The Cape, Chapter I, Section 9
The Cape, Chapter I, Section 9
A wide variety of military spacecraft were launched from the Cape during the 1970s, 80s and early 90s. Some of them have already been mentioned in connection with launch vehicle programs presented in this chapter, and most of them will be addressed in somewhat greater detail (where security guidelines allow) as individual military missions in the next two chapters. Before we move on, we should note the operative principles that put all those individual efforts into a growing national military space strategy in the 1980s.
It is safe to say that the U.S. and Soviet "space
race" of the 1960s had already given way to a very low-key,
sophisticated competition for military superiority in space by
the late 1970s. Like the five fingers of a hand, the U.S. and the
Soviet Union measured their military space capabilities in terms
of: 1) communications, 2) navigation, 3) reconnaissance/early
warning/weather surveillance, 4) offensive systems (i.e.
ballistic missiles) and 5) defensive systems. American political
leaders saw military space systems mature in the 1970s, but they
were soon confronted with Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and
National Security Agency (NSA) reports that suggested the Soviet
Union had narrowed the "technology gap" between itself
and the United States. The Reagan Administration maintained that
Soviet defense outlays exceeded American defense spending by 20
percent in 1972, by 55 percent in 1976 and by 45 percent in 1981.
Throughout that period, the Soviet Union had reportedly spent 10
percent more than the U.S. in the crucial areas of research,
development, test and evaluation. (In the area of
defensive/offensive space capabilities, some officials believed
years of Soviet research into the principles of directed energy
might yield experimental particle beam and laser
"devices" by the mid-1980s.) Though many Democrats and
some Republican congressmen challenged those claims, popular
support for a stronger national defense grew. Thus, despite
program cost overruns and launch failures, three
factors-politics, Soviet military competition, and rapidly
changing technology-coalesced to commit the United States to
deploy more capable military space systems and launch more
sophisticated space experiments in the late 1980s. In the next
two chapters, we will examine those efforts, and we will look at
the field agencies and contractors who made those individual
launch operations possible.48
The Cape: Miltary Space Operations 1971-1992
by Mark C. Cleary, Chief Historian
45 Space Wing Office of History
1201 Minuteman Ave, Patrick AFB, FL 32925