Bush likely to back weapons in space - Guardian

[rndmprsn]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1487124,00.html

Arms race feared over 'death stars' and 'rods from God'

President George Bush is expected to issue a directive in the next few weeks giving the US air force a green light for the development of space weapons, potentially triggering a new global arms race, it was reported yesterday.

The new weapons being studied range from hunter-killer satellites to orbiting weapons using lasers, radio waves, or even dense metal tubes dropped from space by a weapon known as "Rods from God" on ground targets.

...Ms Hitchens argued the directive would trigger an arms race in space. "Let's think of a world where US has 'death stars' everywhere in space that are going over countries every 10 minutes. Do you think other countries are going to accept that?" she said.

The new push to develop space weapons comes as the earth-based missile defence system, intended to hit an incoming missile with another missile and which was heavily promoted by the Bush administration, has been set back by technical problems and failed tests. The air force's intentions were spelt out last September by General Lance Lord, head of its space command, who said satellites had given US military power a decisive advantage with their spying, communications and targeting capacities. That advantage had to be maintained by "space superiority".

[bigtree]

1. BS from NYT article. They are definitely preparing for space war

. . . no matter what they admit today. They already laid out their plans for space war in numerous documents and statements even before Bush first assumed office.

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."

http://www.intl-news.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2152



Peter B. Teets, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, is the former president and chief operating officer of Lockheed Martin who retired from the company in late 1999.

Teets now serves as the director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO, a post that includes making decisions on the acquisition of everything from reconnaissance satellites to space-based elements of missile defense, Undersecretary of the Air Force, and chief procurement officer for all of military space, controlling a budget in excess of $65 billion, a figure that includes $8 billion a year for missile defense and $7 billion annually for NRO spying.

Teets has boasted that the military makeover now underway is geared to "make the world's best space forces even better." http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2002/02


A senior U.S. military officer warned in October of this year that, "Space may become a war zone in the not-too-distant future," in an apparent reaction to China becoming the third country besides the U.S. and Russia to put a man in space. http://www.cryptodesk.com/war.htm


"In my view it will not be long before space becomes a battleground," Lieutenant General Edward Anderson, Deputy Commander, United States Northern Command, and Vice Commander, U.S. Element, North American Aerospace Defense Command, said at a geospatial intelligence conference in New Orleans. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17329

"Our military forces depend very, very heavily on space capabilities, and so that is a statement of the obvious to our potential threat, whoever that may be," he said.

Anderson has served on the Army staff in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Research, Development, and Acquisition in the Pentagon as a space acquisitions and appropriations warrior.

"They can see that one of the ways that they can certainly diminish our capabilities will be to attack the space systems," said Anderson, who was formerly with the U.S. Space Command.

"Now how they do that and who that's going to be I can't tell you in this audience," he warned ominously.

In a Reuters article published in the same month as Anderson's remarks, Rich Haver, former special assistant for intelligence to Donald Rumsfeld, said he expected battles in space within the next two decades.

"I believe space is the place we will fight in the next 20 years," said Haver, now vice president for intelligence strategy at Northrop Grumman Mission Systems. (sincere, concerned look on his face as he speaks)

"There are executive orders that say we don't want to do that," Haver explained. "There's been a long-standing U.S. policy to try to keep space a peaceful place, but ... we have in space assets absolutely essential to the conduct of our military operations (and our portfolios), absolutely essential to our national security. They have been there for many years," he asserted.

"When the true history of the Cold War is written and all the classified items are finally unclassified, I believe that historians will note that it was in space that a significant degree of this country's ability to win the Cold War was embedded," Haver extolled.

Responding to a question about the implications of China sending a man into space, Haver said: "I think the Chinese are telling us they're there, and I think if we ever wind up in a confrontation again with any one of the major powers who has a space capability we will find space is a battleground."


Military Industrial Warriors In The Bush Administration and Space Dollars: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2843269#2843487

[rndmprsn]

3. thanks for the post...

much good info...

this is some scary shit people.

[FreedomAngel82]

4. They're probably

worse than the devil I think.

[punpirate]

2. So much for Kennedy's last arms race reduction iniative...

... the treaty to use space for peaceful purposes only.

This was, sadly, a foregone conclusion. It's such a windfall for the defense aerospace industry that its approval was a lead-pipe cinch.


What the public doesn't realize is that not only is it a monstrous boondoggle, but the downstream costs are going to be trillions of dollars more than what is advertised for the initial research. The software and throw-weight costs will be at least a couple of trillion alone, combined.

[FreedomAngel82]

5. We're already in the toliet

Clearly people can see now that their job is to bankrupt the country and give it to themselves and the corporation's who put them in. Hm. Some of those consperiacy theories of "management" are looking pretty right on target now days. I remember reading about these plans and couldn't believe it. But now I can after all they've done so far. Of course all they have to do is spout out some shit about the "terrorist's" and "9/11" and will have the sheeple's support.