Ousting 40 Russian and Ukrainian engineers from the USA after suspending Boeing's licence to participate in an international satellite launcher project smacks of a return by the US Administration to outdated insular industrial and technology policies founded on national economic and security interests. Ironically, though, the State Department's decision to stop Boeing from participating in the Sea Launch commercial satellite project with its Russian, Ukrainian and Norwegian partners will do more to harm the very national economic, not to mention political, interests which the joint venture serves.
Boeing has admitted that it transferred technology to its partners in the project before receiving US Government approval. The company did not have adequate procedures in place, so the State Department's concerns could have more to do with lax procedures than technology transfer.
Yet Loral and Hughes are also being castigated by Congress over letting China apparently have satellite secrets. The technology transfer furore started with Loral in 1996 when an employee faxed a technical report on rocketry to Beijing officials after a company satellite was destroyed in the failure of the first Long March 3B. This has led to criticisms (still being investigated by Congress) about military information being transferred on other Loral projects.
Hughes faces similar difficulties. Fourteen of the 17 launches of Hughes and Loral-built satellites on Chinese boosters have been monitored by US security specialists. Hughes has offered to pay for the Department of Defense to monitor its future satellite launches on Long March boosters. It says there is no security risk, and no missile technology transfer to China.
The suspension over unauthorised technology transfer risks undermining Boeing's future chances of securing key technologies relatively cheaply from foreign partners such as Russia and Ukraine. Moreover, it could well frighten off other joint US-Russian technology co-operation ventures, through fear of a US national security backlash over information sharing. Significantly, too, the present hard line being taken by the State Department and US Congress over the transfer of American satellite and rocket technology to Russia, Ukraine and China overturns a key post-cold war policy of international co-operation in the space industry. That policy was intended to address the very problem of the space technology race and the escalating costs and duplication which that race engendered.
National security issues fly in the face of international Cupertino. In using partnerships with Russia and China to cut its costs of launching satellites and to access critical technologies, the USA is advancing its own commercial and security interests, not harming them. The USA knows this, which is why the latest concerns over information sharing and exchange smell of paranoia and double standards and have little foundation. For instance, no such pressure has been applied to the International Space Station (ISS). NASA and the Russians are ready to embark on the first launches of components for the ISS. The Congress complains about costs and delays, but makes not a whimper about technology transfer or security
It may not be wedded bliss, but NASA and Russia are co-operating on the ISS technology and details are being transferred to and fro daily. Not just one way, either. What does Russia feel about NASA astronauts having spent over 900 days operating on its Mir space station and flying nine Shuttle flights to dock with the station? NASA has gained more hands-on space station operational experience from Russia than it ever did on its Skylab in 1973/4.
The USA's eagerness to embrace Russian space technology - and Russian hunger for dollars - has been illustrated by the formation of several joint projects to develop and launch new rocket engines and boosters. The Atlas III, the USA's latest commercial launcher, will fly with a Russian engine on its first stage! The same engine will power a US Air Force version of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle. How about that for technology transfer.
Source: Flight International
