A high-ranking U.S. Military official -- speaking in a non-official capacity -- says the hunt for potentially Earth-threatening space rocks should be more centralized, and the Department of Defense could be a primary force behind this project.

Pete Worden, deputy director for Command and Control at the U.S. Air Force Headquarters in the Pentagon, suggested an array of micro-satellites should be used to find and study Near Earth Objects -- asteroids and comets known as NEOs -- in an effort to save money and speed up the search process.

While the odds of an earthly impact are constantly revised and debated, it's the big rocks that keep asteroid hunters ever vigilant. Current estimates hold that the odds of a civilization destroying impact in any single year range from about 1 in 100,000 to about 1 in 300,000.

Worden, a physicist and astronomy researcher who worked on the Clementine lunar mission, said the current NEO search effort is bogged down because "decision makers simply are unwilling to spend scares resources on such an unlikely catastrophe."

Worden said micro-satellites, which are cheaper to build and cheaper to launch, would be particularly effective in rooting out difficult-to-see asteroids that traverse the space between us and the sun.

Though it helped develop the successful LINEAR asteroid search program, the Department of Defense has typically wrung its collective hands over additional involvement in the search for possibly threatening asteroids. According to Donald Yeomans, an expert on NEOs at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, there is a fear of the possible "giggle factor" that could be produced from the idea of a military agency hunting for space rocks.

Yeomans said in a telephone interview that the international NEO community would likely welcome additional help from the military, but he questions whether an army of micro-satellites would be cost-effective compared to current ground-based efforts.

"Anytime you use space-based reconnaissance it's frightfully expensive," Yeomans said. He added that Worden is "taking a pretty brave stance," given that many in the Department of Defense are not keen on the idea.

Worden says he has the support of many colleagues. But, he told SPACE.com, "there are also a number who aren't very enthusiastic about it."

Part of Worden's plan is a more concerted effort to characterize the composition and structure of NEOs. The makeup of asteroids ranges from solid blocks of stone and iron to loosely bound piles of rubble. In truth, researchers know very little about how asteroids are composed, how they hold themselves together and what would happen the next time a big one heads earthward.

Knowledge about asteroid composition, researchers agree, is crucial to determining how to deflect or destroy one that might someday be found to be on a collision course.

Yeomans agreed with others that while added military involvement would be a good thing, competition is healthy and other existing search programs should be continued.

Dr. Benny J. Peiser of Liverpool John Moores University focuses much of his research on the threat of asteroids, and he also moderates the newsletter in which Worden's essay was published.

"Let's face it," Peiser said, "without the U.S. military, the Free World would have been lost long ago. The efforts to safeguard humanity from future impact disasters, however, will need more cooperation and funding. Don't rely on the Department of Defense to save us every time we're in trouble."