A paper submitted to the faculty of the Naval War College in partial satisfaction of the requirement of the Department of Operations by William G. Clapp, Ed.D, Major, Utah National Guard that was later updated for publication as a Strategic Research Department occasional paper because of the timeliness of the topic and the belief that it deserved wider circulation.

In this paper, Clapp provided an overview of the space environment and its assets in order to understand their capabilities. Clapp argued that space assets are vital elements that influence both peacetime and wartime missions at all three levels of military activity: strategic, operational, and tactical. This paper provided insights concerning a few of the limitations and capabilities of U.S. space assets and should help the war fighter understand the environment in which the battle for aerospace superiority must be fought and won.

A longer version of this paper was originally submitted to the faculty of the Naval War College in partial satisfaction of the requirements for an Advanced Research Program elective William G. Clapp, Ed.D, Major, Utah National Guard that was later updated for publication as a Strategic Research Department occasional paper. In this paper, Clapp described how the U.S. space launch program no longer dominated the world and was instead playing catch-up with the world's first commercial launch company, Arianespace. He suggested that a healthy U.S. space launch program could provide considerable economic advantages and is essential to assure continued low-cost military access to space, but that the space policy in the 1990s prohibited development of new launch vehicles and limited the Department of Defense to only upgrades of existing launch vehicles as well as a declining DoD budget. He also identified Arianespace's advantages and offered low-cost recommendations for countering them that would help the U.S. once again dominate the world commercial launch market and ensure affordable military access to space.

A student paper by Lieutenant Colonel Wayland W. Williams for the course in naval warfare at the Naval War College in which he discussed how the destiny of nations have historically been shaped by the application of science and technology to the revolutional military capabilities with space capabilities being the most recent product. The impact on international affairs of man/machine in space and the potential of a nation's space capabilities to provide new tools of political and military strength are discussed and a comparison of the space accomplishments of both the U.S. and Soviet Union is also presented.