The quiet time extraterrestrial ring current, which has a peak of ~7 RE, contains protons with energies in the keV range. In these high &bgr; (&bgr; being the raio of kinetic pressure to magnetic pressure) plasmas which are governed by an antiloss cone distribution function an electromagnetic high-frequency drift instability can arise provided &rgr;>&rgr;c, &rgr; being the strength of the antiloss cone. The growth rates associated with this antiloss cone drift instability are of the order of or even greater than the electron cyclotron frequency.