Full
Spectrum Dominance
The
Future of War: Part 3 of 3
Unrelenting
efforts by the Pentagon and U.S. Air Force are hell-bent on creating
outlandish space-based weapons. Critics assert the result will
be a free-for-all orbiting arms-race.
When Donald Rumsfeld
chaired a commission on space and national security just before
taking office in 2001, the precursors for a deluge of spending
on new space-based weapons programs were put into place. The commission
concluded that to avoid a so-called “space Pearl Harbor”
the U.S. must “vigorously pursue the capabilities called
for in the National Space Policy to ensure that the President
will have the option to deploy weapons in space.”
In 2002, President
Bush — at the urging of the commission — withdrew
from the 30-year-old Antiballistic Missile Treaty, a cornerstone
of our agreements with Russia at the end of the Cold War. One
of the reasons: the treaty prohibited weapons in space.
Fast-forward
four years. Numerous programs buried in the Pentagon’s 2007
budget request may result in the development of space-based weapons.
The programs — including plans for a space vehicle able
to deliver military payloads to any geographic location within
an hour, and tests that would create de facto anti-satellite weaponry
— are the result of years of pressure within the U.S. Air
Force (USAF) to weaponize and dominate space.
TRANSFORMATION
“Space superiority
is not our birthright, but it is our destiny,” former head
of the Air Force Space Command, Gen. Lance Lord, told a USAF conference
in 2004. “Space superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space
supremacy is our vision of the future.”
These comments echoed
the strategy recommended in an unclassified 2003 USAF document
entitled Transformation Flight Plan. The latest Flight Plan details
America’s right to “full-spectrum dominance”—the
control of land, sea, and air, as well as space. According to
the document, space superiority includes three main capabilities:
protect space assets, deny adversaries access to space, and quickly
launch vehicles into space to replace damaged or destroyed space
assets. The document also lists the types of technologies desired
to maintain these goals.
A subsequent USAF document
called Counterspace Operations represents the first U.S attempt
to detail what a conflict in space would entail, and develops
elaborate strategies to defend “space superiority.”
Potential targets in such a conflict would include commercial
spacecraft, enemy satellites, and neutral countries’ launching
pads.
Theresa Hitchens, vice
president of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information,
explains the significance of the two documents.
“Transformation
Flight Plans are long term planning documents,” she says.
"A doctrinal document like Counterspace Operations tells
the military services how to conduct certain types of operations.
It states that the USAF intends to conduct both defensive and
offensive actions in space. The Transformation Flight Plans elaborate
on what types of technologies and capabilities would be required
to do this.”
The ultimate goal of
the USAF Space Command is the issuance of a new national security
directive on the use of space, sanctioning its far-fetched research
into a plethora of space-based weaponry.
TECHNOLOGICAL
SANDBOX
“The Pentagon,
in the words of famous physicist Dick Garwin, is investing in
a ‘technological sandbox’ of concepts that could allow
development of multiple sorts of space weaponry,” says Hitchens.
Much of this
falls under the purview of the national Missile Defense Agency.
After investing nearly $100 billion and 22 years into developing
a ground-based missile defense system and yielding dismal results,
the U.S is setting its sights on launching satellites capable
of shooting down missiles. The Space-Based Interceptor Test Bed
program — scheduled to begin in 2008 — would launch
up to five such satellites.
Other programs are focused
on offensive capabilities, such as the disruption or destruction
of enemy satellites. In April of 2004 the Air Force launched the
XSS-11, an experimental micro-satellite with the ability to disrupt
other nations’ communications and reconnaissance satellites.
The 2007 budget also includes plans to launch a missile at a small
satellite in orbit and tests to determine if high-powered ground-based
lasers can destroy a satellite.
A look at the Transformation
Flight Plan reveals long-term designs for weapons capable of striking
targets on the planet’s surface from space. One such proposal,
nick-named “rods from God,” consists of tungsten bars
hurled from an orbiting platform to hit terrestrial targets. The
“Hyper-Velocity Rod Bundle” would travel at 120 miles
a minute and impact the Earth with the force of a small nuclear
weapon. Another seemingly science-fiction scheme, code-named EAGLE,
would bounce laser beams off mirrors suspended from satellites
or massive high-altitude blimps, refocusing death-rays down onto
the planet’s surface.
AMERICAN
ARROGANCE
Senior military and space
officials with the European Union, Canada, Russia, and China have
all publicly objected to the notion of American space superiority.
Last fall, the U.S. voted to block a United Nations resolution
calling for a ban on weapons in space. Currently, the only international
treaty on the subject is a 1967 agreement, ratified by 91 countries,
that bans weapons of mass destruction in space.
“Almost unanimously,
the rest of the world is seriously concerned about the direction
of the U.S. with regard to military space,” comments Hitchens.
“Because most nations hold that no one can own space, a
move by the U.S. to try to establish ‘space dominance’
will be seen as highly threatening, and other nations are likely
to react in a variety of negative ways.”
According to Hitchens
and other defense analysts, one of the main consequences of America’s
pursuit of space weapons will be an arms race in the heavens.
It is expected Russia and China will follow suit, and this will
lead to heightened tensions and instability among space-faring
nations.
America’s
viewpoint of space superiority is yet another example of U.S.
policy at odds with the world community. Thankfully, there are
still many political hurdles between the USAF and the “full-spectrum
dominance” it so desperately desires. The House Armed Services
Committee has cut funding towards programs in the 2007 budget
request which mention anti-satellite technology — though
the Senate has yet to make any similar moves. However, in an era
of American empire operating on principals of unilateralism and
preemptive, indefinite warfare, a lethal armament encircling the
Earth doesn’t take much to envision.
Written
By Jason Glover
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