Page:The Air Force Role In Developing International Outer Space Law (Terrill, 1999).djvu/19

  President Eisenhower initiated in January 1956. This space “research” project consisted of the Air Force launching 516 from locations in Europe. These balloons carried automatic cameras. Given prevailing winds, the balloons were certain to pass over Eastern Europe and the USSR. If the research succeeded, the balloons-equipped with radio tracking beacons-were eventually to be recovered near Japan and Alaska. The program produced limited intelligence.

When the balloons passed over their territory, Eastern European nations and the USSR protested, complaining that the balloons disrupted civilian aircraft and were equipped for automatic aerial photography in an effort to obtain targeting information. Belgium and Czechoslovakian airlines canceled several flights to Czechoslovakia because of the balloons. The United States initially admitted that, an affiliate of a “privately financed anticommunist organization in the US,” was flying propaganda balloons from West Germany. Further, the Air Force admitted that as part of Operation Moby Dick, it had released some two thousand balloons from various sites around the earth but denied that these releases were a threat to civilian flights. On 7 February 1956, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles responded to the Soviet protests by stating that, in the interest of “decent friendly relations,” the US would “try” to stop the release of the “weather” balloons. While admitting that some of the weather balloons carried photographic equipment, the United States asserted that the equipment was only for taking pictures of high-altitude cloud formations. The Soviets responded that they had developed film from the balloons containing pictures of Turkish airfields. In the face of criticism that the balloons clearly violated the USSR’s airspace, Dulles agreed to stop releasing them. He noted, however, that “the ownership of upper air” was “a disputable question under international law.” Some in the media attacked Dulles for making this statement and for having approved the launch of the balloons. These critics argued that the sovereignty issue had long been resolved and that sovereignty extended indefinitely into the sky. Further, they argued that the Chicago Convention forbade the sending of unmanned missiles over another nation’s airspace without consent. The position of these critics was correct with respect to a nation’s sovereign rights over its own airspace. However, no international law, practice, or custom had as yet established the issue of a nation’s sovereignty in outer space.