The Military Use of Space: A Diagnostic Assessment at Barry Watts.

The Military Use of Space: A Diagnostic Assessment at Barry Watts. Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (http://www.csbaonline.org), 1730 Rhode Island Avenue NW Suite 912 Washington, DC 20036 2001 130 pages, $2000

forward the Edge of Earth: The yet to be of American Space Power on Steven Lambakis. University Press of Kentucky (http://uky.edu/University Press) 663 southward Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 2001 365 pages, $3995

Astropolitik: Classical Geopolitics in the Space Age by way of Everett C. Dolman. Frank Cass Publishers (http://wwwfrankcass.com), 5824 NE Hassalo way Portland, Oregon 97213-3644, 2002, 208 pages, $2450

Space Weapons, Earth Wars by way of Bob Preston et a!. RAND Corporation (http://www.rand.org), 1700 Main road P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, California 90407-2138 2002 201 pages, $2500

Ten Propositions Regarding Spacepower by the agency of M. V. Smith. Forthcoming, Air University Pres (http://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/aul/aupress), 131 West Shumacher Avenue, Maxwell AFB, Alabama 36112-6615 on-line, Internet, available from http://research.au.af.mil/papers/student/ay2001/saas/smith.pdf.

No doubt Arthur C Clarke would appreciate the fact that 2001 saw the emerging see the verb of five major works onward military-space issues. The interrelationships between space and security remain a critical issue steady though right now our collective subconscious would be more likely to contain nightmarish visions of airliners, buildings, and bombing rather than dreams of bone morphing into space planes and space stations to the accompaniment of Richard Strauss's Thus Spake Zarathustra. Coming forward the heels of the congressionally mandated Report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization (Space Commission) of 11 January 2001 chaired by means of the once and future secretary of defense Donald H Rumsfeld these publications afford a haughty vista from which to assess the two narrow issues such as the implementation of the Space Commission's recommendations and many broader make uneasys The five publications are also highly complementary in the feeling that each focuses primarily forward one of th e three determinants of defense policy: (1) technology and operations (Watts, Preston, and Smith), (2) domestic politics (Lambakis), and (3) world politics (Dolman). Cumulatively, they give us single of the best opportunities in many years to reassess America's vision for space. In the last however, when it comes to the interrelationships between space and national security, the nation still faces many more questions than answers.

Barry Watts's The Military Use of Space is must reading for any serious scholar of military space. It is an outstanding assessment of to what extent the use of space is likely to affect US national security by means of 2025; in many ways, it is the in the greatest degree comprehensive and nuanced of the five publications. Watts is a retired Air Force F-4 pilot and an experienced defense analyst who has written extensively onward a variety of topics, including measures of effectiveness, military innovation, Clausewitzian friction, and airpower doctrine. In addition, he coauthored the "Effect and Effectiveness" part of the 1993 swallowing eddy War Air Power Survey. He formerly directed the Northrop Grumman Analysis Center and commonly is director of program analysis and evaluation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense Watts's monograph uses the comparative analysis mode of expression of net assessment developed according to his mentor and former bos Andrew W Marshall, the Pentagon's director of without deductions assessment since 1973: "In Marshall's view, toil assessment is a discipline or art that relies, above all besides on genuine understanding of the enterprise or business involved rather than sophisticated protoplasts complex systems analysis or abstract theory" (p 5)

The major findings in Watts's technologically informed assessment are carefully derived and merit cease attention even though they are unlikely to excite the mainstream; furthermore, they undoubtedly will be attacked at hawks and doves who believe the United States should be doing a parcel more or a lot les in space. This centrist position is undoubtedly Watts's main message: the United States has its priorities about right in military space; it should continue to upgrade its ability to provide actionable, real-time intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) data directly to war fighters; and it is unlikely that force application will become a more important space mission than force enhancement before 2025 Watts's specific elucidation judgements include the following:

* The United States has continued and will continue to derive far more military capability from space than any other state, moreover these significant, space-derived capabilities also create substantial risks and potential vulnerabilities in projecting American military power.

* During the 1990 the United States began transforming its space-derived ISR from primarily preconflict support for central nuclear war to real-time ISR enhancement of ongoing, nonnuclear conflicts, if it be not that it still probably has not realized more than a small fraction of space's potential for force enhancement.