Bush wants to blow you up from space - article
Grafwritah
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Disturbing, even as an American.--------Pentagon Has Far-Reaching Defense Spacecraft in WorksBush Administration Looking to Space to Fight ThreatsBy Walter PincusWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, March 16, 2005; Page A03The Pentagon is working to develop a suborbital space capsule within the next five years that would be launched from the United States and could deliver conventional weapons anywhere in the world within two hours, defense officials said.This year, the Falcon program will test a launcher for its Common Aero Vehicle (CAV), an unmanned maneuverable spacecraft that would travel at five times the speed of sound and could carry 1,000 pounds of munitions, intelligence sensors or other payloads. Among the system's strengths is that commanders could order a CAV -- an unpowered glide vehicle -- not to release its payload if they decided not to follow through with an attack.The first-generation CAV, expected to be ready by 2010, will have "an incredible capability to provide the warfighter with a global reach capability against high payoff targets," Gen. Lance W. Lord, commander of Air Force Space Command, told the House Armed Services Committee last Wednesday.Within the next three years, the Falcon program hopes to enter a second stage of the effort: flight-testing two versions of a reusable hypersonic cruise vehicle, sometimes referred to as a space plane, that could travel a suborbital path, about 100,000 feet high, carrying a CAV anywhere in the world. Unlike a missile, the vehicle could return to its base after releasing the CAV to deliver bombs or intelligence sensors.The Falcon program vehicles "will improve the military's ability to quickly position intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance payloads, while reducing its reliance on forward and foreign basing," Anthony J. "Tony" Tether, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee last week.While most public attention today focuses on meeting threats abroad with traditional land, sea and air forces, the Falcon program reflects how the Bush administration is increasingly looking to space to meet dangers it anticipates.The use of space "enables us to project power anywhere in the world from secure bases of operation," says the Pentagon's national defense strategy, which Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed on March 1. Among the key goals in the strategy paper are "to ensure our access to and use of space and to deny hostile exploitation of space to adversaries." The strategy paper, done every four years, provides the policy basis on which the armed services plan their research, development and acquisitions of weapons systems. This year's strategy, Rumsfeld wrote, "emphasizes the importance of influencing events before challenges become more dangerous and less manageable."In congressional appearances over two weeks, Lord, Tether and other senior Pentagon officials have described a variety of new space initiatives for meeting challenges such as updating intelligence and communications satellite programs and even fielding systems that would allow the United States to temporarily silence enemy satellites if the need arose.Space communications have already become important to U.S. warfighting. As Lord put it, "Our most recent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq prove our nation relies on capabilities coming from and through space more than ever before." For example, more than 60 percent of all communications at the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom came through satellites, which also guided munitions to targets and today transmit intelligence from the United States directly to troops fighting in the field.Looking to the future, the defense strategy calls for the use of space vehicles that provide capabilities beyond the current intercontinental missiles to thwart any future adversaries that move to prevent U.S. use of land or sea bases.Such abilities, Lord told the House members, are dubbed "prompt global strike" and represent "a top priority for our space and missile forces." Because CAVs, unlike missiles, can be recalled, they could be launched toward a potential target even before a final decision was made to attack. The system could, Lord said, "deliver a conventional payload precisely on target within minutes of a valid command and control release order."The capability offered by CAV would also reduce the need for overseas bases and enable the United States "to react promptly and decisively to destabilizing or threatening actions by hostile countries and terrorist organizations," according to DARPA's early solicitation for bids put out in mid-2003.John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a nongovernmental defense think tank, said yesterday that the Falcon and CAV programs will allow the United States "to crush someone anywhere in world on 30 minutes' notice with no need for a nearby air base."In addition to creating attack weapons, the Pentagon is working on new defense systems to protect the ever-more-important satellites the United States has in space."I think everybody that I know in the United States military and the Department of Defense understands the important role that our space assets play in our national security," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee last Thursday.Last October, the Pentagon announced deployment of its first mobile ground-based system that could temporarily disrupt satellite-based communications from an enemy satellite. The counter-communications system uses powerful electromagnetic radio frequency energy to silence transmissions from a satellite in a way that is reversible if the need passes. Two more units are due later this year.?? 2005 The Washington Post Company
Comments
They just asked Congress for something absurd, like $130 Billion for their 'Future Soldier' program. Even the GOP are starting to think it's out of hand.
Bush and diplomatic cronies have been trying to convince Canada to join Ballistic Missile Defence. Keep repeating mantra that it won't lead to "weaponization of space". Canada doesn't go for it (more for complicated domestic political reasons).
Meanwhile, Canada jumps up its military budget to compensate for bowing out of BMD. Keep Bush and defense (offense) contractor buddies happy. Departing ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci says re: increased military budget - "I have achieved what I set out to do."
"We're the government! We print the money, we make the rules, and we breed the supersoldiers. Now go back to your home, relax, and remember: You didn't hear anything about the supersoldiers."
super soldiers? i thought they were gonna be robots
Pffft. They WISH they were so close to supersoldiers. They still have real-live soldier problems, basic, Human Resource problems to deal with...
Methinks that the whole "let's go to Mars" thing is just a front to launder pentagon money.
Actually, lots of defense money just goes to prop up domestic companies. You see how much Boeing gets? Same with the steel industry - their reasoning is, since they can't predict when they might need tanks, or figher jets, or whatever in the future, it's best to pay to keep the companies in business now so they'll be around later. The other reason US defense budgets are so high is that they fund most science and engineering research.
Hilarity ensues.
Know what though - Cellucci actually didn't achieve shit. We're not in Iraq like they wanted us to be, we're not joining missile defense like they wanted and unless Harper and his fellow freaks get in, I can't see Canada joining the murder train into Iran, Korea, Brazil, Argentina or wherever the fuck the next enemy is declared to be. Ultimately, if we up military spending but never use it for evil, then whatever. We're buying shitty second-hand subs that cause deaths and helicopters that crash, maybe it's time to spend a little cash.
I hate to be a white ass bleeding liberal and use terminology like this, but "it's a slippery slope." It's the military-industrial complex. We didn't ante up for BMD, because Quebec would freak, but we're still spending the money for "defense". Where's that money going? I'm sure that Cellucci will wind up on the board of Lockheed-Martin (who are doing the next Canadian census, by the way) as a token of appreciation for helping to open new markets.
For now, it's going towards salary hikes and recruitment. Most of the cash won't kick in for another few years...depending on who's running shit by then, it could be for weapons in space and torture camps for "threats to national security" or it could be for state-of-the-art emergency care units for things like earthquakes and floods.
Don't get me wrong - I wish we had a decent national daycare program more than I wish we had the latest and greatest in helicopters.
Yeah. Did you see those new Canadian army ads on TV? They showed up within days of the budget announcement. Slick and glossy as fuck. Reminded me of the US Army ads you see during sports broadcasts.
It's where the culture is going. I remember when they didn't even have recruitment ads. Or they looked like they were done by film students working for community television.
2). Who would win in THE SUPER SOLDIERS vs. The Lizard People? Winner battles Raystar and Big Stacks in Erotic Non-Digger Fiction.
I haven't seen the new ones, but I remember they used to play army ads in theatres before movies for a time.
I think they are sick. I know I'm over-simplifiying it, but it just make me think they're ads that might as well say "Send your kids off to die! Send your kids off to kill other kids!" Uhg.
I liked the Saturday Night Live parody from the seventies where it was "Send your kids off to clean toilets!"
Lizard people, they have lazers and that train thing in the middle of the earth, the super soldiers will all look like jean claude van damme and will have the mental capacity of said actor, so things look good for the green folk
Did Reynaldo PM them? We gotta give props to the little dude, the fact that he has PM capibilities with the Lizard People says a lot about the quality of judgement.
one of the worst realities of the 21st century is that the thrill of discovery/exploration is lost on nearly everyone. If anyone leaves our atmosphere is so we can drop wild shit on people in the atmosphere.
Europeans - now that the space program is slightly more unified, is any hot shit going down right now? The real way to counter cheney led hijackings of NASA is for the Europeans to show us what we're all really capable of. its pretty much science's only hope.
Hey, don't you worry about that. Tom can fix anything, even Bush. Tom is the man.