Left Flank

A CSIS report concludes, that US space policy, due to a decade-long export control scheme, American companies are losing market share to younger space-faring states and Russia.

The United States tightened space technology-transfer rules in 1999 after congressional investigators found China had acquired sensitive technologies from U.S.-built commercial satellites then being launched by the Chinese.

The new rules put commercial communications satellites, subsystems and components on a munitions list subject to State Department licensing even if similar products could be easily bought worldwide.

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In the global communications satellite market -- where the United States enjoyed a technical edge over international competitors in the 1990s -- the gap with competitors has "significantly closed" in the last decade, the report said.

The U.S. share of global space markets is steadily declining and U.S. companies are increasingly hard-put to cash in on foreign markets, it said. "U.S. preeminence in space is under challenge in many areas."

The export-control regime is designed to enhance U.S. national security but "did not do what it intended," said Pierre Chao, one of the study's three co-chairs, at a briefing on the findings. "In some cases, it had the opposite effect."

For instance, Russia was sharing relevant know-how with China, Europe and India even as the United States had shied from doing so, the report said.

The study said the overall financial health of the top manufacturers in the U.S. space industrial -- by implication, companies like Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp -- was "good," despite the U.S. industry's loss of share overseas.

But it said U.S. access to foreign innovation and "human capital" was getting tougher. The U.S. space industrial base is largely dependent on U.S. national-security spending, it added.

One example mentioned is commercial imaging. Another example could be the difficulties finding a civilian contractor to supply the International Space Station.