Ever since March 1983 when Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative to build a space shield to protect Americans from a nuclear missile attack by the Soviet Union (or anybody else so inclined), backers of Star Wars have depicted U.S. plans as purely defensive. How could anyone be opposed, they argue, to saving American lives by blowing up enemy ICBMs before they blow up our cities?
However, that wasn’t how others saw SDI and its successors.
The Soviets, for instance, saw it as a first-strike system. Even in the days when Edward Teller was grossly overstating the capabilities of the insane space-based X-Ray laser weapon (and laboratories were doctoring SDI tests), it was pretty clear to everyone that no space shield could stop every missile in a full-out Soviet attack. Unless, that is, the U.S. attacked first. Under such a scenario, the U.S. would launch an attack and take out most Soviet missiles and planes, then use its space- sea- air- and land-based Star Wars defenses to mop up whatever enemy missiles survived the first strike.
SDI advocates laughed at such charges. They smeared those who made them as “weak on defense” or even pro-Soviet. America was not in the business of pre-emptive war, they said. SDI was to be purely a shield, not a sword.
Published last November,
The U.S. Air Force Transformation Flight Plan puts any pretensions of the defensive nature of Star Wars permanently to rest.
Noah Shachtman, whose
Defense Tech site is essential reading, crystallizes the report perfectly in his article
overview at
Wired News.
[The report] 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. …
"As we look to the future, space is where our adversaries are looking to cut us off," [said Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for the U.S. Air Force Space Command]. "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 vulnerable 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," … DeBlois … told a George Washington University audience last year.
The Transformation Flight Plan has its origins in an older document, popularly known as
Rumsfeld Commission II, and formally as the “Report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization.” It first came into the public eye just as George W. Bush prepared to take his seat in the Oval Office. Occasionally, the report discusses peaceful uses of space, but it is fundamentally a military document and lays the philosophical groundwork for a U.S. Space Command that would become a fully separate Space Force equal to the Army, Navy and Air Force in a decade or so.
That report, too, has a predecessor. It’s called
Rebuilding America’s Defenses:
Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, and was published in 2000 by our neoconservative pals over at the Project for a New American Century.
Many Americans see even peaceful space programs as, at best, a luxury and, at worst, a squandering of resources better spent on solving earth problems. I reject this view. Such an approach will keep us shackled to the planet forever - there will always be problems here. But leave that debate aside for the moment. Right now, we’d benefit from a full-fanged exploration of what the continuing U.S. militarization of space will do to reinforce problems on earth.
Unhappily, such an exploration seems unlikely to occur during the current election cycle. Post 9-11, too many otherwise smart politicians have fallen into the trap of “everything has changed.” That’s code for giving free rein to those who fantasize permanent, unilateral U.S. domination. What’s at stake isn’t just Iraq, or U.S. policy in the whole Middle East, or how to fight terrorism. It’s the far broader matter of what kind of world, if any, our children and grandchildren will inherit if America takes humankind’s penchant for warfare into the heavens.