[Peace-discuss] Bush and Space weapons

[ppatton at uiuc.edu]

Given that I may end up working on a sensory neurobiology
project funded by DARPA, I'm really troubled by the Bush
administration's drive to militarize so many aspects of
science and technology.
-Paul Patton

Air Force Seeks Bush's Approval for Space Weapons Programs
by Tim Weiner
 

The Air Force, saying it must secure space to protect the
nation from attack, is seeking President Bush's approval of a
national-security directive that could move the United States
closer to fielding offensive and defensive space weapons,
according to White House and Air Force officials.

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.

A senior administration official said that a new presidential
directive would replace a 1996 Clinton administration policy
that emphasized a more pacific use of space, including spy
satellites' support for military operations, arms control and
nonproliferation pacts.

Any deployment of space weapons would face financial,
technological, political and diplomatic hurdles, although no
treaty or law bans Washington from putting weapons in space,
barring weapons of mass destruction.

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.

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."

With little public debate, the Pentagon has already spent
billions of dollars developing space weapons and preparing
plans to deploy them.

"We haven't reached the point of strafing and bombing from
space," Pete Teets, who stepped down last month as the acting
secretary of the Air Force, told a space warfare symposium
last year. "Nonetheless, we are thinking about those
possibilities."

In January 2001, a commission led by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then
the newly nominated defense secretary, recommended that the
military should "ensure that the president will have the
option to deploy weapons in space."

It said that "explicit national security guidance and defense
policy is needed to direct development of doctrine, concepts
of operations and capabilities for space, including weapons
systems that operate in space."

The effort to develop a new policy directive reflects three
years of work prompted by the report. The White House would
not say if all the report's recommendations would be adopted.

In 2002, after weighing the report of the Rumsfeld space
commission, President Bush withdrew from the 30-year-old
Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which banned space-based weapons.

Ever since then, the Air Force has sought a new presidential
policy officially ratifying the concept of seeking American
space superiority.

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.

Yet "there seems little doubt that space-basing of weapons is
an accepted aspect of the Air Force" and its plans for the
future, Capt. David C. Hardesty of the Naval War College
faculty says in a new study.

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.

The Air Force's drive into space has been accelerated by the
Pentagon's failure to build a missile defense on earth. After
spending 22 years and nearly $100 billion, Pentagon officials
say they cannot reliably detect and destroy a threat today.

"Are we out of the woods? No," Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, who
directs the Missile Defense Agency, said in an interview.
"We've got a long way to go, a lot of testing to do."

While the Missile Defense Agency struggles with new technology
for a space-based laser, the Air Force already has a potential
weapon in space.

In April, the Air Force launched the XSS-11, an experimental
microsatellite with the technical ability to disrupt other
nations' military reconnaissance and communications satellites.

Another Air Force space program, nicknamed Rods From God, aims
to hurl cylinders of tungsten, titanium or uranium from the
edge of space to destroy targets on the ground, striking at
speeds of about 7,200 miles an hour with the force of a small
nuclear weapon.

A third program would bounce laser beams off mirrors hung from
space satellites or huge high-altitude blimps, redirecting the
lethal rays down to targets around the world. A fourth seeks
to turn radio waves into weapons whose powers could range
"from tap on the shoulder to toast," in the words of an Air
Force plan.

Captain Hardesty, in the new issue of the Naval War College
Review, calls for "a thorough military analysis" of these
plans, followed by "a larger public debate."

"To proceed with space-based weapons on any other foundation
would be the height of folly," he concludes, warning that
other nations not necessarily allies would follow America's
lead into space.

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."

Last month, Gen. James E. Cartwright, who leads the United
States Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services
nuclear forces subcommittee that the goal of developing space
weaponry was to allow the nation to deliver an attack "very
quickly, with very short time lines on the planning and
delivery, any place on the face of the earth."

Senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican from Alabama who is
chairman of the subcommittee, worried that the common aero
vehicle might be used in ways that would "be mistaken as some
sort of attack on, for example, Russia."

"They might think it would be a launch against them of maybe a
nuclear warhead," Senator Sessions said. "We want to be sure
that there could be no misunderstanding in that before we
authorize going forward with this vehicle."

General Cartwright said that the military would "provide every
opportunity to ensure that it's not misunderstood" and that
Global Strike simply aimed to "expand the choices that we
might be able to offer to the president in crisis."

Senior military and space officials of the European Union,
Canada, China and Russia have objected publicly to the notion
of American space superiority.

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."

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."

The Air Force does not put a price tag on space superiority.
Published studies by leading weapons scientists, physicists
and engineers say the cost of a space-based system that could
defend the nation against an attack by a handful of missiles
could be anywhere from $220 billion to $1 trillion.

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."

"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."

Surveillance and reconnaissance satellites are a crucial
component of space superiority. But the biggest new spy
satellite program, Future Imagery Architecture, has tripled in
price to about $25 billion while producing less than promised,
military contractors say. A new space technology for detecting
enemy launchings has risen to more than $10 billion from a
promised $4 billion, Mr. Teets told Congress last month.

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," he told an Air Force conference in September. "Space
superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space supremacy is our
vision for the future." 
__________________________________________________________________
Dr. Paul Patton
spring semster 2005
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Biology, Williams College
Williamstown, MA
phone: (413)-597-3518

Research Scientist
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-344-5812
homepage: http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ppatton/www/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
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