arrangements in general.
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    The Minimum Means of Reprisal: China's Search for Security in the Nuclear Age
    (2004-09-01) Lewis, Jeffrey; CISSM
    Among the 5 states authorized under the NPT to possess nuclear weapons, China has the most restrained pattern of deployment: The People"s Republic of China (PRC) operationally deploys about 80 nuclear warheads exclusively for usewith land"based ballistic missiles. Its declaratory doctrine rejects the initiation of nuclear war under any circumstance. The PRC does not maintain tactical nuclear forces of any kind, and its strategic forces are kept off alert, with warheads in storage. This posture has been sustained over time and changes in threat perception, suggesting restraint is the result of choice and not expediency. The apparent implication of the sustained pattern of Chinese restraint implies a distinctly different strategic assessment from that developed by Russia and the US to justify and direct their larger and more actively deployed forces. As articulated in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, the United States seeks credible options for the preventive use of strategic forces. Such options will presumably undermine confidence among Chinese leaders that a small strategic force provides adequate deterrence, and that vulnerability to preemption poses a less significant risk than the loss of control over alert forces. There is no evidence yet of a fundamental revision in the traditional deployment pattern of Chinese strategic forces, perhaps because China is likely to preserve a modest capability sufficient for its minimalist conception of deterrence. If China were subjected to a level of preemptive threat that Beijing judged intolerable, Chinese leaders would likely to reject, at least initially, the systematic emulation of US deployment patterns. Although the inner deliberations of China"s leadership are only barely perceptible, patterns in Chinese defense investments, strategic force deployments, and arms control behavior suggest China would consider asymmetric responses that targeted the vulnerable command, control and intelligence (C2I) systems essential to preventive operations. This dissertation attempts a systematic examination of Chinese policy statements and diplomatic actions for two purposes: To test the plausibility of China"s apparent strategic logic against the conflicting expectations of prevailing US assessments. To provide guidance for shaping both the specific security relationship with China and global security arrangements in general. Jeffrey Lewis is a graduate research fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland.
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    The Unsettled Legacy of the Cold War
    (2002-10-01) Steinbruner, John; Lewis, Jeffrey; CISSM
    On May 24, 2002, at a summit meeting in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W.Bush signed a treaty and issued a declaration of political accommodation promising, in Bush"s words, to "liquidate the legacy of the Cold War." That is, of course, an appealing phrase and an aspiration every reasonable person will endorse. But it is certainly not an imminent accomplishmentnot yet even the predominant trend. The underlying reality is that U.S. military forces are being prepared for extended confrontation, not political accommodation. Their projected capabilities are inherently provocative not only to Russia, but to China as well. They are also vulnerable to Russian and Chinese reactions, particularly in space, where some of the most critical assets are based. Soothing rhetoric cannot indefinitely obscure the ominous implications. It is time for everyone to pay attention John Steinbruner is director of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. Jeffrey Lewis is a graduate research fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland.