The leader of U.S. Strategic Command says so few satellites are in queue now for launch for critical missions--such as weather observation satcom or ballistic missile warning--that there is a risk of service gaps that could impede the military's ability to do its job.

Walter Pincus notes that a proposal in the recent U.S.-Russian strategic arms control agreement to setup a global center to monitor missile launches is similar to a long-since stalled U.S.-Russia program to establish a "Joint Data Exchange Center".

The US military has abruptly ended an informal arrangement that allowed scientists access to data on incoming meteors from classified surveillance satellites. The change is a blow to the astronomers and planetary scientists who used the information to track space rocks, especially those that burn up over the oceans or in other remote locations.

For 15 years, scientists have benefited from data gleaned by U.S. classified satellites of natural fireball events in Earth's atmosphere but a recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that these observations are classified.

A Japanese ruling party panel is to propose that pre-emptive strikes against enemy bases be allowed despite the country's pacifist constitution, Kyodo news agency said on Monday, weeks after a North Korean missile launch.

U.S. lawmakers and top military officers on Monday predicted cuts in missile defense spending, now running at nearly $10 billion a year, and said the focus would shift increasingly to cooperative efforts with other nations and networking current weapons.

If North Korea launches one or more rockets into space in early April, the U.S. military might have trouble determining immediately whether the boosters are carrying a satellite into orbit or flight-testing a long-range ballistic missile, according to Strategic Command chief Gen. Kevin Chilton.

The Japanese Defense Ministry is thinking of developing an early warning satellite that can detect ballistic missiles in their boost phase to increase the effectiveness of the missile shield it is building.

Russian researchers are tracking the malfunctioning U.S. Defense Support Program satellite, DSP-23, out of concern that the it might prove troublesome to other high-value satellites in its populated geocentric orbit.

Working in secret, Israel and Germany have jointly developed a nuclear missile detection system, according to the Defense News Web site. Code-named Project Bluebird, the system is based on the prototype of an aerial infrared sensor designed to identify a nuclear-tipped missile speeding toward a target amid a cluster of decoy missiles.