According to a report in the New York Times today, the US Air Force is seeking presidential approval of a “of a national-security directive that could move the United States closer to fielding offensive and defensive space weapons” in order to “secure space to protect the nation from attack.”
Citing “White House and Air Force sources” (ahh, unnamed sources that speak with such an air of authority! Didn’t Newsweek cite one of those recently?), the Times says a decision on directive is expected “within weeks,” but actual named sources told the Times the focus is not on deploying weapons in space, but “having free access in space.”
“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.”Of course they are. As Air Force General Lance Lord (now there’s a proper name for an Air Force general, especially one who heads something called Space Command! In between acts, he shills for the nutritional goodness of Ohee-ohhs, the only oat cereal blasted into orbit!) told Congress recently, “we must establish and maintain space superiority … Simply put, it’s the American way of fighting.”
There’s Global Strike, the sub-orbital spaceplane designed to get anywhere in the world in 25 minutes and bomb it with 1,000 pounds of, well, whatever. There’s Rods From God, the Air Force program that hopes 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.” (An idea also contemplated as an alternative to hydrogen bomb warheads on Minuteman missiles.)
Not to mention high-altitude mirrors focusing ” lethal rays down to targets around the world.”
Who exactly would we be defending ourselves from? The Chinese, who seem a lot more interested in commerce than war? The Russians, whose sclerotic economy has yet to produce decent consumer goods? Nineteen box-cutter wielding airplane hijackers? Daleks? Cylons? Legions of Clone Troopers?
Although the piece is peppered with foolish notions that somehow deploying weapons in space would wreck it as a global commons, or that other nations would be unwilling to accept the deployment of an American “Death Star,” the most telling critique comes from a former Air Force officer:
International objections aside, Randy Correll, an Air Force veteran and military consultant, told the council, “the big problem now is it’s too expensive.”
Nice try. But that won’t stop our tax, borrow and spend spend spend Conservative Republican administration. Not when it comes to war.
11:51 am on May 18, 2005
