An article in Monday’s issue of Aerospace Daily caught my eye with this lede: “The Defense Department’s fiscal 2008 budget request includes just more than $1 billion in programs that could support the development of anti-satellite and space-based weapons capabilities, according to a new analysis from the Center for Defense Information (CDI).” The report references a CDI press release from late last week and accompanying budget analysis to support that conclusion. CDI uses this analysis to conclude that “In the absence of a clear national strategy to secure the future use of space, the development and testing of such technologies and the deployment of dual-use capabilities without rules of the road for their operations will threaten other nations and drive U.S. policy toward space weaponization.”

A review of their budget analysis shows that CDI has a very expansive definition of “anti-satellite and space-based weapons capabilities”. They include some technology demonstration programs, like XSS and NFIRE, which could enable future space weapons (although that’s not necessarily their only application). CDI also throws in systems with any application to potential space-based missile defense. The analysis, though, also includes programs like Operationally Responsive Space, which, one can argue, could support the development and launch of ASATs and such, although ORS has seen a lot of interest recently as a way to respond to ASAT systems by providing a means to quickly deploy gapfillers and temporary replacements in the event on-orbit assets are attacked. CDI also counts relatively benign systems, such as a ground-based jammer and a surveillance systems, which are not considered space weapons, at least in the conventional sense. At least they didn’t include EELV funding: after all, a lot of these proposed space-based missile defense and other weapons systems may be too big to launch on small boosters, and a space-based weapon does no good on the ground…