A new missile gap?

In 1960, as a young presidential candidate, John F. Kennedy described what he thought was a missile gap between the United States and Russia.  While wrong on the numbers, he was right in principle – Russia was pressing ahead in space, and we were behind in material ways.  He was also right in another way.  Space was about to dominate the country’s national security – arguably enabling it.  Space would become our Achilles heel. 

As president, Kennedy made sure we caught up.  Notably, America reached the moon first.  The focus on space, winning the battle for dominance in space, was significant.  It set in motion a train of events.  These events – which decided global security and still do – involved stages, just like a rocket. 

{mosads}The first stage was outright competition – a race to the moon.  Second stage was a coming together in the Apollo-Soyuz, joint U.S.-Soviet mission, or rapprochement.   Third was recognition that the U.S. could dominate space if it chose, highlighted by President Reagan’s announcement that America was well on its way to developing a Strategic Space Initiative, layers of space-based defense.  While the last never fully materialized, it again set events in motion.  That was in the early 1980’s.  By 1989, the Soviet Union was history, and the world seems momentarily at peace, or at least headed that way.

In space, for the next thirty years, China, Russia and others pressed their hopes, while the United States pursued three approaches at once.  We continued to look further out, toward Mars.  We became the grand promotors of a near-earth orbit International Space Station (ISS).  And we kept our eyes on national security in near and deep space.  

But then, over the past decade, our space dominance and three-part strategy for maintaining leadership in space – and security from space – has faltered.  First, the ISS gradually became the tail that wagged the dog, consuming multiples of what it was originally supposed to, draining other space budgets and evolving into a miniature United Nations in space.  While offering an example of admirable and continuous international cooperation, it clipped other options.  No matter, there were benefits. 

Then, despite protestations that no such thing would ever happen – could never happen – and promises by multiple administrations that America would always have a way to put humans in space, the Space Shuttle program abruptly ended.  Without a replacement.  America suddenly had – and still has – zero ways for mankind to get to space, not to the ISS, to the moon, to Mars or anywhere else.  That was a strategic error number two. 

Now, America suddenly confronts another test of our wisdom, foresight and strategic thinking.  If we do not act wisely, we are about to lose all ability to place critical national security satellites – to include GPS communications satellites – in the proper orbit, with a rocket called the Atlas V.  We are again making promises to ourselves.  Today, that rocket depends – in a cooperative, Soyuz-like arrangement – on our use of a powerful, one-of-a-kind Russian rocket, called the RD-180, forcing us to rely on an increasing belligerent Russia to abide to contracted terms. 

While we want to build an American engine that rivals or exceeds this Russian engine’s power, this will arguably take between eight and ten years, some say longer.  The powerful F-1 American engine (not suited for this purpose), powered the Saturn V rocket that took us to the moon – and took almost 20 years to build.  Research began in earnest in the very early 1950s.  These are not easy builds.  Making matters worse, in the name of oversight and political wrangling, today’s Federal Government adds years to any such large project.  The ISS, by way of example, was decades past delivery. 

So, why is Congress doing something that is at best foolhardy, arrogant and ill-advised – at worst a crushing blow, the creation of a real missile gap that will undermine U.S. national security – now with the Rd-180 rocket?  What, you ask, are they doing?  They have apparently concluded that America’s satellites either need not be launched any more to the orbits we have always needed them at – and still need them at, or that we will snap our fingers and in a two or three years have the American engine that experts say will actually take us a decade to build. 

This is not wisdom.  In a frenzy to punish Russia for actions in Ukraine, Congress appears poised to cut off all RD-180 rocket engine buys, after the existing purchase (perhaps 18) is done.  This is either arrogant congressional pique, or utter indifference to our national security.  We are literally cutting off our own access to these Russian engines, the only engines that will fill the gap between today and when we have a heavy lift rocket that it developed, proven, certified and deployed.  The smart move is not create another “missile gap,” this one damaging U.S. national security in a real and palpable way, and multiples more dangerous than the one Kennedy spoke of years ago, but to be smart. 

The right answer is to put language in a bill this year – and very soon – that both encourages creation (and funding) of a big American rocket engine, and continues American access unbroken to that unique Russian RD-180 engine, the one that currently enables American satellites of all sorts into orbit.  To wish and hope we could do what we cannot, while ending a relationship that allows us to protect the country, would be folly. 

Congress has embraced follies before, but this is one we cannot afford, counsel or permit.  It is dangerous for the country in a way that only those close to space and national security may fully understand, but that we may all appreciate.  As an expert in this field for many years, I would suggest leveler heads prevail, despite our jousting with Russia.  Revisit this topic and legislate access to the Russian engines without some arbitrary end date, while the country presses rightly presses ahead on our own heavy lift engines.  Not to do so would create a real and devastating “missile gap,” or more accurately a “heavy lift launch gap,” that we cannot afford.  So let’s take a page from Kennedy and Reagan both, and do the right thing, not the easy thing.

Johnson, a former F-15 Strike Eagle and A-10 Warthog fighter pilot, is political-military adviser on the staff of the Secretary of the Air Force (International Affairs), fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and senior adviser to the Royal Air Force think tank.  He is an adjunct at North Central Texas College specializing in defense studies.