Real-Life Star Wars: The Militarization of Space

By Stan Cox, AlterNet. Posted November 15, 2007.

Last January 11, a missile launched from China's Xichang Space Center destroyed a satellite 537 miles above the Earth's surface. Although the target was a weather satellite belonging to China itself (shot down ostensibly because it was obsolete), the act clearly rattled the U.S. space establishment.

Said one observer, The new space policy says we can defend the heavens with technology. But we can't, and the Chinese just proved it."

Precisely six years earlier, on Jan. 11, 2001, the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization issued a report to Congress. The group, which had been headed by President-elect George W. Bush's Defense Secretary-to-be Donald Rumsfeld, asserted that it's only a matter of time until there's all-out war in the heavens:

We know from history that every medium -- air, land and sea -- has seen conflict. Reality indicates that space will be no different. Given this virtual certainty, the U.S. must develop the means both to deter and to defend against hostile acts in and from space -- and ensure continuing superiority.

The current thinking of military and industry officials was revealed last month at the annual Strategic Space and Defense Conference in Omaha, Nebraska. At that meeting, held in the backyard of the US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM).

And that strategy includes not just war mongering against countries like China and Pakistan by "space warriors," but it poses a threat to the safety and liberties of all Americans.

The Militarization of Space

Military space officials will have to develop new doctrine and concepts for offensive and defensive space operations, power projection in, from, and through space, and other military uses of space. -- Rumsfield's Commission Report

The opening talk at the Strategic Space conference was given by USSTRATCOM acting commander Lt. Gen. Robert Kehler, who repeated that old cliche about the Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." Implicitly responding to China's January self-attack, he added, "Well you know what? We get paid to deal with interesting times."

But how USSTRATCOM plans to deal with them isn't clear. In 2002, the Air Force undersecretary for military space acquisitions told The New York Times that "We haven't reached the point of strafing and bombing from space," but that "we are exploring those possibilities."

This fall marks the 40th anniversary of the Outer Space Treaty, an agreement among 98 nations (including the U.S.) that, banned nuclear arms from space but left out mention of other weapons. Nevertheless, no nation has ever launched an attack into or from space, and the costly US missile-defense program that began life two decades ago as President Reagan's "Star Wars" dream continues to founder.

Spending on missile defense has doubled since 2000, and the program is expanding into Poland and the Czech Republic. But Bruce Gagnon of Brunswick, Maine, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, believes the US Missile Defense Agency, with its current official budget of more than $9 billion, is just "a Trojan Horse."

He says, "Missile defense brings in the money but the real story is offensive, preemptive attack technologies for global strike. That's where the real action is." Gagnon agrees that current U.S. space policy remains entirely consistent with the aggressive stance taken in the Rumsfeld report, "although they have slacked off just a bit on their rhetoric."

In September, The New York Times relayed a similar message from a former Pentagon official, who said that space weapons are "still definitely part of the program, but they don't emphasize it because the arms-control people come out of the woodwork."

From the World Policy Institute and other sources, we know about some of the weapons under planning or development in the murkier parts of the military-industrial budget:

• Micro-satellites that could stalk and destroy satellites of other nations
• The Evolutionary Air and Space Global Laser Engagement (EAGLE) project, a series of orbiting mirrors to direct beams from ground- or air-based lasers at targets in space
• The ground-based Kinetic Energy Anti-Satellite Weapon, which could shoot down satellites with missiles, along with the Kinetic Energy Interceptor, a missile-defense system that could double as an anti-satellite weapon
• The Washington Post revealed this week that the Congress has appropriated $100 million for a space-weapon system called "Falcon," described as "a reusable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV) capable of delivering 12,000 pounds of payload at a distance of 9,000 nautical miles ... in less than two hours." House and Senate conferees wrote, "Enhancing these capabilities is critical, particularly following the Chinese anti-satellite-weapons demonstration last January."
• Hypervelocity Rod Bundles, or "Rods from God," 20-foot-long, one-foot-diameter tungsten poles (existing only on paper at this point) that would be hurled from low-Earth orbit at 25,000 miles per hour to pulverize "hardened" targets in enemy territory.

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Stan Cox is a plant breeder and writer in Salina, Kansas.