The recommendations of the congressionally-mandated “Allard Commission,” including the need to reestablish the National Space Council, are still valid two years after they were issued. Dr. Joan Johnson-Freese, Professor of National Security Studies at the Naval War College, draws that conclusion in an article for the Joint Force Quarterly’s latest issue.

The commission, named after former Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO) who wrote the legislative language that created it in the FY2007 DOD authorization act, completed its report in 2008. The commission was set up to make an independent assessment of the organization and management of national security space programs.

Chaired by retired aerospace executive A. Thomas Young, the commission made four recommendations:

• establish and execute a national space strategy and reestablish the National Space Council, under the chairmanship of the National Security Advisor, to implement it;
• create a senior National Security Space Authority in support of the Secretary of Defense and Director of National Intelligence;
• establish a National Security Space Organization to consolidate the functions of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, other parts of Air Force Space Command, and the National Reconnaissance Office; and
• adopt and implement strategies for identifying, selecting, educating, training and managing a core group of government professionals in sufficient numbers to support the nation’s space acquisition responsibilities.

Johnson-Freese finds that two years after the report was issued “military space integration is still limited by organizational gridlock and resistance, with few indications of positive change on the horizon. The answer for how to change that dim future outlook remains within the Allard Report.”

In particular, Johnson-Freese champions the Allard Commission’s recommendation to reestablish the National Space Council under the chairmanship of the National Security Advisor. The original National Aeronautics and Space Council, created as part of the 1958 law that established NASA, was abolished by President Nixon in 1973. A National Space Council was recreated by Congress in the FY1989 NASA authorization act, and President George H.W. Bush established it by Executive Order early in his term under the leadership of Vice President Dan Quayle. The Council still exists in law, but neither President Clinton nor President George W. Bush chose to staff or fund it. President Obama pledged to reinstate it during his campaign, but has not done so. “The ability to stifle such a promised action is a tribute to the power of bureaucratic and organizational politics,” says Johnson-Freese.

The Allard Commission and Johnson-Freese want the Space Council to be chaired by the National Security Advisor, instead of being a separate White House entity under the Vice President’s purview as it was previously. Johnson-Freese says that putting it under the National Security Advisor “unambiguously signals an attempt to move space policy closer to the inner circle of Presidential advisors and to someone with a strong position in the security communities.” If that does not happen, she continues, space issues will be considered as subsets of other issues, never rising beyond “the level of bureaucratic, staff importance. Until somebody close to the President is in charge, we will continue to rearrange deck chairs.”

Transformation, not reorganization, is needed to fix the problems with the national security space program, she argues, adding that “While the presence of a National Space Council does not assure that transformation will occur, its absence almost certainly does assure that it will not.”

On December 13, 2010, the Secure World Foundation sponsored a panel discussion about issues involved in writing a national space strategy and whether the United States needs one. A SpacePolicyOnline.com summary of the meeting is available on our left menu under Our Meeting Summaries or simply by clicking here.

Spaceflightnow.com has posted more nifty photos of the X-37B after its return from orbit, courtesy of Boeing.

UPDATE: This is updated with further details from RIA Novosti.

Russia’s GLONASS navigation satellite system suffered a setback today when three satellites were lost in a failure of their Proton launch vehicle.

The GLONASS satellites are launched in groups of three. What caused the Proton to fail is under investigation, but Russia’s Itar-TASS news agency quoted an unnamed Russian aerospace industry official as saying “The rocket’s engine gave a much bigger impetus than planned, and the orbiting unit separated at an altitude much higher than the designated one.”

The Voice of Russia website downplayed the effect of the loss on the satellite system, which is conceptually analogous to the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS). Like GPS, 24 operational satellites are needed for a fully functioning system. For many years, Russia could not maintain that number, but it recently became a governmental priority. Although Voice of Russia reports that there are 26 GLONASS satellites in orbit including “two in reserve,” Aviation Week points out that “two are spares and the other four are not operational.” Thus the constellation is still short of the 24 needed for global, three-dimensional coverage.

Russian news agency RIA Novosti added that the satellites fell into the Pacific Ocean 15,000 kilometers north of Honolulu. That news source says that three of the on-orbit GLONASS satellites are not functional, rather than four as reported by Aviation Week. It does confirm that the three lost today were intended to complete the operational network.

The Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane returned from its seven month journey in orbit today, landing autonomously at Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA early this morning. An Air Force press release said only that it “conducted on-orbit experiments for 220 days during its maiden voyage.”

Launched on April 22, the mission was shrouded in secrecy from the beginning. The X-37 began as a NASA program to build a spaceplane to service the International Space Station (ISS). NASA cancelled it once President Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration was announced and it was transferred to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and then to the Air Force where it received a new, classified mission as X-37B.

The Air Force said today that the program will now move into a “refurbishment” phase and the next X-37B mission will be launched next spring.

NASAWatch has a link to some post-landing photos posted on OnOrbit.com.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has little insight into the effectiveness of its attempts to commercialize space-related technologies developed through its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Although DOD has invested “about 11 percent of its fiscal years 2005-2009 R&D funds through its SBIR program to address space-related technology needs,” department officials could not tell GAO how many of the technologies resulting from the nearly 500 space-related contracts during that period had transitioned into acquisition programs or the commercial sector. GAO also stated that DOD officials acknowledge that the department does not have “overarching guidance” for the SBIR program.

GAO recommended that DOD collect data so the program’s effectiveness can be determined, issue guidance, and review challenges identified by small businesses in the course of the GAO study on challenges they face in developing technologies for the space sector. DOD agreed with the first two, but not the third, according to the report.

The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) is scheduled to vote on Gen. C. Robert Kehler’s nomination to be the new commander of U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) on Thursday, November 18, at 9:30 am. Gen. Kehler has been serving as commander of Air Force Space Command (AFSC), and would replace Gen. Kevin Chilton, who is retiring. Kehler is following in Chilton’s footsteps, who also moved up from commanding AFSC to leading USSTRATCOM.

The European Union (EU) unveiled a revised draft of its “Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities“ during a meeting at the United Nations last week. The Secure World Foundation and the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) sponsored the event in conjunction with a meeting of the U.N.’s First Committee. The Council of the European Union had adopted it on October 11.

Meanwhile, the U.N. First Committee is proposing creation of a Group of Governmental Experts on Space Security to develop Transparency and Confidence Building Measures (TCBMs) for space, according to SWF’s Ben Baseley-Walker in a press release summarizing the meeting.

As Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Frank Rose explained, President Obama’s new National Space Policy calls for developing TCBMs in order to promote “responsible and peaceful behavior in space.” As examples, he listed “dialogues on national security space policies and strategies, expert visits to military satellite flight control centers, and discussions on mechanisms for information exchanges on natural and debris hazards. Joint resolutions on space security, and the adoption of international norms or ‘codes of conduct’ are also examples of TCBMs.” Regarding the EU draft code of conduct specifically, Mr. Rose noted that the United States had been working with the EU over the past 18 months and hoped to decide “in the coming months” whether to sign on to it.

Jean-Francois Mayence provided a snapshot of the revised draft, whose purpose is “security, safety, sustainability” for all space activities based on four guiding principles: freedom of outer space as expressed the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the principle of self-defense as expressed in the U.N. Charter, non-harmful actions, and the peaceful use of outer space.

Geodesy is the science of measuring the Earth’s shape, orientation in space, and gravity field, and how they change over time, and the space- and ground-based systems that provide those critical measurements need renewed investment says the National Research Council (NRC).

A summary of a new report from the NRC’s Board on Earth Sciences and Resources (BESR) on the geodetic infrastructure was released today in advance of a meeting later this week of the National Advisory Board on Positioning, Navigation and Timing (see our calendar on the right menu for details). The full report will be released later this month.

NASA and DOD satellites and NSF radio telescopes are among the U.S. facilities used to provide geodetic data. The report summary lists elevation maps, navigation systems, precision agriculture, and early warning for hazards as some of the beneficiaries of geodetic data. The authors state that:

“U.S. federal agencies have made considerable contributions to the geodetic infrastructure on the global scale. These past investments, however, are degrading as the infrastructure ages. Unless the infrastructure is maintained, the existing applications that depend on accurate information about the Earth will degrade in quality, and progress toward more sophisticated applications will stall.”

From the standpoint of space-based systems, the report highlights the need “to establish and maintain a high-precision GPS national network constructed to scientific specifications that can work with other GNSS networks around the world and stream high volumes of data in real time.”

The report was requested by NASA. NSF, USGS, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Naval Observatory, and NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey.

President Obama announced today that National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones will leave his post by the end of the month. Some news reports say that while the resignation had been anticipated for some time, it was accelerated because of White House unhappiness at comments Jones made to Bob Woodward for his recent book Obama’s Wars. Jones’ deputy, Tom Donilon, will be the new National Security Adviser.