Impeachment of the president is not the only issue dividing the Clinton-Gore White House and the Republican-controlled 106th Congress. The new Congress wants to fund programs needed for military control of space, while the White House wants to avoid the issue. Many in the Pentagon, preferring increased spending on military readiness and traditional weapons, would rather defer any big spending on space. Enter Sen. Bob Smith, New Hampshire Republican and chairman of the strategic subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who is determined to force the issue even if it means breaking up the Air Force and creating a Space Force. Strongly advocating the need for military power in space, the senator expressed his views in a speech in Boston on Nov. 18.

Sen. Smith said America's future security depends on space supremacy. While we are ahead in space now, our future dominance is not assured. We need a space control advocate within the government, who will press for the needed resources. The Air Force was to become that advocate, but it has not. Three years ago the Air Force published "Global Engagement," proposing to become a Space and Air Force. But now the service is retreating from its own vision.

It's new concept is to create an "aerospace force," in which air power is dominant and space systems just support air power.

This is a surrender by Air Force leadership to White House opposition to weapons in space. The Air Force wants to move into space while trying to accommodate the view that space is some pristine wilderness that must be kept free of weapons. This view of space is favored by those who fought President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and continue to oppose all weapons in space.

President Clinton began by killing the White House Space Council, a body chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle that had effectively coordinated government space policy. Next, he converted the space-oriented SDI into a ground-based effort, ended programs to develop "Brilliant Pebbles" and other space-based defenses, and gave effusive support to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that bans space-based components of a national missile defense.

In 1997, he used the line-item veto (later ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court) to cancel three space control programs. He made an agreement with Moscow to ban anything that could intercept a theater ballistic missile from space, and abolished the Office of Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Space. Mr. Clinton's position is crystal clear: No U.S. weapons in space, offensive or defensive.

The problem facing the Pentagon is that it cannot control space without weapons. The administration gives lip service to the need for space control, but puts little money in the budget to pay for it. Mr. Smith bemoans the "paltry" investments in space power, noting he has to earmark funds to keep alive the military spaceplane, the kinetic energy antisatellite device, and the Clementine II space experiment.

The Air Force must assume the space power mission and allocate funds to it, says Mr. Smith, and this means shedding large chunks of today's Air Force to pay for tomorrow's. If the Air Force is unable or unwilling to change, Congress will have to create a Space Force, just as Congress created the Army Air Corps in 1926 and the Air Force in 1947. A separate service would fight for the resources needed to obtain space control weapons, which no one is doing now.

The senator hopes the Air Force will solve the problem by becoming a true Space and Air Force. But, he adds, the need for space dominance is too important to allow the bureaucracy or service parochialism to block it. Control of space will create security for this country for centuries to come, he says. Responding to Mr. Smith at a Dec. 23 breakfast for reporters, acting Secretary of the Air Force F. Whitten Peters said a Space Force is not necessary and would encounter the same space policy problems as the Air Force.

In other words, it is not the Air Force that is preventing the development of space weapons -- it is White House policy.

The arms control position on space appeared in an article by Sen. Charles Robb of Virginia, a pro-defense Democrat, who wrote correctly in the winter issue of the Washington Quarterly that putting weapons in space would be a remarkable advance and a true revolution in military affairs. But then he said the United States should deny itself this capability, to prevent an arms race in space. Yet, such self-denial would leave the United States with weapons to fight the last war instead of the next one.

In 1921, Gen. Billy Mitchell called for America to invest in airpower, but his vision was not shared by the national leadership. It took Pearl Harbor to motivate this country to build a modern air force. Mr. Smith may be today's Billy Mitchell -- raising the alarm about the need for space power. His congressional colleagues should heed his advice and reallocate enough defense spending to speed development of the space weapons that will be needed in the 21st century.

James T. Hackett is a contributing writer to The Washington Times based in San Diego.