Air Force as a Backseat “Driver” in Space Law Debates
By 1956, as a result of the Air Coordinating Committee’s (ACC) efforts at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the United States had established a position regarding the evolution of outer space law. However, the United States had yet to formulate an overall or general outer space policy. From 1955 to late fall 1957, US foreign policy and its concomitant international actions regarding outer space had focused on disarmament and “space-for-peace.” These efforts were driven by the Eisenhower administration’s effort to obtain the free passage through space of intelligence-gathering satellites. As described earlier. Air Force efforts had been primarily focused on precluding an international treaty as being premature. As time passed, the US position was nonetheless evolving to a less hardened opposition to formal statements of space policy and international law.
In November 1957, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles wrote Secretary of Defense Neil H. McElroy to encourage direct communication between the Departments of State and Defense (DOD) on space issues. Dulles requested assistance in formulating a US position regarding proposals for inspections of objects to be sent through outer space to ensure that such objects were for exclusively peaceful and scientific purposes. Such cooperation was further encouraged when State Department legal adviser Loftus Becker recommended to DOD general counsel Robert Dechert that the Defense Department establish a task force to study and cooperate with a State Department task force that had been created to deal with space law. Dechert responded, on 15 January 1958, advising Becker that DOD had followed his advice and that Monroe Leigh, assistant general counsel for international affairs, had been assigned to establish the task force and would be DOD’s point of contact with State.
In early 1958 the United States focused less on disarmament and more toward obtaining international cooperation for peaceful uses of outer space. This shift in focus was evidenced within the Air Force by an Air University (AU) study regarding the control of outer space. This study, mentioned earlier, diverged from the existing Air Staff position
