The year is 2007. Tensions are rising in the Far East, and U.S. satellites are being targeted for destruction. The U.S. Aerospace Force swings into action, moving its constellation of orbiting lasers and beam-directing mirrors into position.
Sure, it sounds futuristic. But Air Force Gen. Howell Estes views space as the ultimate high ground, where American military and commercial interests are sure to be challenged."Unfortunately there are those in the world who are going to develop means to put these assets at risk in space," the four-star general and commander in chief of the U.S. Space Command said in an interview.
Estes, who also is commander in chief of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, is not predicting which country might target U.S. satellites, or when. But he thinks Americans should see that the more this country ties its military and economic wagon to space the more vul-ner-able it becomes.
Of the more than 500 satellites now operating in space, about 220 of them are American, representing investments of more than $100 billion, Estes says. Many hundreds more satellites are expected to be operating in the coming 10 years as communications companies launch a new generation of phone and other satellite services.
Just as the American military today aims to deter, and if necessary defeat, aggression that would threaten oil supplies in the Persian Gulf, so too must it be prepared to safeguard U.S. economic lifelines in space, Estes says.
While most satellites entering orbit today are for commercial use, Pentagon officials believe new space-faring nations in the 21st century will have broader interests.
"The number of countries capable of using space-based platforms for military purposes will increase, as will the potential for future adversaries to disrupt, degrade or defeat" U.S. space systems, Army Lt. Gen. Patrick M. Hughes, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress in February.
As a sign of stratospheric strains in the making, Estes cited reports of an incident in March in which Indonesia deliberately jammed the transmissions from a communications satellite operated by APT Satellite Co. of Hong Kong. The Pacific nation of Tonga, which leases the satellite's orbital slot to APT, accused Indonesia of violating its sovereignty and trying to intimidate it.
It is this kind of conflict - and the prospect that warfare itself could move from Earth into space - that has Estes and other U.S. military leaders thinking of ways to shape America's armed forces to ensure its domination of the heavens.
Estes calls it "space control."
"It means just what it says: control space," he said recently. "Control space, ensure we have access to it" and deny access to others if necessary.
In a formal statement of its vision for the year 2020, Estes' Space Command advocated planning for the "prospects for space defense and even space warfare."
The notion bothers some.
"It doesn't seem the first point of wisdom to look like we're turning space into a battlefield, since we've got the most to lose," said Spurgeon Keeny Jr., president of the Arms Control Association, a Washington think tank.
The only international limitations on militarizing space are the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits putting nuclear weapons in space, and the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which outlaws the kinds antimissile defenses in space that former President Reagan's "Star Wars" envisioned in the 1980s.