Page:The Air Force Role In Developing International Outer Space Law (Terrill, 1999).djvu/59

 emphasized NASA's role in outer space. Air Force leaders were critical of the new NSC policy and its "leaders continued to chafe at what they considered a policy that produced too modest a defense support,space program and prevented offensive weapons development altogether."

RAND finally completed its Air Force sponsored study in the spring of 1959. The report helped solidify Air Force doctrine, namely, that the United States avoid committing itself to any position regarding space law. The RAND study was circulated widely within DOD. Substantive intergovernmental discussions relating to space issues continued to the point that NSC's Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) on 18 March 1959 approved an "Operations Plan for Outer Space." The OCB operations plan translated national security policy statements into specific US programs and courses of action, including the following:

1. Promote recognition of the right of passage through outer space of any orbiting objects or vehicles not equipped to inflict injury or damage upon the citizens, territories, or property of any State or any property of its citizens.

2. Develop a catalogue of the possible legal issues with regard to outer space programs and analyze specific cases with a view to initiating, where necessary, the formulation of definite US legal positions.

3. Continue US initiatives in the UN and its Disarmament Commission calling for technical studies of the design of an inspection system that might make it possible to assure that the sending of objects through outer space will be exclusively for peaceful and scientific purposes.