So much for non-militarization of space....

[unixronin]

The USAF has filed a plan for militarization of near-earth space over the next ten years ranging from RF satellite-to-satellite weapons, to orbiting mirrors for directing over-the-horizon attacks with groundbased lasers, to a Thor weapon system and other orbital surface-bombardment weapons.  One has to wonder who the US is planning on fighting the next world war against.  There's an explicitly stated intention to deny space to anyone the US considers an "adversary".  (Oh, I'm sure the US will allow those pesky Europeans to play a little, so long as they don't do anything evil and destabilizing like, say, trying to put weapons in space.)  And of course, once all this shit is up there, you can just bet we'll have to justify the expense by finding someone to attack with it.

I don't know about you, but personally, I don't trust the US Government with a Damoclean sword hung over the heads of the entire planet.  They're stupid enough to use it.  At least with the strategic nuclear arsenals, anyone with three brain cells to rub together has the wit to realize that you can't actually use the damned things without wrecking civilization and possibly rendering the planet uninhabitable.

Didn't we talk everyone into signing a bunch of treaties promising not to do exactly this?  But then, the US Government has a long history of violating its treaties, so why change now?

"We have met the enemy, and he is us." -- Pogo, Walt Kelly

Comments

[juuro.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I'd be surprised if there wasn't something weapons-grade up there already. Not necessarily U.S. operated only. There are several satellites orbiting the globe whose canisters are too big for the declared or obvious purpose of the object.

There is not necessarily on overwhelming incentive to use a weapons system just because it is there. The ICBM:s, for instance, were never used. I think.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, there's been ASAT stuff put up there periodically. The SU and Russia have both taken pot-shots of varying sophistication at each other's spy satellites. This is the first plan I'm aware of for a large-scale militarization of space, though, particularly with weapons designed for attacking ground-based targets. Ths US is signatory to several treaties prohibiting deployment of weapons in space; I guess that's just another case of "do what we say, not what we do."

True, fortunately for us all the ICBMs never flew, mainly because rhetoric aside, everyone was clearly aware that a full-scale nuclear exchange would be a Really Bad Thing. Nevertheless, the Pentagon had a first-strike nuclear strategy for decades in the event of a Soviet land invasion of Western Europe that overran NATO ground forces (which all of the Western military strategists were unanimous in predicting that it would). And it's frightening to learn how close the Cuban missile crisis actually came to nuclear launches against the mainland US, which would almost certainly have precipitated a global nuclear exchange.