Page:The Air Force Role In Developing International Outer Space Law (Terrill, 1999).djvu/67

 space. However, State did recommend that the Space Council undertake a review of the question of defining the limits of air and outer space. The Joint Staff represented DOD's uniformed services in this review. At the end of 1961, Adlai E. Stevenson, US ambassador to the United Nations, stated to the General Assembly that a demarcation between air and outer space was "premature." Underlying the discussion regarding a definition for outer space and the concomitant determination of sovereignty was the fact that US satellites had been orbiting over other nations for approximately three years without objection. Along the line of what Eisenhower had much earlier concluded, attorneys within OSD and the services agreed that the "internationalization" of outer space was in the US national interest and that "peaceful purposes" were consistent with self-defense under the UN charter.

In February 1962, the JCS, in a memorandum for the secretary of defense, stated two reasons for their opposition to defining outer space: it was premature and it limited military space operations. In a letter to E. C. Welsh, secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, Cyrus Vance restated that DOD's position remained the setting of a limit on sovereignty was neither necessary nor desired. That spring, Maj Gen John M. Reynolds (USAF), vice director of the Joint Staff, recommended to Foreman, DOD's assistant general counsel, that the DOD position on the limits of air and outer space was that "international agreement on definition of outer space [was] neither necessary nor desirable at this time. Should a finite boundary be forced upon us, 20 miles or less would be least disadvantageous." Foreman passed this on to the NASC, which issued its summary of department and agency positions on the issue, noting that none had recommended immediate action for setting an upper limit for airspace.

The line of demarcation issue then lay dormant for several years. By 1964 the generally accepted US position was that satellites orbiting the earth were in outer space. The efforts to complete passage of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (commonly known as the Principles Treaty or the Outer Space Treaty) again raised the demarcation issue in 1967. In May 1967, Leonard Egan, Air Force assistant general counsel for international affairs, submitted recommended changes to a draft State Department position paper that Jerome Silber (Foreman's successor as DOD assistant general counsel for international affairs) had provided him. Egan's proposed amendments