[Peace-discuss] Space weapons- turning China into an enemy

[patton paul]

Pentagon Preps for War in Space

Noah Shachtman, Wired News
02/23/2004

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,62358,00.html


An Air Force report is giving what analysts call the most detailed picture
since the end of the Cold War of the Pentagon's efforts to turn outer
space into a battlefield.

For years, the American military has spoken in hints and whispers, if at
all, about its plans to develop weapons in space. But the U.S. Air Force
Transformation Flight Plan changes all that. Released in November, the
report makes U.S. dominance of the heavens a top Pentagon priority in the
new century. And it runs through dozens of research programs designed to
ensure that America can never be challenged in orbit -- from
anti-satellite lasers to weapons that "would provide the capability to
strike ground targets anywhere in the world from space."

Space has become an increasingly important part of U.S. military efforts.
Satellites are used more and more to talk to troops, keep tabs on foes and
guide smart bombs. There's also long been recognition that satellites may
need some sort of protection against attack.

But the Air Force report goes far beyond these defensive capabilities,
calling for weapons that can cripple other countries' orbiters.

That prospect worries some analysts that the U.S. may spark a worldwide
arms race in orbit.

"I don't think other countries will be taking this lying down," said
Theresa Hitchens, the vice president of the Center for Defense
Information.

The space weapons programs listed in the Air Force report went largely
unnoticed until Hitchens circulated them in an e-mail Thursday.

"This will certainly prompt China into actually moving forward" on space
weapon plans of its own, she added. "The Russians are likely to respond
with something as well."

This year, the Air Force will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to
find ways to track enemy satellites -- and, if necessary, blind those eyes
in the sky.

Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for the U.S. Air Force Space Command, said
$66.4 million is being spent on a research project to "deny, disrupt and
degrade adversary space-based surveillance and reconnaissance systems." He
said another $79 million is funding efforts to build a "constellation of
optical sensing satellites to track and identify space forces."

"As we look to the future, space is where our adversaries are looking to
cut us off," Kucharek said. "We know from the attempted jamming of our GPS
(global positioning system, which relies on satellites) during OIF
(Operation Iraqi Freedom) that our enemies are going to try to deny us
from using space."

But it's unclear whether putting weapons into space would provide much
protection. The arms themselves could become sitting ducks in orbit --
giving the United States a new weakness, not a new strength. Satellites
are already a weak "center of gravity" in American militarty planning,
argues Bruce DeBlois, the editor of Beyond the Paths of Heaven: The
Emergence of Space Power Thought. They're vulnerbale to electronic
jamming, orbiting projectiles and nuclear detonations in near-Earth space.
The space-based weapons would have all of the same vulnerabilities -- and
would make that center of gravity a more inviting target.

"Simply put, we would posture ourselves as a target in a volatile context
that we create, and weaken ourselves at the same time," Bruce DeBlois, the
editor of Beyond the Paths of Heaven: The Emergence of Space Power
Thought, told a George Washington University audience last year.

However, there's more to the Air Force plan than keeping satellites safe.
The Evolutionary Air and Space Global Laser Engagement, or EAGLE, project
aims to put mirrors underneath an airship 25 times the size of the
Goodyear blimp.  In theory, lasers -- fired from the ground, from space,
or from the air -- would bounce off these blimp-borne mirrors, to track or
even destroy enemy missiles.

Incredible as it sounds, the EAGLE effort is underway at the Air Force
Research Laboratory's Directed Energy division, sources there confirm.
Also under research at the lab is the Ground-Based Laser, which, according
to the Air Force report, would shoot "laser beams through the atmosphere"
to knock out enemy spacecraft in low-earth orbit.

Even more outlandish is the Hypervelocity Rod Bundles research project.
That effort calls for creating a system of metal poles, fired from space,
that could strike anywhere on the planet. It's a long-held -- and
long-ridiculed -- idea. Keeping the rods from liquefying as they enter the
atmosphere is a daunting task, noted Columbia University physics professor
Richard Garwin in a 2003 presentation. In order to be considered effective
weapons, he said, the "rods would need to be orbited at very low
altitudes, and could only deliver one-ninth the destructive energy per
gram as a conventional bomb."

Despite such technical hurdles, space-based arms are legal. The Outer
Space Treaty of 1967 only bans nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass
destruction from orbit.

Over the years, American administrations have looked into developing such
weapons -- most notably, as part of President Reagan's Star Wars
anti-missile initiative.

However, Hitchens said, "no U.S. president has authorized the deployment
of a space weapon, at least in the white (unclassified) world."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on the other hand, long has advocated
sending arms into orbit. Just before taking office in 2001, he chaired a
commission on space and national security that warned that the country
could face a "space Pearl Harbor" in the years to come. This calamity must
be avoided, the commission declared, asserting that the best way to do
that is to "vigorously pursue the capabilities ... to ensure that the
President will have the option to deploy weapons in space."

But pursuing such a strategy may actually put the United States in greater
jeopardy, argues David Wright, with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"You're opening a door you might rather not have opened," he said.

"America is the country with the most satellites, he explained. By
developing anti-satellite weapons, "it legitimizes systems that the U.S.
has the most to lose from." Other countries could start pursuing
long-taboo space weapons efforts. And while countries like China don't
have the technical sophistication of the United States, they already have
the capabilities to hurt us in space -- medium range missiles, and nuclear
warheads.

Wright added, "This could trigger a backlash that actually leaves the U.S.
worse off."