MOSCOW (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Kislyakov). -- So much has been said about the grim prospect of U.S. weapons in space that even Russian and Chinese leaders have voiced their concern.
It was probably for this reason that White House spokesman Scott McClellan told U.S. media on June 10 that the U.S. believes in peaceful exploration of space and is not going to deploy weapons there.
He said "the president initiated our space policies in June 2002 ... The president has already issued, I think, four presidential directives as part of that space policy review" and a fifth is in the pipeline, but its contents are not clear and thus provide cause for anxiety.
"But we believe in the peaceful exploration of space," McClellan said. "And there are treaties in place, and we continue to abide by those treaties. But there are issues that relate to our space program that could affect those space programs that we need to make sure are addressed.
"And that's what part of this interagency review process is. It's not looking at weaponizing space, as some reports had previously suggested. But the peaceful exploration of space also includes the ability of nations to be able to protect their space systems," he said.
In fact, this statement said it all, although the tone was peaceful and the rhetoric humanistic. Jim Oberg, 56, who worked for 22 years as a space engineer in Houston, where he specialized in NASA space shuttle operations for orbital rendezvous, poses as the enemy of these "humanistic attitudes."
His June 14 article in USA Today, "Hyperventilating for 'Space Weapons'," is shocking and does not confirm Washington's official line.
Unlike McClellan's soft commentary, Oberg's article raises many questions, the search for answers to which could (again) expose the essence of the new U.S. space policy.
The main conclusion from Oberg's article is that sharp foreign replies to American space initiatives, which have nothing to do with the militarization of space, were inspired by "the near-hysterical ranting from American newspapers" and by politicians of some foreign nations (Russia and China) "eager to score cheap propaganda points."
The latter phrase needs no further comment, as does this one: "In recent years, historians have revealed that Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev bankrupted his country's space program by demanding that his engineers build a copy of NASA's space shuttle because his advisers persuaded him that the United States wanted to use it for bombing Moscow." It appears that the events of the 1980s have been erased from the specialist's memory.
But his words about the U.S. Air Force are telling: "Gung-ho space-superiority mantras have been coming from U.S. Air Force leaders for decades, but without funding, it has mostly been just bold talk."
However, I cannot recall a really serious program that was denied appropriations. The ASAT anti-satellite program has received financing since 1977, and by the late 1980s American specialists had turned the F-15 fighter and the deck-based F-14 into a system that can intercept 25% of low-orbiting satellites from the continental U.S.
McClellan also talked about "the ability of nations to be able to protect their space systems." But why should Intelsat be protected if it is used for communications purposes and nothing else? The answer was provided by Oberg: "It's not the equipment that's important (that's why the United States never responded to earlier Russian space weapons); it's the offensive capabilities the hardware is supposed to deliver. That's what must be considered foremost before considering the likelihood of responses."
So there is no need to worry. American satellite systems are not a weapon per se and are not supposed to deliver offensive capabilities. But they should, of course, be protected with weapons. This is the conclusion that stems from Jim Oberg's article.
In May 2001, President George Bush ordered that the creation of armed forces capable of waging sixth-generation (contactless) wars across the world be sped up.
The U.S. successfully used new precision-guided weapons during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq in 1991. After that, it was decided to finance the strategic concept Joint Vision 2010, with its spotlight on "full spectrum dominance." ("Full-spectrum dominance means the ability of U.S. forces, operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of military operations.") The operation in Afghanistan in autumn 2001 and in Iraq in 2003 only reinforced Washington's belief in the correctness of its "contactless" line.
The U.S. created precision-guided weapons, mostly using Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missiles. The new missiles, capable of delivering strikes against countries across the world, are to join combat duty in 2005.
Vladimir Slipchenko, a Russian military analyst, believes that "a prognosis analysis shows that the number of ships of this project would be at least 70 by 2020 and 100 by 2030. They will carry 50,000 precision-guided cruise missiles ready to fly and another 150,000 missiles for subsequent launches."
These missiles will have integrated combat control systems and are guided from numerous navigation and reconnaissance satellites. All of this equipment should certainly be protected, including from space, as nearly all of the orbital craft will become part of the U.S. offensive capability.
It is clear that Washington does not intend to attack Moscow or Beijing from space. And the Ballistic Missile Defense system is not designed entirely to protect the States themselves from a possible nuclear attack.
The U.S. will create the BMD system, but only as a secondary element, one of many. Its main goal is to use BMD cover for creating a space-based infrastructure for future contactless wars. It is with this aim in view that the U.S. is deploying a global space reconnaissance and information network worth about $50 billion, with a powerful ground-based protection system. Jim Oberg has not convinced us that this is not so.
