By 
September 1st, 2020
In the U.S. national security space policy debate, there has been a dichotomy between a “sanctuary” space policy and a “contested” space policy. Policymakers have chosen between preventing conflict in space by delegitimizing attacks on satellites on the one hand and preparing for conflict through warfighting doctrines and weapons systems on the other.
A new report — The Rise and Fall of Space Sanctuary in U.S. Policy – is availabe from The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Space Policy and Strategy.
U.S. Space Force – sewing (sowing) its future.
Credit: U.S. Space Force
More continuity than change
“The history of U.S. space policy includes more continuity than it does change, especially over the last four decades. Sanctuary policy only experienced 20 years of prominence at the outset of the Space Age,” explains Robin Dickey, a space policy and strategy analyst at the Center focused on national security space (now retired).
Since 1975 the sanctuary-versus-contested debate within the U.S. government has ended in victory for the contested camp, Dickey points out. Different administrations may have pursued contested space to different degrees, and some tried to resurrect specific elements of sanctuary policy, she explains, but each administration since U.S. President, Gerald Ford, has eventually accepted the need to develop passive and active capabilities to defend U.S. assets in space and to deny or defeat hostile activities in a bid to improve the survivability of the U.S. space architecture.
U.S. Air Force Col. Nick Hague completed his first spacewalk, March 22, 2019.
Credit: NASA
New insight
“This analysis provides new insight into what has changed and what remains the same in U.S. policy and activities in the space domain,” Dickey writes. “The last 10 years have witnessed unprecedented changes in the space domain. Old competitors have developed new capabilities, new competitors have risen, and the commercial space industry has been transformed by new companies, new technologies, and new ways of conceiving behavior in space.”
Air Force X-37B space plane.
Credit: Boeing
Dickey’s report concludes that we must recognize which debates we have had before, what decisions we have made to lead up to this point, “and what patterns and predispositions we have followed in our past policies before we can decide how to move forward.
For this report — The Rise and Fall of Space Sanctuary in U.S. Policy – go to:
https://aerospace.org/sites/default/files/2020-09/Dickey_SpaceSanctuary_20200901.pdf
Posted in Space News
