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US Military Plans Space Combat
MacDork writes "Wired news is reporting that the US Air Force has documented its plans to shoot down "commercial spacecraft, neutral countries' launching pads -- even weather satellites" should the need arise. From potential Chinese militarization of space to commercial spy satellites their reasoning seems obvious, but there are just as obvious consequences of such actions. Just glancing at the PDF, I don't see any plans for the aftermath..."
I agree. Isn't it true other countries cannot take pictures of other countries (like the US), according to the US, but it's fine and dandy for the US to take spy pictures of others?
Do unto others as you would others unto to you (Or something like that)
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
Look, I wish you were right. But, there was the guy who said:
And another who said:
They were both assholes, but they were right in those remarks. That's what make them scary. The biggest asshole of them all, to return in-topic, is the one who (wisely?) said:
The USSR isn't there any more to deter the US, so the US can do pretty much what they want. (If English had the same distinction as German, I would say können, and not dürfen.)
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
``should the need arise''
You mean, if Bush accuses them of having WMD?
Sow more hatred, harvest more pain. Piss off everybody, and gee, there are terrorists attacking you. Who would have thought? Good we spent those billions building our super hyper space defense system rather than improving quality of life!
What's that you say? They're using low-tech weapons that we cannot detect? We must have stronger security checks, fuck civil rights and liberties!
And the maddening thing is, voters actually support all this...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Both Republicans and Democrats, if given the opportunity to target certain assets will do so- even if only by mistake.
What will be the long term consequences, for example if you down a weather sat? Well, for many countries that depend in large part on agriculture for both survival and balance of trade, not having a reliable weather info could be catastrophic. Besides the loss of human life, is it too outlandish to think that a bunch of people that have had their standard of living suddenly diminished could blame the US?
<background>
Clinton had a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan bombed to the ground on suspicion of producing WMDs. It was a mistake they later apologized for.
Consequences? A lot of people without access to cheap anti-malaria drugs and affordable veterinary drugs. In other words, a lot of people die, although not right away or in a "sexy" way for western media. I'm afraid people won't get the point of how dangerous it is to disable key infrastructure like weather sats or pharm plants.
</background>
An other near-term consequence of this will be to piss off some Canadian moderates that are uneasy with the idea of supporting the US on ballistic missile defense (another component of space weaponization).
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Lead by example, not hypocrisy.
"Hypocracy" means saying one thing and doing another. Using it as a label is a sign of weak thinking.
So, tell me: When did the US Military tell people that nobody should think about how to take down satellites?
If you can't answer that... and you can't... it is not hypocracy. It may be other things but that isn't it.
The same goes for the Geneva Convention, and US strong opposition to the International Criminal Court. In Bush & Co.: War Crimes and Cover-Up we have
You mean, stand around inside a cage called a free speech zone? Or be out in the street with cops with rifles on the building tops, military helos over head, and sonic cannons and whatnot pointed at you?
That's the state of "protest" today in the US and why most people don't engage in it. Everyone knows it's one incident away from beoming a bad news scene with a lot of people hurt, and better than even odds some undercover "officer" agent provocateurs starting it.
Everything else by the way of protest in the traditional way they can and will ignore, they could care less about letters to the editor or any emails you send them basically. Petitions, bah, ignored. Redress of grievences? Sure, you have the "right" to cough up thousands of dollars to begin talking to some lawyer, then it gets more expensive from there. He's gonna giggle all the way to his mercedes dealer while you sue the government over something. And the vote? See the so called "official national presidential debates"? An infomercial for the NWO corporate party basically, as much diversity and differences of opinion there as at any regular Klan meeting....and for backup they have new & improved voting, courtesy of blackbox diebold..
Funny, for the primaries and the debates for the two for one party they seem to have no problems finding enough podiums for half a dozen guys up on stage, but once down to the wire,for the biggee, all they can find is two podiums. Funny how that works out. Let me see, two dudes, frat bros for some elitist neo nazi satanic frat, both wearing black suits, wives wearing white suits....Yep, a true difference, there's your choice, and you can protest it all you want..but it won't change a dang thing either....
Nope, we are graciously "allowed" the illusion of protest, but americans know what's up, and what's upo is basically "shutup, sit down, do what you are told or else, here, have some trinkets and gadgets and cheap beer and nascar and football, that's it, don't rock the boat too hard..or ELSE!'".
It's not as bad yet as say north korea, but give it some time, it'll get there. That's eventually what these technofeudalists want, that's why red china is their poster boy model nation, BTW, they dig on that scene there. it's efficient. A few folks give the orders, you get to "vote", and they throw you some bones.
If folks don't agree it will get there,as bad as them other places are now, let them try an easy experiment. Next time you are stopped at a "random courtesy checkpoint" roadblock, you know, those kinds that never existed except for the last few years and are now common, where everyone gets stopped and checked for their "paperz, pleezz! and whatnot" by Darth Vader officer friendly with the glock and MP5, just..don't stop! They don't have any probable cause or even reasonable suspicion, they are just stopping you because they can, so go for it, keep driving on your merry way, see what happens, see if it isn't already a lot closer to north korea than you want to contemplate. Of course, you might not make it to even report back, either...in "free" america today.
There's no real protest anymore, people talk about protest, play-act at protest, but the authorites control protest close to 100% now, and they aren't giving up that sort of power. It'sincremental, on a thousand fronts, we read about it all the time here, but it's relentlessly forward for those globalists. That's their plan, you and me and we can "protest" all we want as long as we follow thier rules, their schedule, their methods, manner and location, and remain satisfied with the outcome of any such "protest", which is carved in stone, "they win, you lose."
Space is not demilitarized, both the Soviet Union and America have posessed weapons designed for space in addition to military satellites (including the beloved GPS), and there are no treaties concerning anti-satellite warfare.
During the Cold War, F-15 fighters recieved the capability to take out low-orbit satellites via the ASAT missile, a capability they still posess. The USSR had satellite "bombs" designed to take out low-orbit satellites via EMP (there has been speculation that they could take out medium-orbiting objects as well, but we really don't know). With the demise of the USSR and the collapse of their military, Russia has been willing to sell almost anything, and it wouldn't be a stretch to find China, North Korea, Libya, or Iran with weapons based on Soviet designs. Note that higher orbital objects were immune from these approaches.
There are no treaties concerning the destruction of satellites, although there was one for ballistic missiles; America withdrew in 2002, using a procedure outlined in the treaty which required six months of notice. Incidentally, the ABM treaty allowed the US and USSR to deploy weapons around capital cities. America chose not to, while Moscow is still protected by anti-ballistic missiles. Moscow once expressed interest in a anti-satellite weapons treaty, as did various groups of scientists in the US, but no such treaty was ever signed.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Some very public failures of the screening process (like that college kid from Louisianna(?)) show that you are correct about it being mainly for show - and for disarming those who would fight back in the event of a hijacking.
Airplanes would be less apt to be hijacked if they issued everyone on board a stun gun or a big pointy stick and locked the pilots in the cabin.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
I don't know which is funnier, the notion that Europe would ever fund defense at US levels (with the resultant sacrfices required by the welfare stare)
According to US military, some European countries spend nearly the same amount of GDP on defense as the USA. On the average, EU would have to spend additional 2.5% of GDP on defense, to match the USA. Now, according to Goethe Institut, EU spent on average in 1999 around 28% of GDP on welfare. Moving 2.5% from welfare to defense would be a noticeable, but not drastic policy shift. The reason why Europe is so drastically outperformed by the USA in terms of military capabilities is that European armies are mostly (UK is an exception --- not surprising, since it is shielded by sea) cold-war style, prepared to fight a large scale land war against the Russian invasion. Such armies are useless in today's combat fields, be it Kosovo, Afghanistan or Iraq. USA did not have to pay this 'Russian tax', being separated by an ocean. You could develop a more mobile army (leaving aside technological superiority). Given some time, Europe will remodel its armies, abolish the draft entirely and increase the spending. Creating an common foreign policy will give the incentive to do this, and creating a common army will give the economies of scale.
the notion that Europe would ever be able to do anything but what it's done since the end of WWII (namely: kow-tow to whoever has the guns, be it the US, USSR, or now, increasingly, Muslim extremists)
The USA could well afford to be more rash with the USSR, being shielded by an arsenal of nukes and an ocean. Europe has its problems with sending soldiers abroad (again: abolishing the draft will lessen them), but we were not afraid to send soldiers to Afghanistan. Some EU countries fight in Iraq (UK, Poland, Netherlands) and their experiences (if we still have the UK in the EU in the future) will add to EU military capabilities. The fact that other countries opposed war with Iraq does not mean that they do not fight terrorists. They simple were sane enough to notice that there were no terrorists in Iraq before the war.
the notion that somehow a united, militarized Europe would actually threaten the US, or be seen as threatening by the US.
The EU is not going to wage a war against the USA. It is only going to be taken more seriously by the USA, seriously enough to able to say 'we don't like your blowing up satellites in the sky' and be taken into account by the USA.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
USA did not have to pay this 'Russian tax', being separated by an ocean. You could develop a more mobile army (leaving aside technological superiority).
I'm not disagreeing with the overall gist of your post.
I was in the USAF for 8 years, and I would argue that our (US) military became more mobile and hi-tech precisely BECAUSE of our committment to the defense of Europe from the (potential, if not actual) Soviet threat.
1.) Despite the fact that we had a number of heavy divisions garrisoned in Europe, the bulk of our manpower was still in the Continental US and required heavy airlift capability to mobilize in a timely manner. The ability to project our combat power to anyplace in the World on short notice was driven by the need to counter the Soviets and their proxies.
2.) We developed hi-tech precision munitions to even the odds against superior numbers of Warsaw Pact forces in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. One account I have read estimated 20 Warsaw Pact divisions versus 8 NATO divisions. Even taking into account that NATO divisions tended to be larger than WP divisions, (IIRC, NATO divisions were 15K to 20K troops and WP divisions were generally about 12K troops) that's a 3:2 ratio of Warsaw Pact troops to NATO troops.
Our hi-tech weapons (M-1 tanks, Apache and Blackhawk helicopters, TOW and Hellfire missiles, MLRS artillery, Patriot SAMs, AWACS, J-Stars, Aegis guided missile cruisers, GPS, precision guided munitions) were all in response to the Soviet threat.
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Various studies have shown that the real standard of living in many 'developed' countries has been falling since the 1970s, most of all in the USA. Such measurements take into account 'quality of life' elements like availability of health care and education (NB: this does not depend on public systems; private systems are OK as long as it is affordable and of a decent standard), real income (counting inflation and household debt), pollution, politcal/speech freedom, etc.
Yes. Even more frightening is the possibility of the USA defaulting on its borrowings. The USA has accrued massive debts, and it is questionable whether it can all be serviced. That would throw the entire global economy into chaos. Some even fear that this could be used as a tactic by the US government to get what they want. If that happens, nobody can do anything about it, and they'll be forced to acquiesce for fear of destroying their economies. No it's not true, but the parent post makes a good point. There is a massive dispaity of wealth in the US, and levels of poverty and homelessness are much higher than in other developed countries. I am not a socialist by any means, but there is something seriously wrong when you have the resources to prevent (or at leat reduce) this yet nothing is done.OLPC Australia