America`s Grand Strategy: Militarizing Space
From: Mathaba Prevention of an arms race in outer space would avert a grave danger for international peace and security: Over 140 nations agreed. Only two declined support, both abstaining - America and Israel.
- by Stephen Lendman
On January 3, 2001, the UN General Assembly's Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space Resolution A/55/32 said:
"The exploration and use of outer space....shall be for peaceful purposes and be carried out for the benefit and in the interest of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development. (The) prevention of an arms race in outer space would avert a grave danger for international peace and security."
Over 140 nations agreed. Only two declined support, both abstaining -America and Israel.
On August 9, 1996, in Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine, then Commander-in-Chief US Space Command, Joseph W. Ashy asserted:
"It's politically sensitive, but it's going to happen. Some people don't want to hear this, and it sure isn't in vogue, but - absolutely - we're going to fight in space. We're going to fight from space and we're going to fight into space. That's why the US has development programs in directedenergy and hit-to-kill mechanisms. We will engage terrestrial targets someday - ships, airplanes, land targets - from space."
On April 18, 2002, the Center for Defense Information's Theresa Hitchens headlined, "Weapons in Space: Silver Bullet or Russian Roulette," saying:
Weaponizing space "could actually undermine, rather than enhance, (America's) national security....There is nothing to be gained, and potentially much to be lost, by (pursuing) a momentous change in US space policy."
Co-founder and coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Bruce Gagnon warned:
"If the US is allowed to move the arms race into space, there will be no return. We have this one chance, this one moment in history, to stop the weaponization of space from happening. The peace movement must move quickly, boldly, and publicly," what so far hasn't happened, most people mindless to the danger.
First revealed in the 1998 US Space Command document, Vision for 2020, it was later released in 2000 as DOD Joint Vision 2020 calling for "full spectrum dominance" over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming power to wage and win global wars against any adversary, including with nuclear weapons preemptively, ultimately from space, America wanting unchallenged control.
The Pentagon's Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) plans an array of sophisticated weapons to achieve it, some operational, others being tested, and new ones under development for its Operations Plan (OPLAN) 8010-08 Strategic Deterrence and Global Strike use, the US Strategic Command's (STRATCOM) Strategic War Plan.
Since at least WW II, America's strategy has been permanent war, a topic discussed earlier.
On June 17, Space.com's Jeremy Hsu headlined, "Air Force Sees Hypersonic Weapons and Spaceships in Future," saying:
"A recent (Air Force) scramjet test has hinted at a future where hypersonic vehicles," traveling five times the speed of sound, fly around the world and in space, an "experimental X-51A Waverider," achieving the longest ever Mach 5 flight on May 26, using a rocket booster and air-breathing scramjet.
Charles Brink, head of the Air Force Research Laboratory's X-51 program envisions future hypersonic weapons flying "600 nautical miles in 10 minutes," including in space. NASA's James Pittman, principal investigator of its hypersonics project, hopes to have "large vehicles for access to space using air-breathing propulsion."
Earlier X-43A hypersonic scramjet test flights reached Mach 6.8 in March 2004 and Mach 9.6 in November that year - about 7,000 MPH. The X-51A project uses a more sophisticated scramjet engine, but hasn't yet matched or broken the X-43A's record, nor can it reach orbit, a goal Boeing Phantom Works/Defense hypersonics director Joseph Vogel hopes to achieve in the next 15 - 20 years, saying he expects the technology will be able to fly missions not possible today, the X-51A showing early promise.
In April, after years of development, the Air Force successfully launched the X-37B, its robot space shuttle, a reusable spacecraft traveling like an aircraft at Mach 5 - perhaps another future space weapon. Global Security.org's John Pike told Space.com that projects like the X-37B may "represent the tip of a space weapons program hidden within the Pentagon's secret 'black budget,' or they might be nothing more than smoke and mirrors," intended to deceive America's rivals, fueling a space arms race, hoping they'll "waste money chasing down dead ends."
For its part, the Air Force denies wanting the X-37B for an orbital weapons delivery system or for surveillance. Others disagree, journalist Sharon Weinberger saying "the most daring job of a space plane, and the one least discussed, is (its) role (as) a bomber, (letting it) fly over targets within an hour of launch to release cone-shaped re-entry vehicles that would both protect and guide weapons through the atmosphere."
It would also be able to "carry 1000 or 2000-pound re-entry vehicles armed with precision munitions like bunker-busting penetrators or small-diameter bombs (including mini-nukes more powerful than the atom bombs destroying Hiroshima or Nagasaki), or simply use the explosive impact of kinetic rods cratering at hypersonic speeds to destroy targets."
On the other hand, the X37B's main function may be a test platform, perhaps for developing even more destructive space weapons, part of America's permanent war strategy, waging future ones from space, using technologies adversaries can't match.
READ MORE
RSS Feed