The Crisis in ELDO in 1966 and the Renewed Pressure for. Technological Sharing

In February 1966 the British government circulated an aide-memoire to its part­ners in ELDO.40 It remarked that the organization was unlikely to produce any worthwhile result and that Her Majesty’s government saw little interest in continu­ing as a member of the organization and contributing financially to its program. Development costs of Europa had more than doubled from the initial estimate of about $200 million to over $400 million. The time to completion had slipped from five to seven-and-a-half years. The British first stage, Blue Streak, had been successfully commissioned in June 1965, while the French and German stages were still under development. The British were therefore effectively subsidizing continental industries to produce a launcher that, in fact, would be obsolete tech­nologically and commercially uncompetitive with American heavy launchers.41

The timing of this move was deemed most unfortunate in Washington. First, the European integration process was in a very brittle state at the time and even NATO seemed to be on the brink of fragmentation.42 The French had precipitated a crisis in the European Economic Community (EEC) by boycotting the EEC’s decision-making machinery so as to liberate the country from its “subordination” to community institutions and the dilution of sovereignty that that entailed.43 In this inauspicious climate, everything possible had to be done to sustain the momentum for European unity. As Undersecretary of State George Ball emphasized, European integration “is the most realistic means of achieving European political unity with all that that implies for our relations with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. . . and is the precondition for a Europe able to carry its proper share of responsibility for our common defense.”44 ELDO was not central to European integration. But just when France was challenging the momentum of European unity, the significance of the United Kingdom’s threat to leave ELDO risked being amplified by those who were increasingly hostile to supranational ventures on the continent.

The British challenge to ELDO also came at the very moment when her part­ners were becoming increasingly vocal about the putative “technological gap” that had opened up between the two sides of the Atlantic.45 President Johnson took this matter so seriously that in November 1966 he personally signed NSAM357, instructing his science adviser, Donald Hornig, to set up an interdepartmental committee to look into “the increasing concern in Western Europe over possible disparities in advanced technology between the United States and Europe.”46 In its preliminary report, the committee concluded that “the Technological Gap [was] mainly a political and psychological problem” but that it did have “some basis in actual disparities.” These included “the demonstrated American superiority in sophisticated electronics, military technology and space systems.” Particularly important were “the ‘very high technology industries’ (particularly computers, space communications, and aircraft) which provide a much greater military capability, are nationally prestigious, and are believed to be far-reaching in their economic, political and social implications.”47 For the Johnson admin­istration, then, the technological gap, even if inflated in Europe, was a prob­lem that had to be addressed, and the mutual development of space technology through an organization like ELDO was one way of doing so.

Finally, NASA again emphasized that enhanced international collaboration in space would aid nonproliferation. Quoting James Webb this time, it would be “a means whereby foreign nations might be increasingly involved in space technology and diverted from the technology of nuclear weapons delivery.”48 The United States could use the carrot of technological sharing with ELDO to redirect limited human and material resources away from national programs that were more difficult to con­trol and which might encourage the proliferation of weapons delivery systems.

The continued and spectacular success of the French space program gave this argument for saving ELDO an added urgency. On November 26, 1965, France had become the third space power by launching its own satellite with its own launcher, Diamant-A, from Hammaguir in Algeria. The feat was repeated in February 1966. This three-stage launcher combined “militarily significant solid and storable liq­uid fueled systems”—just the kind of technology the United States did not want it to develop—in a highly successful vehicle derived from the national missile pro­gram.49 In the light of these achievements and de Gaulle’s growing determination to affirm his independence of the EEC and the Atlantic alliance, “[t]he US is concerned that, if ELDO were to be dissolved, France might devote more of its resources to a national, military-related program or that it might establish undesir­able bilateral relationships [with the Soviet Union] for the construction of satellite launch vehicles.”50 The United States had to contain this threat and ensure that European institutions emerged “from the present crisis with their prestige, power and potential for building a united Europe as little impaired as possible.”51

The Johnson administration took two steps to address this situation. First, they let Britain know that they were deeply concerned about the implications of its pos­sible withdrawal from ELDO. In addition, the administration formally undertook to provide technological support to ELDO. On July 29, 1966, Walt W. Rostow, one of LBJ’s two national security advisers, signed off on National Security Action Memorandum 354.52 NSAM354 was a response to a request from the Department of State that the United States “clarify and define” its policy concerning collabora­tion with the “present and future programs” of ELDO. The document affirmed that it was “in the U. S. interest to encourage the continued development of ELDO through U. S. cooperation.” It referred to the results of an ad hoc working group, established by the State Department and chaired by Herman Pollack, that had pre­pared a statement “defining the nature and extent of U. S. cooperation with ELDO which the U. S. government is now prepared to extend.” This statement was to be “continually reviewed by the responsible agencies,” above all, the Department of Defense and the State Department, along with NASA, “to ensure that it is current and responsive in terms of developing strategies.”

The help that Pollack’s working group proposed was extensive. It was divided into three categories: general, and short-range and long-range assistance.53 The first contained some standard items—training in technical management, facilitat­ing export licenses, use of NASA test facilities—but also suggested that a tech­nical office be established within NASA “specifically to serve in an expediting and assisting role for ELDO.” Short-range help included “technical advice and assistance” in items such as vehicle integration, stage separation, and synchronous orbit injection techniques, as well as the provision of unclassified flight hard­ware, notably the strapped-down “guidance” package used on the Scout that had already been exported to Japan. Long-range assistance was focused on helping with a high-energy cryogenic upper stage of the rocket, as had been requested by Stephens on behalf of ELDO the year before. It was proposed that Europeans be given access to technological documentation and experience available in the Atlas-Centaur systems, that ELDO technical personnel “have intimate touch with the problems of systems design, integration, and program management of a high-energy upper [sic] such as the Centaur,” and even that the United States consider “joint use of a high-energy upper stage developed in Europe.”54 In short, in mid-1966, the United States was considering making a substantial effort to help ELDO develop a powerful launcher with geosynchronous orbit capability by sharing state-of-the-art knowledge and experience and by facilitating the export of hardware. This support—it should be added—would not normally be available on a bilateral basis to European national launcher programs.

None of this would have been thinkable as long as NSAM294 (denying tech­nology that might help the French military program) and NSAM338 (denying technology that might subvert a single global comsat system) were not revised. Indeed in spring 1966 it was evident that NSAM294 was due for review. European booster technology was advancing rapidly without external help. A blanket denial of export licenses now would unnecessarily harm both US business and foreign policy interests. Even worse, it might encourage a request to a non-US supplier, most obviously the Soviet Union with whom de Gaulle was fostering technological collaboration as an expression of French autonomy. Reiterating NASA’s demand that policy for technology transfer should make “detailed and fine distinctions,” Richard Barnes, the director of Frutkin’s Cooperative Projects Division, insisted (and Webb concurred) that the interpretation of restrictions on technology trans­fer determined by NASM294 had to be more specific. The guidelines, he wrote the chairman of the NSAM 294 Review Group in the State Department, should deny to a foreign power “only those few critical items which are clearly intended for use in a national program, would significantly and directly benefit that pro­gram in terms of time and quality or cost, and are unavailable in comparable sub­stitute form elsewhere than the US” (emphasis in the original).55 Correlatively, it should share items that were “of only marginal benefit to the national program” or “were available elsewhere than the US without undue difficulty or delay.” This was happening already in sensitive areas. The release of inertial guidance technol­ogy to Germany had been officially sanctioned in July 1964 on condition that it was not employed “for ballistic missile use or development.”56 A strapped-down “guidance” package had been offered to Japan. By contrast, and foolishly in Barnes’s view,57 an American company had recently been refused a license to assist France with the development of gyro technology even though gyros of comparable weight and performance were already available in France. In short US policy should take into account the kind of technology at issue, its likely uses in practice, the global state of the market for the technology, and the importance of collaboration from a foreign policy perspective.

While Barnes was putting NASA’s case to the State Department, Webb was doing what he could to get the Department of Defense to support NASA’s approach. Writing to Defense Secretary McNamara in April 1966, Webb pointed out that although high-energy, cryogenic, or “non-storable” upper stages might conceivably be employed for military purposes, in practice they would probably not be deployed in that way. He argued that anyway the risks of technological leakage into the military program were outweighed by the benefits of promot­ing a civilian rocket. As he put it, “Even in the case of France it seems likely that encouragement to proceed with upper stage hydrogen/oxygen systems now under development might divert money and people from a nuclear delivery pro­gram rather than contribute to that which is already under way using quite dif­ferent technology.” Here, and in general, wrote Webb to McNamara, rather than a blanket restriction, “we might be better off were we to concentrate on a few very essential restrictions, such as advanced guidance and reentry systems” (my emphasis). In a supportive reply McNamara reassured the NASA administra­tor that he strongly favored international cooperation in space and that he had directed the DoD staff “to be as liberal as possible regarding the release of space technology for payloads and other support items.”58

It was fairly easy to revise the restrictions embodied in NSAM294 to accom­modate the changing balance of technological power between the United States and France, particularly once the French had shown that they had mastered launcher technology sufficiently to place their own satellite in orbit. The con­straints imposed on sharing booster technology in NSAM 338 were less easily dislodged, and were a serious irritant to US-European relations. Frutkin wrote with some exasperation that the Europeans were persuaded that the United States was “seeking by all means, fair or foul, to maintain political and technical control of Intelsat.”59 Barnes was equally frustrated by “European fixation on comsats and launch vehicles.”60 Of course people in France and Germany may have been exaggerating the situation, but the administration itself recognized that they had some cause to complain. Charles Johnson admitted in an exchange with Walt Rostow that the odds were so heavily stacked in the United States’ favor in the (interim) Intelsat agreements that it was “difficult to maintain international cooperation on this basis.”61 Barnes agreed. There had been a “deterioration of ‘climate for cooperation’ caused by (1) US policies and actions within the Intelsat, and (2) US export policies in support of the ‘single global system.’”62

NASA’s view was that, unless they acted fast, and softened the restrictions in NASM338, the United States would lose all control over the direction of the European communications satellite system, as well as support for American poli­cies in Intelsat. Frutkin was convinced that the United States had to be prepared to provide launch services on a reimbursable basis for (experimental) foreign communication satellites. This would “extend the market for American vehicles, remove some incentive for independent foreign development of boosters, and assure that we could continue to exercise critical leverage in foreign comsat activities rather than lose such leverage.” An (anonymous) internal memoran­dum argued, along similar lines, that technological sharing was the best way to enroll foreign firms and their governments in American comsat policy. By allowing “United States firms to enter cooperative arrangements with the com­munications and electronics manufacturing industry in other countries,” notably in Western Europe, industries in these countries would develop the technical know-how needed for them “to compete effectively for contracts for the space segment of the global communications system.” This would “remove a current irritant, primarily expressed by the French but also shared by the British, Italians and Germans, about their inability to supply hardware for the Intelsat space seg­ment.” And even if such technological sharing did not irreversibly lock these European countries into the single global system favored by the United States, one could expect them to have a “greater incentive” to collaborate with America in developing that global system. They were also likely to be more cooperative and sympathetic to the US position during the renegotiation of the interim Intelsat agreements scheduled for 1969. Anyway, if the United States did nothing to help these nations, they would eventually develop the technology on their own, with­out American help, and would be quite capable of establishing separate, regional communications satellite systems in due course.63 As Frutkin explained,

(a) We do need to improve our situation in Intelsat with specific reference to the 1969 negotiations. (b) We already have a strong technical lead in the comsat field.

(c) We already have an adequate voting majority in Intelsat. (d) We can rely upon our technical, moral and financial strength to assure continuing leadership—with­out seeking to deny technology to our partners in Intelsat.64

The proposal from Pollack’s working group to help ELDO develop or acquire the kick-stage and propulsion technology needed to place a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit was entirely coherent with this attitude.