Air force urges Bush to deploy space arms

Is it any wonder why the rest of the nations of the world do not trust the "good intentions" of the US? Would you?

Air force urges Bush to deploy space arms

By Tim Weiner The New York Times

THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2005





NEW YORK The U.S. Air Force, saying it must secure outer space to protect the nation from attack, is seeking President George W. Bush's approval of a national security directive that could move the United States closer to having offensive and defensive space weapons, according to White House and air force officials. 
The proposed change would be a substantial shift in policy. It would almost certainly be opposed by many American allies and potential enemies, who have said it might create an arms race in space. 
A senior administration official said that a new presidential directive would replace a 1996 Clinton administration policy that emphasized a more pacific use of space. 
Any deployment of space weapons would face financial, technological, political and diplomatic hurdles, although no treaty or law bans Washington from putting weapons in space, other than weapons of mass destruction. 
A presidential directive is expected within weeks, said the senior administration official, who is involved with space policy and insisted that he not be identified because the directive was still under final review and the White House had not disclosed its details. 
Air force officials said Tuesday 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 Major Karen Finn, an air force spokeswoman. "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." 
In January 2001, a commission led by Donald Rumsfeld, before he became the defense secretary, recommended that the military should "ensure that the president will have the option to deploy weapons in space." 
The effort to develop a new policy directive reflects three years of work prompted by the report. The White House would not say if all the report's recommendations would be adopted.  
In 2002, Bush withdrew from the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which banned space-based weapons. 
Ever since, the air force has sought a new presidential policy officially ratifying the concept of seeking American space superiority. 
The air force believes "we must establish and maintain space superiority," General Lance Lord, who leads the U.S. Air Force Space Command, told Congress recently. "Simply put, it's the American way of fighting."  
The mission would require new weapons, new satellites, new ways of doing battle and, by some estimates, hundreds of billions of dollars. It faces enormous technological obstacles and many U.S. allies object to the idea of space as an American frontier. 
A new air force strategy, called Global Strike, calls for a military space plane carrying precision-guided weapons armed with a half-ton of munitions. Lord told Congress last month that Global Strike would be "an incredible capability" to destroy command centers or missile bases "anywhere in the world." 
Pentagon documents say the weapon could strike from halfway around the world in 45 minutes. "This is the type of prompt Global Strike I have identified as a top priority for our space and missile force," Lord said. 
The air force's drive into space has been accelerated by the Pentagon's failure to build a nuclear-missile defense on earth. After 22 years and nearly $100 billion, Pentagon officials say they cannot reliably detect and destroy a threat. 
While the Missile Defense Agency struggles with new technology for a space-based laser, the air force already has a potential weapon in space. In April, it launched the XSS-11, an experimental microsatellite with the technical capability to disrupt other military reconnaissance and communications satellites. 
Another space program, nicknamed Rods From God, aims to hurl cylinders of tungsten, titanium or uranium from the edge of space to destroy targets on the ground, striking at speeds of about 7,200 miles an hour, or 11,500 kilometers an hour, with the force of a small nuclear weapon. A third program would bounce laser beams off mirrors hung from satellites or huge high-altitude blimps, redirecting the lethal rays to targets around the world.  
Senior military and space officials of the European Union, Canada, China and Russia have objected publicly to the notion of American space superiority. 
No nation will "accept the U.S. developing something they see as the death star," Teresa Hitchens of the Center for Defense Information, a policy-analysis group in Washington, said at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations. "I don't think the United States would find it very comforting if China were to develop a death star, a 24/7 on-orbit weapon that could strike at targets on the ground anywhere in 90 minutes." 
International objections aside, Randy Correll, an air force veteran and military consultant, told the council, "The big problem now is, it's too expensive." The air force has not put a price tag on space superiority. Studies by leading weapons scientists, physicists and engineers place the cost of a space-based antimissile system at anywhere from $220 billion to $1 trillion.