On Monday Theresa Hitchens, director of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, told a conference in Airlie, Va., put on by the Nuclear Policy Research Institute that a new policy document was imminent to replace President Bill Clinton's 1996 one that permitted some military uses of space. However, Clinton limited these to "stabilizing" purposes such as surveillance satellites to monitor potential weapons deployments and monitor verification of arms-control agreements.

"A new national space policy should be signed in the next couple of weeks," Hitchens said.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that the U.S. Air Force was seeking approval from the president of a new national security directive that would permit the deployment of such weapons in space.

Hitchens said the new policy was likely to overturn not merely Clinton's 1996 policy document, but basic principles on U.S. space policy that go back to Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower nearly half a century ago.

Ever since then, "The main emphasis in U.S. space policy was on the peaceful uses of outer space," she said. In particular, she said, "The Clinton administration was hostile to space warfare and space weapons."

By contrast, the Bush administration has already approved a number of consistent steps in that direction, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, the U.S. Air Force's own 2003-4 Transformation Flight Plan and the USAF Doctrine Document 2-2.1 in August 2004 on Counterspace Operations.

Rumsfeld also previously presided over a blue-chip commission to assess U.S. National Security Space Management and Organization. It concluded that "the U.S. government should vigorously pursue the capabilities called for in the (1996) National Space Policy to ensure that the president will have the option to deploy weapons in space to deter threats to, and, if necessary, defend against attacks on U.S. interests."

This so-called Rumsfeld Commission also warned that the United States could face a "Space Pearl Harbor" if it did not upgrade its defense and its current space-based military assets and deploy new offensive ones as well.

The Air Force's Transformation Flight Plan includes proposals for many kinds of space-based weapons such as a Kinetic Kill Vehicle; Hypervelocity Rod Bundles to destroy underground, protected "hard" targets; space-based radio frequency energy weapons; a space maneuver vehicle; the Evolutionary Air and Space Global Laser Engagement; improved space-based surveillance; and the Space Based Infra Red System.

Other projects being developed or explored include the Near Field Infrared Experiment satellite and the space-based Interceptor Test Bed.

Other U.S. space-weapons programs include the U.S. Army's Kinetic Energy Anti-Satellite program and the ground-based Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser.

A major strategic shift of assets from large ground forces to a far "leaner and meaner" ground force deployed with its impact greatly magnified by state-of-the-art space-based assets was always central to Rumsfeld's vision for transforming the U.S. military to enable it to face the new security challenges of the 21st century, Everett Dolman, associate professor of comparative military studies at the U.S. Air Force's School of Advanced Airpower Studies, told the Airlie conference.

But many experts and leading scientists do not share Rumsfeld's vision or his optimism.

"If we could turn on overnight a completely effective missile defense system, I would be completely in favor of it, even if it cost hundreds of billions of dollars," Steven Weinberg, a physics professor at the University of Texas in Austin and the winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics, told the conference.

Weinberg described the current, ground-based, limited Anti Ballistic Missile system being deployed in Alaska and elsewhere by the Bush administration to defend against a limited ICBM attack as "a system that has no capability at all."

"There is no prospect" of an effective ABM system to defend the United States against ballistic missile attack for years, perhaps even decades, to come, he said.

The U.S. government's spending on space weapons of all kinds has actually declined by $1 billion over the past fiscal year. It totaled $9.9 billion in Fiscal Year 2004 but fell to $8.8 billion in Fiscal Year 2005 -- a decline of more than 11 percent. However, if or when President Bush approves the new national security document, he is likely to request additional funds from Congress.

"Missile defense still retains iconic status in the Bush administration and among Republican members of Congress, but it has less juice than it did," John Isaacs, executive director and president of the Council for a Livable World, told the Airlie conference.

Also, experts warn that the more the Untied States relies on space-based assets, the more it may make itself vulnerable to them being knocked out. "Space capabilities are highly valuable but equally vulnerable," warned John Polanyi, a professor of chemistry at the University of Toronto and winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

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