The NYT offers this article, on what is no doubt to them another exposure of evil Pentagon machinations in our imperialistic drive for world control. The Chief finds the report to be rather heartening – to think that part of DoD is actually proactively planning ahead!
This is something that is a vital and absolute necessity. If we do NOT do this, the ChiComs will – they are already going in this direction. You don’t even want to think about the world if they held the ultimate “high ground” of space, and we had no effective counter.
The proposed change would be a substantial shift in American policy. It would almost certainly be opposed by many American allies and potential enemies, who have said it may create an arms race in space.
…and the point is? They won’t like us anyway, so we might as well do ourselves some good while they’re not liking us.
A presidential directive is expected within weeks, said the senior administration official, who is involved with space policy and insisted that he not be identified because the directive is still under final review and the White House has not disclosed its details.
If this is done, it will prove to be every bit as significant as Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Remember that? It ended up being the virtual straw that broke the camel’s back of the Soviet Union, when they realized they couldn’t match either our technology, and our capacity to actually afford to build it. Hmmmm. Maybe, just maybe….the ChiComs? What a thought!
Air Force officials said yesterday that the directive, which is still in draft form, did not call for militarizing space. “The focus of the process is not putting weapons in space,” said Maj. Karen Finn, an Air Force spokeswoman, who said that the White House, not the Air Force, makes national policy. “The focus is having free access in space.”
Sounds sort of like the situation on the high seas. This is good.
With little public debate, the Pentagon has already spent billions of dollars developing space weapons and preparing plans to deploy them.
It’s reassuring to know that at least some of the government is doing it’s job without quaking in their boots from the moonbats.
The Air Force believes “we must establish and maintain space superiority,” Gen. Lance Lord, who leads the Air Force Space Command, told Congress recently. “Simply put, it’s the American way of fighting.” Air Force doctrine defines space superiority as “freedom to attack as well as freedom from attack” in space.
The mission will require new weapons, new space satellites, new ways of doing battle and, by some estimates, hundreds of billions of dollars. It faces enormous technological obstacles. And many of the nation’s allies object to the idea that space is an American frontier.
See again: it’s like the high seas. We certainly have an approximation of Naval dominance and superiority, but no one is under the illusion that the US “owns” the seas, not the way we “own” for instance Lake Michigan.
A new Air Force strategy, Global Strike, calls for a military space plane carrying precision-guided weapons armed with a half-ton of munitions. General Lord told Congress last month that Global Strike would be “an incredible capability” to destroy command centers or missile bases “anywhere in the world.”
Pentagon documents say the weapon, called the common aero vehicle, could strike from halfway around the world in 45 minutes. “This is the type of prompt Global Strike I have identified as a top priority for our space and missile force,” General Lord said.
This is cool. So are the other ideas noted in this article.
Despite objections from members of Congress who thought “space should be sanctified and no weapons ever put in space,” Mr. Teets, then the Air Force under secretary, told the space-warfare symposium last June that “that policy needs to be pushed forward.”
Again, if we don’t do it, I KNOW who will!
Senior military and space officials of the European Union, Canada, China and Russia have objected publicly to the notion of American space superiority.
Better call them a waambulance: waa-waa, waa-waa, waa-waa.
They think that “the United States doesn’t own space – nobody owns space,” said Teresa Hitchens, vice president of the Center for Defense Information, a policy analysis group in Washington that tends to be critical of the Pentagon. “Space is a global commons under international treaty and international law.”
OK. Let’s try it one more time: just because we have carrier battle groups doesn’t mean we own the ocean. Same difference for space weapons. The “global commons” concept doesn’t contradict this.
No nation will “accept the U.S. developing something they see as the death star,” Ms. Hitchens told a Council on Foreign Relations meeting last month. “I don’t think the United States would find it very comforting if China were to develop a death star, a 24/7 on-orbit weapon that could strike at targets on the ground anywhere in 90 minutes.”
International objections aside, Randy Correll, an Air Force veteran and military consultant, told the council, “the big problem now is it’s too expensive.”
Just like it was too expensive in 1912 to try to build a carrier battle group!
Richard Garwin, widely regarded as a dean of American weapons science, and three colleagues wrote in the March issue of IEEE Spectrum, the professional journal of electric engineering, that “a space-based laser would cost $100 million per target, compared with $600,000 for a Tomahawk missile.”
This reminds me of the IBM CEO in the early 80’s stating that PC’s were so expensive he could never envision that they COULD ever become popular for home use.
“The psychological impact of such a blow might rival that of such devastating attacks as Hiroshima,” they wrote. “But just as the unleashing of nuclear weapons had unforeseen consequences, so, too, would the weaponization of space.”
But General Lord said such problems should not stand in the way of the Air Force’s plans to move into space.
“Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny,”
This is possibly the understatement of the century!