Last spring,
Antifascist Calling
reported on the launch of the Pentagon's secretive X-37B mini space
shuttle, a 29-foot long unmanned orbital test vehicle (OTV).
Built
by Boeing Corporation, the multibillion dollar project was the
culmination of a decades-long dream of Pentagon space warriors: to field
a reusable spacecraft that combines an airplane's agility with the
means to travel at 5 miles per second in orbit.
After the craft's successful April 22 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, Air Force Space Command (
AFSPC) denied that the X-37B was a prototype for a near-earth weapons platform.
Back in 2005 however,
The New York Times
reported that General Lance W. Lord, then commander of AFSPC, told an
Air Force conference that "space superiority is not our birthright, but
it is our destiny. ... Space superiority is our day-to-day mission.
Space supremacy is our vision for the future."
And with no public
debate whatsoever, new weapons programs spawned in the bowels of the
Pentagon's black budget parallel universe are on coming on-line.
We do know however, that the National Reconnaissance Office (
NRO)
the secretive Defense Department satrapy that builds and flies
America's fleet of spy satellites, is ramping up operations for the
"most aggressive launch schedule that this organization has undertaken
in the last 25 years," NRO director Bruce Carlson said in a speech at
the National Space Symposium, according to
Aviation Week.
Among
the most heavily-outsourced American secret state agencies, NRO and its
sister organization, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (
NGA) are preparing the "battlespace" for new imperial adventures. The
AllGov
web site reported Friday that NGA "recently awarded $7.3 billion in
contracts for its EnhancedView commercial imagery program, which is
intended to yield higher resolution photos of earth targets than what is
currently available to the military."
Reporters David
Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff tell us that "DigitalGlobe operates
three satellites capable of collecting imagery at resolutions of better
than 1 meter, and GeoEye has two satellites in orbit that can photograph
objects as small as half a meter in size." Perfect for zeroing-in on
"anti-government forces" or perhaps pesky dissidents and whistleblowers
here in the
heimat.
A short
blurb
on AFSPC's web site hailing the space plane's orbital insertion was
long on cheesy boilerplate but short on details of what the mission
hoped to accomplish.
The Air Force informed us that "the X-37B
... will provide an 'on-orbit laboratory' test environment to prove new
technology and components before those technologies are committed to
operational satellite programs."
What that "test environment" might produce is anyone's guess and the Air Force isn't saying.
Prior to the launch however, AFSPC was far less coy,
proclaiming
"if these technologies on the vehicle prove to be as good as we
estimate, it will make our access to space more responsive, perhaps
cheaper, and push us in the vector toward being able to react to
warfighter needs more quickly."
Such as bombing any point on earth in under an hour as the mad
Prompt Global Strike
program hopes to do, or, given the X-37B's diminutive profile, serving
as an anti-satellite weapon that could threaten the space assets of
other nations, particularly those of China and Russia.
While
speculation as to what X-37B capabilities are have run the gamut from an
orbital delivery system for conventional or nuclear weapons, to a
satellite killing drone, to a relatively inexpensive means to launch
mini-satellite swarms into orbit, the best guess is that all three are
plausible hypotheses.
Despite contrary claims by the Obama
administration, the "space superiority" that the Air Force lusts after
include plans to weaponize space, imperialism's "high frontier." Or, as
Gen. Lord would have it, the "freedom to attack as well as freedom from
attack" in earth orbit.
"International Cooperation" and other Fairy TalesWriting in
The Diplomat,
journalist David Axe reported last month that during the 2008
presidential campaign candidate Barack Obama made opposition to
space-based weapons "part of his platform."
According to the
changling's campaign material, "He [Obama] believes the United States
must show leadership by engaging other nations in discussions of how
best to stop the slow slide towards a new battlefield."
"Yet just
two years into the Obama presidency," Axe wrote, "it's clear that these
noble sentiments aren't being matched by US deeds."
Brian Weeden, the author of a
briefing paper for the Pentagon- and industry-connected Secure World Foundation (
SWF),
claims that the mini space plane "has near zero feasibility as an
orbital weapons system for attacking targets on the ground."
Weeden
alleges that the X-37B's payload bay is too small for carrying an
effective space-launched weapon, and moves too slowly to carry out
bombing runs when re-entering the atmosphere, unlike the hypersonic
glide vehicle under development by the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (
DARPA) as a component of the Pentagon's "Prompt Global Strike" program.
Policy wonks such as Eric Sterner, an analyst with the Washington, D.C.-based
Marshall Institute,
a rightist think tank chock-a-block with former Cold Warriors, retired
Pentagon clock-punchers and corporatist bag men, told Axe that "in
theory" the X-37B could be weaponized or might be ideal for sneaking up
on and probing, capturing, or even destroying an adversary's satellites.
"You open the payload bay, you can have in it anything you want, like a hard-point on an aircraft," Sterner told
The Diplomat. "You can put sensors in there, satellites in there. You could stick munitions in there, provided they exist."
Sterner
should know. After all, the Marshall Institute is pushing for the
accelerated development of a "robust" U.S. missile defense system.
The
Institute, along with right-wing grifters from the American Foreign
Policy Council, the Claremont Institute, the Free Congress Research and
Education Foundation, The Heritage Foundation, High Frontier, the
Institute of the North and a gaggle of defense corps, are the dark heart
of the Rumsfeldian Independent Working Group (IWG).
Last year, the IWG published another in a series of alarmist screeds urging deployment of this exquisitely destabilizing
first strike weapons system.
The group's 2009
report,
Missile Defense, the Space Relationship & the Twenty-First Century,
told us that "Missile defense has entered a new era. With the initial
missile defense deployments, the decades-long debate over whether to
protect the American people from the threat of ballistic missile attack
was settled--and settled unequivocally in favor of missile defense."
Although
the United States is a founding member of the UN Committee on the
Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and is a signatory to the 1967 Outer Space
Treaty banning orbital nuclear weapons, as the previous administration
amply demonstrated, international treaties and agreements are so many
worthless scraps of paper to be tossed aside when it inconveniences the
Empire.
Ratcheting up tensions in the wake of the 9/11
provocation as plans to invade Iraq were secretly being hatched by the
Bush crime family, at former SecDef Rumsfeld's insistence, the U.S.
unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty with
Russia and proclaimed that it would build--and deploy--a missile defense
system.
With a cover story that the system would be based in
Central Europe to "protect" NATO allies from a nonexistent "Iranian
threat," Washington believes it has the right to threaten and cajole
other nations because of its status as the world's "sole superpower."
Mikhail Barabanov, the editor of
Arms Export
magazine, believes that the "real motivation of the multibillion-dollar
undertaking is the desire to expand U.S. military and strategic
capacities and constrict those of other states that have nuclear
missiles, Russia and China most of all,"
UPI reported.
Barabanov
argued that "even a limited missile defense system injects a high
degree of indeterminacy into the strategic plans of other countries and
undermines the principle of mutual nuclear deterrence.
"With
Russia continuing to reduce its nuclear arsenal significantly and China
maintaining a low missile potential," Barabanov said that "the
Americans' ability to down even a few dozen warheads could deprive the
other side of guaranteed ability to cause the U.S. unacceptable damage
in a nuclear war."
In response to the American threat, Barabanov
wrote that "the only way to prevent a slow growth of the American
strategic advantage is a significant increase in the purchase of new
ballistic missiles by Russia."
America's drive for nuclear- and
space superiority excludes any attempt to limit deployment of new
weapons systems anywhere, including space. While Bush and his minions
may have receded from the headlines, Washington militarists are up to
their old tricks--and semantic parlor games--rebranded as "change."
In June,
The New York Times
reported that the administration will "consider proposals and concepts
for arms control measures if they are equitable, effectively verifiable,
and enhance the national security of the United States and its allies."
As
with all things Obama however, the administration's "new space policy"
mantra is more public relations puffery than substance.
Peter Marquez, director of space policy at the National Security Council told the
Times
that Washington would "oppose the development of new legal regimes or
other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access or use of
space."
This of course, is a red herring since no other nation has sought to "prohibit or limit" America's "access or use of space" for
peaceful
purposes. As a means to preclude the prospect for negotiating a new
arms control treaty for space, despite international backing by China,
Russia and America's NATO allies, caveats and distortions by the NSC are
deal killers.
"Those are the gates," Marquez told the
Times,
"that the arms control proposals must come through before we consider
them." In other words, the global godfather has spoken so forget it.
If
the U.S., as candidate Obama declared, is truly interested in stopping
the "the slow slide towards a new battlefield," why then has the
Pentagon embarked on a crash program to field a new generation of
orbital weapons?
Washington's lack of transparency when it comes
to the X-37B's potential to compromise other nations' satellite systems
reveal that Obama's pledge to strengthen "international cooperation" for
de-escalating conflicts in space, like his promise to close the
Guantánamo Bay gulag, end torture or halt secret state domestic spying,
are a cynical pack of lies.
Space Situational Awareness: Preparing the Orbital BattlespaceWith
the upcoming launch of the first in a series of spysats called the
Space Based Surveillance System (SBSS) by AFSPC, we can expect more in
the orbital dirty tricks department.
Built by usual suspects Boeing and Northrop Grumman for the Air Force, the SBSS,
The Register
tells us "is intended to make life much easier for the US air force
Space Superiority Wing, which tries to keep tabs on all other nations'
military 'space assets'."
In April,
Defense Systems
reported that AFSPC has "identified four pillars" of space situational
awareness: "intelligence characterization, data integration and
exploitation, threat warning, and attack reporting."
To address
those "pillars," three new hardware programs are coming on-line: "the
Space Based Space Surveillance (SBSS) space vehicle, Space Fence and
Space Surveillance Telescope (SST)."
SBSS is viewed by Pentagon
star warriors as an ideal spy platform because it "offers a resilient
space-based capability that weather cannot affect. It doesn't have
foreign basing issues. And it provides more timely revisit rates for
high-interest objects at geosynchronous orbit."
Or, more
realistically, given Pentagon proclivities to shoot first and analyze
later, provide wannabe starship troopers with real-time targets for
efficient takedown.
While deliberate meddling with other nation's satellites is strictly forbidden by international treaty,
The Register
informs us that "America might not be above a little bit of
unattributable orbital naughtiness itself at some point in the future."
Indeed, "unattributable orbital naughtiness" is the name of the game. Last week,
The Register
reported that the Pentagon's new "'fractionated' swarm satellites--in
which groups of small wirelessly-linked modules in orbit will replace
today's large spacecraft--will be able to scatter to avoid enemy attacks
and then reform into operational clusters."
According to a DARPA
press release,
"System F6 (Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying
Spacecraft) demonstrator program [will] emphasize development of an open
and ubiquitous space architecture and an associated set of open
standards. The fractionated spacecraft concept replaces large,
monolithic space assets with clusters of smaller,
wirelessly-interconnected modules that share resources to create, in
effect, a 'virtual satellite'."
In other words, satswarms in constant communication with their Pentagon masters on the ground.
With
an emphasis on "real-time, fault-tolerant resource sharing over
wireless cross-links; algorithms for safe and agile multi-body cluster
flight; persistent broadband communications between low earth orbit
(LEO) spacecraft and the ground; and a robust and scalable multi-level
information assurance architecture," DARPA believes the F6 program will
"enable multiple payloads supplied by different agencies, services or
even countries to share common infrastructure at multiple levels of
security."
DARPAcrats say the project will "exploit benefits of
democratization of innovation" and find better ways to kill people in
the process. How's
that for innovation!
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research,
an independent research and media group of writers, scholars,
journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, Rowan's Avenger, and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.
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