US Monopolizing use of Space
The "Space Race" of the sixties is coming to its logical conclusion.
Having established dominance in space, the United States are now openly pursuing a policy of "active denial". The use of space for intelligence and communication purposes is to be denied to other nations, including US allies.
Loring Wirbel writes in EE Times
"The nation's largest intelligence agency by budget and in control of all U.S. spy satellites, NRO is talking openly with the U.S. Air Force Space Command about actively denying the use of space for intelligence purposes to any other nation at any time - not just adversaries, but even longtime allies, according to NRO director Peter Teets."
Ever so slowly, more data seeps out through the net of secrecy. Here is an article by John Kaminski on how the militarization of space is thought to proceed.
U.S. 'negation' policy in space raises concerns abroad
EE Times
May 22, 2003 (1:26 p.m. ET)COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - While much of the talk around the Pentagon these days focuses on "transformation" of the military, some of the United States' closest allies worry about another buzzword being used in subtler ways at the National Reconnaissance Office: "negation."
The nation's largest intelligence agency by budget and in control of all U.S. spy satellites, NRO is talking openly with the U.S. Air Force Space Command about actively denying the use of space for intelligence purposes to any other nation at any time - not just adversaries, but even longtime allies, according to NRO director Peter Teets.
At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide "persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters." If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have "no veto power."
Beginning next year, NRO will be in charge of the new Offensive Counter-Space program, which will come up with plans to specifically deny the use of near-Earth space to other nations, said Teets.
The program will include two components: the Counter Communication System, designed to disrupt other nations' communication networks from space; and the Counter Surveillance Reconnaissance System, formed to prevent other countries from using advanced intelligence-gathering technology in air or space.
"Negation implies treating allies poorly," Robert Lawson, senior policy adviser for nonproliferation in the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, said at a Toronto conference in late March. "It implies treaty busting."
Hints of such a policy showed up in the Rumsfeld Commission report of January 2001, which warned of a "space Pearl Harbor" if the United States did not dominate low-earth, geosynchronous and polar orbital planes, as well as all launch facilities and ground stations, to exploit space for battlefield advantage.
The European Union complained in no uncertain terms five years ago that the NRO and National Security Agency were using global electronic-snooping programs like Echelon outside the boundaries of mutual NATO advantage. The European Space Agency chimed in last fall, when the Defense Department tried to bully ESA into changing its design plans for a navigational-satellite system called Galileo.
In the aftermath of the successful Iraq campaign, concern goes much deeper and extends to the heart of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command inside Cheyenne Mountain near here. While Canada is supposed to be an equal member of NORAD, representatives of Canada's military and civilian establishment are complaining that they are not allowed to use space-based communications and intelligence in the same way the United States can.
"We cannot address the way the U.S. views missile defense and weapons in space without dealing with their insistence on space negation head-on," said Lawson of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs.
Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Judd Blaisdell, director of the Air Force Space Operations Office, said recently, "We are so dominant in space that I pity a country that would come up against us."
Missile-defense critic William Hartung, of the Institute for Policy Studies, said none of this should be a surprise. U.S. unilateralism in space was codified in a Sept. 20, 2002, document titled the "National Security Strategy of the United States."
After the administration renounced the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty last year, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made it clear that the abrogation of treaty constraints in the use of radar and tracking devices was not just for the benefit of fielding a missile-defense system, but to build better unilateral networks to manage the planet from space.
In fact, NRO director Teets said here and in earlier Congressional testimony that it is artificial to see communication tools, intelligence tools and missile-defense tools as separate. In reality, he said, the programs all feed into each other and help reinforce the Pentagon's current overwhelming space dominance.
Currently, the NRO manages a series of imaging satellites, including the 20-year-old Advanced Crystal system. It manages a family of large radar satellites called Lacrosse/Onyx, and two classes of listening satellites: a microwave-only system known as Vortex or Mercury, and a multifrequency behemoth known as Magnum or Orion. The last two geosynchronous satellites are so large they must be launched by the massive Titan-IV rocket.
Even though billions were spent every year on these satellites in the 1980s and 1990s, they could not fulfill the new NRO mission of disseminating intelligence beyond the nation's civilian leaders, direct to the battlefield. NRO lobbied Congress for a radar satellite follow-on, now called Space-Based Radar. While NASA is supposed to be a customer for such a system, Teets said its primary purpose is to improve moving-target indication on the battlefield.
On the imaging and signals fronts, Boeing Corp. won separate contracts in the late 1990s for a next-generation imaging network called Future Imagery Architecture and for a listening satellite called Intruder. Both Boeing projects now face Congressional scrutiny for being over budget and behind schedule.
To fill the imaging gap during the Afghan and Iraq wars, the NRO and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) bought up all the image products from two companies that fly commercial imaging satellites, Space Imaging Inc. and DigitalGlobe Inc. In the first phase, ClearVision, the agencies merely bought up existing photographs. But a new phase, NextVision, calls for NRO and NIMA to specify how the commercial firms should build their next-generation satellites.
The constellation of 27 satellites in the Global Positioning Satellite navigation network were used in Iraq to turn dumb bombs into precision weapons. With further upgrades planned in the GPS-III system, DoD wants to be sure the United States holds the trump in space-based navigation.
The SBIRS-High infrared detection system, meanwhile, has become one of the Defense Department's biggest white elephants.
The SBIRS-High Increment 1 software finally was installed at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colo., almost two years late, but the birds themselves are plagued with problems involving the infrared telescopes and other glitches.
New communications satellites are being rolled out for the Defense Information Systems Agency, under the management of NRO. The Advanced Extremely High-Frequency satellite is the successor to Milstar. Voiceband communications will be handled by the Multi-User Objective System satellite, or MUOS, while new broadband video services will be handled by the Wideband Gapfiller.
But NRO's Teets said those three programs are only the beginning. The Transformational Communication Office was established last September to meld the communication and intelligence interests of the Defense Department. NRO and NASA will spend more than $10 billion in coming years to define a network of joint NRO-NASA satellites that will bring Internet-like space communications to terrestrial battlefields.
What will this massive palette of space resources bring? Teets told Congress that what's already in place allows U.S. military dominance in any possible battle scenario.
This transformational use of space resources may play well since the end of the Iraq War, but it is causing some defections. Several analysts at the Naval War College and Air Force Academy published essays in the months leading up to the Iraq assault, warning against assuming that the United States can maintain sole dominance of space. In March, retired Brig. Gen. Owen Lentz, former director of intelligence for Space Command, publicly voiced his opposition to using space intelligence assets for first-strike warfare. Just because the strategy worked in Iraq, Lentz warned, "does not mean that it should become a pattern for future action against others."
Update June 2006:
A recent conference in Hawaii passed a resolution promoting peaceful use of space and contact with extraterrestrial civilizations.
Hawaii Declaration on Peaceful Relations with Extraterrestrial Civilizations
"A New World If You Can Take It"
(original on Exopolitics blog)
We, the individuals and institutions participating in and/or supporting the Extraterrestrial Civilizations & World Peace Conference in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, June 9-11, 2006,
Are a body of concerned private citizens who are promoting world peace and harmonious relations with extraterrestrial civilizations,
Recognizing the overwhelming evidence pointing to the presence of extraterrestrial civilizations, and their generally peaceful interaction with individuals and governmental authorities,
Inspired by the profound significance for humanity of sharing the wisdom, knowledge, culture and technology provided by extraterrestrial civilizations,
Asserting that extraterrestrial civilizations have been observing human evolution for some time with particular interest in humanity's quest for lasting peace among its peoples,
Noting that extraterrestrial civilizations have indicated that the abolishment of nuclear weapons worldwide is a necessary milestone toward peaceful coexistence on earth and as a prerequisite for open contact,
Recalling United Nations resolutions concerning international co-operation in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space, banning atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests, and proscribing hostile acts on the moon and other celestial bodies,
Recognizing a range of initiatives promoted by private citizens and citizen organizations with regard to extraterrestrial civilizations visiting Earth,
Intending for this Declaration to be used as a starting point for a greater public dialogue with those holding similar or diverging perspectives and interests concerning extraterrestrial visitation,
Using a consensual decision making process among speakers, organizers, and participants at the Extraterrestrial Civilizations and World Peace Conference, 2006, we have agreed to,
Honor the following principles for establishing peaceful relations with extraterrestrial civilizations:
1. We affirm the intent of humanity to join in peaceful and cooperative relations with extraterrestrial civilizations,
2. Affirm support for United Nations resolutions promoting the peaceful use of Outer Space, and support for UN, International and U.S. Congressional initiatives to prevent an arms race in outer space, including the weaponization of space,
3. Affirm the natural right of all citizens to have open contact with representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations in all cases, and to engage in non-official diplomacy,
4. Declare the need for Civil Society to develop acceptable protocols (standards of behavior) with extraterrestrial civilizations, that the protocols should be representative of the aspirations of all humanity, and that all nations should work in concert to establish peaceful relations,
5. Cooperate with extraterrestrial civilizations in promoting Earth, Cosmic and Life friendly technologies, and encouraging the right use and open availability of these technologies,
6. Affirm our desire to coordinate the earth's ecological health and biological diversity with extraterrestrial civilizations that can aid us in that endeavour,
7. And express our desire to welcome the open appearance of benevolent extraterrestrial civilizations.
***
Official Conference website: www.etworldpeace.com
Conference Sponsor is the Exopolitics Institute: www.exopoliticsinstitute.org
Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, June 11, 2006
See also:Weaponization of space - The best missile defence, is a good missile offence
Here is an article in the Telegraph
Here is an article in the Guardian
January 2004: U.S. Eyes Space as Possible Battleground on the Reuters newswire
picked up also on CNN
US Takes War Into Space Levels Of The Game The Deeper You Go, The Darker It Gets
US ready to put weapons in space - The Guardian, UK
Defence expert says America is likely to ignore treaty banNuclear Terror at Home - by Noam Chomsky
"If you read the vision for 2020 published by the Space Administration, it talks about how the new frontier is space—and that we have to take control of space for military purposes and make sure that we have no competitors. That means the space-based instruments of sudden mass destruction... When the Bush administration took over they just made it more extreme. They moved from the Clinton doctrine of control of space to what they call ownership of space, meaning—their words—"instant engagement anywhere" or unannounced destruction of any place on earth."
Experts warn U.S. of space isolationMilitary Role in Space Said Set to Expand
By Jim Wolf - 8 February 2006
WASHINGTON -- The military's role in deterring attacks on commercial satellites is set to be strengthened in the first broad overhaul of U.S. space policy in a decade, a U.S. official said on Wednesday. The policy would remove any ambiguity about official responsibility for figuring out who was behind any attack on U.S.-owned commercial satellites, said Air Force Col. Anthony Russo, head of the U.S. Strategic Command's space division. Russo said recent drafts of the policy, which he said could be announced within months, did not rule out weapons in space.
Pentagon eyeing weapons in space
March 14, 2006, Boston Globe
The Pentagon is asking Congress for hundreds of millions of dollars to test weapons in space, marking the biggest step toward creating a space battlefield since President Reagan's long-defunct ''star wars" project. The Defense Department's budget proposal...includes money for a variety of tests on offensive and defensive weapons. Arms-control specialists fear the tests will push the military closer to basing weapons in space than during Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative in the mid-1980s -- without a public debate of the potential consequences. The descriptions included in the budget request mark only what is publicly known about the military's space warfare plans. Specialists believe the classified portion of the $439 billion budget, blacked out for national security reasons, almost certainly includes other space-related programs. Under President Bush, the White House has emphasized what's known as ''space dominance" -- the notion that the United States must command space to defend the nation, but the budget request marks a transition from laboratory theory to reality. The Bush administration has sought to keep the military's options open despite international opposition to weapons in space.Administration Conducting Research Into Laser Weapon
Wednesday 03 May 2006
The Bush administration is seeking to develop a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would use beams of concentrated light to destroy enemy satellites in orbit. The largely secret project, parts of which have been made public through Air Force budget documents submitted to Congress in February, is part of a wide-ranging effort to develop space weapons, both defensive and offensive. No treaty or law forbids such work. The laser research was described by federal officials who would speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the topic's political sensitivity.October 2006: New Bush space policy unveiled
... the Bush space policy is designed to "ensure that space capabilities are available in time to further U.S. national security, homeland security, and foreign policy objectives." Moreover, a fundamental goal of the policy is to "enable unhindered U.S. operations in and through space to defend our interests there." The policy calls upon the Secretary of Defense to "develop capabilities, plans, and options to ensure freedom of action in space, and, if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries."Domination of Space
How far are we from a time when anyone on Earth can be cooked from space? Perhaps not far. This video also talks about Theater Missile Defense, which finally explains to me why we need bases all over the world. The video says we had a war game recently where the US launched a preemptive attack on China using the newest Space Shuttle and then a space based laser. No wonder China recently blew up one of their own satellites!Russia, China Challenge U.S. Space Arms
China and Russia challenged the United States at a disarmament debate Tuesday by formally presenting a plan to ban weapons in space — a proposal that Washington has called a diplomatic ploy by the two nations to gain a military advantage.Space Arms Race Heats Up Overnight
The U.S. Navy's successful missile hit and apparent destruction of a defunct spy satellite represents a major step forward in the space arms race in the eyes of some analysts. Others are not so sure."It was an unfortunate choice by the United States that seems to have been unnecessary. The fact is that satellites fall from space all the time and the risk of it was fairly minimal," said Stephen Young, the senior analyst in Washington, D.C., for the Union of Concerned Scientist's Global Security Program. "But the implications of the satellite shootdown could be very severe. We're talking about a potential arms race in space."
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Friday June 6 2003
updated on Tuesday December 21 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/06/06/us_monopolizing_use_of_space.htm
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