AIR FORCE: ALL’S FAIR IN SPACE WAR

The American mil­i­tary has begun plan­ning for com­bat in space, an Air Force report reveals. And com­mer­cial space­craft, neu­tral coun­tries’ launch­ing pads even weather satel­lites are all on the poten­tial tar­get list.
“Air Force Doctrine Document 2–2.1: Counterspace Operations” is an appar­ent first-​​cut at detail­ing how U.S. forces might take out an enemy’s space capa­bil­i­ties — and pro­tect America’s eyes and ears in orbit. Signed by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper, the unclas­si­fied report sketches out who would be in com­mand dur­ing a space fight, what American weapons would be used, and which tar­gets might be attacked.
In that way, the report is sim­i­lar to hun­dreds of oth­ers in the Pentagon’s archives. But buried in the report’s acronyms and org charts are two strik­ing sen­ti­ments, ana­lysts say. First, the doc­u­ment declares that the U.S. Air Force is duty-​​bound to slap down other coun­tries’ space efforts, should the need arise. Then, Counterpsace Operations declares that a satel­lite or a ground con­trol sta­tion doesn’t have to belong to one of America’s ene­mies in order to get hit.
“You could be inflict­ing large costs on a com­pany or coun­try that has no role in a war. And that intro­duces great pos­si­bil­i­ties for back­lash and polit­i­cal fall­out,” warned Theresea Hitchens, vice pres­i­dent of the Center for Defense Information. “You could wind up dam­ag­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of our allies or even our­selves.“
But the Air Force may not have much of a choice, really. Nearly all the world’s mil­i­taries includ­ing America’s — rely on pri­vate com­pa­nies’ satel­lites for relay­ing mes­sages, tak­ing pic­tures, or guid­ing bombs. During the Iraq inva­sion, for exam­ple, com­mer­cial orbiters car­ried 80 per­cent of U.S. forces’ satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions.
My Wired News arti­cle has details.
THERE’S MORE: Via Secrecy News, here’s a primer, for Congressional eyes only, in the U.S. military’s role in space.
AND MORE: Over at The Register, John Lettice has a nice wrap-​​up of the Air Force’s coun­ter­space report.
AND MORE: Now Slashdot has picked up on the story. Read the, shall we say, spir­ited debate over space war here.

October 1st, 2004 | Space | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.