IBD on the “Spirit of Reykjavik”
October 11, 2006 :: Investor’s Business Daily :: Analysis
This week marks the twentieth anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s bold stand against trading missile defense for an arms treaty, writes Investor’s Business Daily in an editorial entitled “Reykjavik Forever.” In October 1986, during a meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, the Soviet premier unexpectedly offered an unprecedented reduction in nuclear weapons. His price was that the U.S. abandon all but the most rudimentary research on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which Reagan had called “a new hope for our children in the 21st century.” According to contemporary accounts, Reagan gathered his papers, stood, and told Gorbachev, “No way.” Criticism and derision followed immediately. U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar compared SDI to France’s disastrous Maginot Line in World War II. In a New York Times op-ed, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), said “Star Wars is a physical and technological impossibility,” adding that “it is difficult to believe that any other president since World War II would have ignored the opportunity that knocked at Reykjavik.” Claiborne Pell (D-RI), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, lamented, “This is a sad day for mankind.” Yet as Investor’s Business Daily points out, “history proved the critics all wrong—including the scores of scientists who knew so much better than this simpleton who somehow landed in the White House.” In several years, Gorbachev was gone, and the Soviet Union imploded. At the time of Reagan’s death, Gennady Gerasimov, senior Soviet foreign ministry spokesman admitted that SDI had been “a very successful blackmail.”
As for SDI, Investor’s Business Daily adds that “today, U.S. interceptor missiles that can stop incoming nuclear warheads in space—Teddy Kennedy’s ‘physical and technological impossibility’—are an operational reality.” This is only partially true. The U.S. has deployed the ground-based midcourse defense system in Alaska and California, which recently intercepted a live target missile. Reagan’s vision for strategic defenses, however, has yet to come. The U.S. has not yet deployed the necessary space-based missile defense assets, such as Brilliant Pebbles, capable of targeting and destroying long-range ballistic missiles in mid-trajectory. Most of the U.S., including the East Coast, remains vulnerable to ballistic missile attack, as does the entire homeland from a ship-launched short range ballistic missile against a coastal city. On the twentieth anniversary of Reykjavik, while celebrating Reagan’s bold stand against trading away missile defense, Americans should also ask when the U.S. will implement the former President’s full vision for the strategic defense of the nation. (Article, Link)
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» Missile system details for: Brilliant Pebbles
Popovkin on Russian Military Space Revival
October 5, 2006 :: RIA-Novosti :: News
In today’s RIA Novosti, Colonel General Vladimir Popovkin, commander of the Russian Space Troops, describes his vision for Russia’s military space revivial. Up to this point, he acknowledges, the Space Troops have spent their time “averting a potential crisis in military space and space missile defenses, stopping the quantitative and qualitative degradation of the orbital constellation and its ground infrastructure, and creating the preconditions for its revival so that it can fulfill its tasks effectively.” Beginning next year, however, the Space Troops will start launching “new types of military spacecraft under test and deployment programs.” Popovkin expounds upon Russia’s reasons for doing so, taking a not-so-subtle swipe at perceived U.S. space ambitions:
Space infrastructure is now increasing its role throughout the world in boosting both the military might and social and economic prosperity of the leading world states. In military matters, space-based systems are the key to information supremacy. They provide more accurate and prompt information about the situation to all troops and weapons systems. Space resources have therefore become a matter of vital interest for the state economically, politically and militarily.
The drive to possess these resources and control their use may in the foreseeable future expand the sphere of military operations and move them to outer space. Russia is against this scenario in principle, and is making every effort to prevent its realization. But we, like most of the space powers, are considering methods of protecting our orbital constellations of spacecraft and space resources against possible discriminatory and restrictive moves. If foreign states develop and deploy space-strike infrastructure, Russia must be ready to take adequate defensive and offensive measures.
(Article, Link)
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Russia Concerned U.S. May Deploy Space-Based Assets
September 26, 2006 :: Defense Daily International :: News
Russian leaders are concerned that the U.S. may deploy space-based missile defense assets, reports Defense Daily International. At a recent symposium hosted by the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington DC think tank, analysts noted that Russia could respond by detonating a nuclear weapon in space to create a radiation belt that would render U.S. space-based defenses useless. Such a move would also annihilate functioning of Russian satellites, although Russia has far less to lose. According to retired Russian General Vladimir Dworkin, now senior researcher with the Center for International Security at the Institute for World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Science, Russia’s concerns about lasers in space do not apply to existing components of the multi-layered U.S. missile defense system, such as the Airborne Laser. “We’ve gotten used to it,” Dworkin said. “But if you’re talking about reviving … Star Wars,” perhaps by resurrecting Brilliant Pebbles or developing a laser BMD system, then that “would be a shock” to Russians that they would not easily get used to. The more the U.S. pushes to develop a space-based BMD system, the more sharply Russia would be likely to respond, Dworkin warned. (Link)
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» Missile system details for: Brilliant Pebbles
China Fired High-Powered Lasers at U.S. Satellites
September 22, 2006 :: Defense News :: News
Defense News reports that China has fired high-powered, ground-based lasers at U.S. reconnaissance satellites in an attempt to blind the spacecraft and keep them from taking pictures of Chinese territory. The article quotes Pentagon officials who refused to state how many times the lasers have been tested against U.S. satellites, but confirmed that several firings have taken place over the past few years. According to one source, China has the ability to “blind” satellites passing over its territory but not “disable” them, given the massive amount of energy required to shoot a laser through the dense lower atmosphere and reach a fast-moving satellite. In any event, China’s burgeoning anti-satellite capabilities underscore the severe vulnerabilities of U.S. reconnaissance satellites, and indeed the entire U.S. space network. “The Chinese are very strategically minded and are extremely active in this arena,” said one senior former Pentagon official. “They really believe all the stuff written in the 1980s about the high frontier and are looking at symmetrical and asymmetrical means to offset American dominance in space.” The Pentagon, however, has kept largely quiet regarding China’s anti-satellite efforts, in line with the Bush administration’s policy of maintaining cordial relations with Beijing, which is a leading trade partner and seen as key to dealing with rogue threats such as North Korea and Iran. (Article, Link)
» More stories on: China, High Energy Defenses, Space-Based Systems
WSJ Interviews Obering, Discusses Space-Based Defenses
August 26, 2006 :: The Wall Street Journal :: News
The Wall Street Journal today interviewed Lieutenant General Henry “Trey” Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency. Gen. Obering discussed the current and future capabilities of the U.S. missile defense system, in particular the role of space-based interceptors which he termed “very attractive.” When asked to respond to the “weaponization of space” argument, he noted that “we already do intercepts in space, because that’s where the missiles fly … What we’re talking about is having space-based interceptors that would engage from space.” Gen. Obering also said that he favors deploying more sophisticated sensors in space. “If someone had told me 15 or 20 years ago that we’d be fighting in Afghanistan, I wouldn’t have believed them. We don’t know where we’re going to be fighting in the next 20 years … and so instead of populating radars around the world to try to guess where those threats are going to be coming from, it makes a lot of sense to go to space … We have sensors in space but they are not sensors that you can accurately track from.” (More »»»)
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China and Russia Discuss Joint Mission to Mars
August 23, 2006 :: AFP :: News
China and Russia are planning a joint mission to Mars. The Xinhua news agency quotes Ye Peijian, a scientist at the Chinese Research Institute of Space Technology, who announced yesterday that Russia plans to launch the spacecraft in 2009, which will carry Chinese-made equipment. The goal is to land on Mars and its nearest moon, and collect samples.
In June, Sun Laiyan, administrator of the China National Space Administration, said that China would focus on the moon and Mars in its deep space exploration program over the next five years. China has previously said it hopes to launch a lunar exploration satellite in 2007 as part of a program that aims to place an unmanned vehicle on the moon by 2010. In 2003, it successfully launched astronaut Yang Liwei into orbit, becoming the third country after the Soviet Union and the U.S. to put a man in space. (Article, Link)
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South Korea Launches First Military Communications Satellite
August 22, 2006 :: AFP :: News
South Korea today launched its first military communications satellite, reports the AFP. The Mugunghwa-5 satellite, built by the French company Alcatel, was launched from a ship in the South Pacific off Hawaii. It will be placed in geosynchronous orbit, at 36,000 kilometers (22,000 miles), and will be able to collect surveillance information on North Korea. The Mugunghwa-5 is South Korea’s fourth communications satellite, but the first for military purposes. South Korea has previously had no surveillance system of its own and depended on U.S. airborne reconnaissance aircraft based at Okinawa in Japan. (Article, Link)
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Chilton Predicts Attacks on U.S. Satellites
August 15, 2006 :: Reuters :: News
General Kevin Chilton, who recently took charge the Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, today predicted future attacks on U.S. satellites and called for the expanded tracking of foreign launches, reports Reuters. Chilton noted that U.S. tracking efforts currently focus on determining if an overseas launch is a ballistic missile or designed to put an object in orbit, and then cataloging the launch over a period that often takes weeks. “I say those days are over,” he said. “If it’s a space launch, we can’t afford to relax.” He warned that U.S. satellites are increasingly vulnerable to attack, as foes naturally will want to deny the U.S. its current military and commercial advantages in space. “In the future, I’m convinced they’ll strike at these capabilities, if nothing else to attempt to level the playing field,” Chilton said, adding that the U.S. has a duty to secure “the entire space domain not just for our own military but for our allies and for the benefit of the free world.” To accomplish this, he said, the U.S. needs to increase its “situational awareness” and to gain the ability to take rapid defensive measures. “We need to know what the intent of that launch is,” he said. Chilton, in particular, recommended the development of new computer programs that would present easily digestible information on foreign launches to military commanders. (Article, Link)
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Pentagon Studies “Remediation” System to Defend Satellites
August 14, 2006 :: UPI :: News
The Pentagon is researching a new system to defend U.S. satellites from high-altitude nuclear detonations and solar storms. The “radiation belt remediation” system, as it is known, would protect low-orbiting satellites from being damaged by charged particles in unusually intense radiation belts created by high-altitude nuclear explosions or solar storms. The “remediation” system would generate very low frequency radio waves to flush particles from the radiation belts and dump them into the upper atmosphere over one or several days. The project is being pursued by the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Some scientists, however, have noted that the “remediation” system could cause communication blackouts among high frequency radio transmissions and GPS navigation signals. (Article, Link)
» More stories on: Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Weapons, Nuclear Weapons, Space-Based Systems
Chinese Military Looks to Outer Space
August 3, 2006 :: AFP :: News
China’s space program has to a large extent been a military undertaking from the very beginning, reports the AFP. The article quotes a group of unidentified researchers at the Chinese National Defense University, who yesterday published an article in the mass-circulation People’s Daily that listed space as an area where the People’s Liberation Army must be equipped and prepared to defend Chinese national interests. “Our military should not only protect China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity, but should also protect the oceans and transport routes and other economic interests as well as … the security of space,” it said. A similar suggestion was put forth last month in the Study Times, a newspaper published by the Communist Party’s Central Party School. “We should strive to develop coordinated land, sea, air and space systems,” the article said. The AFP notes that the new emphasis on space as a possible theater of operations for China’s armed forces is a noteworthy departure from previous Chinese strategic literature, which tended to give space a less prominent place in defense planning. (Article, Link)
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