In January, when China destroyed one of its own weather satellites, scientists worried that the explosion would result in a profusion of space junk. What they didn’t know is that the explosion’s detritus would clutter not only our galaxy’s nether regions, but the American defense budget as well.

The separate House and Senate  defense authorization bills “boldly go” in the direction of big boosts in space spending, much of it related to “space situational awareness” programs intended to scan the heavens for potential threats to our expensive satellites.

A closer look at these programs, however, raises suspicions that lawmakers may be falling into the old habit of throwing large sums of money at duplicative or unproven ideas in an effort to take care of defense companies in their home districts.

A TCS analysis of last year’s defense spending bill uncovered $6.5 million worth of earmarks for programs related to space situational awareness.  This year, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have tacked on nearly $250 million for similar programs in their authorization bills, considered a “blueprint” for the spending bills to follow.

The Senate bill includes such provisions as $35 million for Space-Based Space Surveillance (SBSS), a long-term plan to deploy several satellites for tracking small objects in space; $10 million for a new Space Fence, an older program that does essentially the same thing;  $16.8 million for Space Situational Awareness , another collection of programs for increasing space observation; $50 million to the Self-Awareness Space Situational Awareness program, which allows satellites to monitor themselves; and $5 million for the Rapid Attack Identification Detection and Reporting System (RAIDRS), which detects attacks on satellites.

All of these programs appear on the Air Force’s Unfunded Priorities list, meaning the committee did not reveal the extra allocations as earmarks under its own disclosure rules. The House Armed Services Committee, which had no such rules exempting Air Force wish-list items still failed to list additional space-awareness spending in the earmark disclosure tables attached to its report.

Some of these programs already have a spotty record.  According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) earlier this year, the Air Force restructured the SBSS program after an independent review team declared its baseline projections inaccurate, its requirements overstated, and its production “risky.” The Senate committee did seem aware of the uncertainty behind the $22 billion the Department of Defense is projected to spend in FY 2008 on satellites and other space systems, however, when it included a clause in the bill mandating a “space posture review” outlining national security space goals for the next decade.
           
But despite the intention to outline national goals, the appetite lawmakers have for home-district projects has not been dulled. The fiscal year 2008 defense authorization bills contain earmarks for space awareness programs in Maui, New Mexico, and Omaha, for example. And we know from past lessons that earmarks are much more frequently driven by political clout than by national or even local priorities. In fact, the pursuit of projects appears to be the driving force behind Congress’ decisions about how the United States should invest in space weapons. Despite the cost overruns and delays, space weapons have become the newest frontier for bringing home military pork.

For more information, contact Laura Peterson, (202)-546-8500 ext. 114 or laura [at] taxpayer.net