January 21, 2007
OUR ACHILLES HEEL?
China recently destroyed one of its own satellites with a ballistic missile in what must have been meant as a public demonstration that warfare of the future will include outerspace as a significant field of battle.
China successfully carried out its first test of an antisatellite weapon last week, signaling its resolve to play a major role in military space activities and bringing expressions of concern from Washington and other capitals, the Bush administration said yesterday.
Only two nations — the Soviet Union and the United States — have previously destroyed spacecraft in antisatellite tests, most recently the United States in the mid-1980s.
Arms control experts called the test, in which the weapon destroyed an aging Chinese weather satellite, a troubling development that could foreshadow an antisatellite arms race. Alternatively, however, some experts speculated that it could precede a diplomatic effort by China to prod the Bush administration into negotiations on a weapons ban.
“This is the first real escalation in the weaponization of space that we’ve seen in 20 years,” said Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks rocket launchings and space activity. “It ends a long period of restraint.”
That last paragraph is one of the most dubious assertions I've read in print for some time. Contrary to any notions of "restraint", the United States has been at the forefront of weaponizing space for the past three decades, and I'm not talking about any barely functioning missile defense system. Satellites have become the most significant military force multiplier since the invention of the aircraft. There is little aspect of the U.S. armed forces that is not dependant on space-based data transfer. From supply chain management, to intelligence gathering and weapons delivery, the 21st century U.S. military depends on satellites to keep its troops fed and drop bombs directly on the heads of specific individuals in a crowded urban environment.
And warfare is about more than dropping bombs. An army is only as strong as the economy behind it. Like the Allies' plan of bringing Germany to its knees during WWII by crippling its industrial base--destroying oil refineries and ball bearing factories--any opponent of the U.S. would have to see that disrupting its satellite-based information technology dependent economy would be massively damaging to its war-waging abilities.
Obviously, I don't want to overstate my case, but this small article in The New York Times may one day appear as portentious to the leveling of worldwide military power as the Soviets testing their first atom bomb.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at January 21, 2007 12:24 AM
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