Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 1997, Air Force Gen. Howell Estes III, commander-in-chief of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and of the U.S. Space Command--established in 1985--laid out the U.S. rulers' perspective for maintaining and advancing its military power in space: "We must dominate the military space dimension and integrate space forces into our overall warfighting capabilities across the spectrum. As the number of spacefaring nations grows, space superiority will become a must for the United States."

The general added, "Today, we are the world's most powerful space force; however, we are in a shifting environment where space operations are becoming ever more vital to U.S. and global economies, and military space capabilities are becoming increasingly indispensable to U.S. national security. Space power is inextricably linked to military operations on land, sea, and in the air," he said. "Key military functions have already migrated to space--intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; ballistic missile detection and early warning; weapons guidance; position location; communications; and environmental monitoring. Space is truly the fourth medium of military operations and represents to our terrestial warfighters the ultimate high ground."

He added, "Although today we use space power to enhance the effectiveness of our terrestrial forces, space power will become a dominating force in the United States" with "even the potential for war itself... moving from Earth into space."

The Air Force general pointed out that there are over 500 satellites in space today and about half of the more than 200 U.S. satellites are designated for military operations. Washington is planning to spend $25 billion over the next 20 years for a dozen or so new satellites with electronic cameras that "would be able to track objects as small as a baseball anywhere, anytime on the planet," the International Herald Tribune reported. "It will be 'an incredible improvement' in America's ability to spy from the sky, a U.S. official said in Washington," the paper added.

Many of the U.S. forces stationed around the world depend on satellite communications and military intelligence to conduct their operations. The Naval Space Command (NSC), for example, which was commissioned in 1983, maintains a "space watch" around the clock to track satellites in orbit. According to a fact sheet on its website, they operate "a surveillance network of nine field stations located across the southern United States...that can detect objects in orbit around the Earth out to an effective range of 15,000 nautical miles." More than 1 million "satellite detections, or observations," are collected by this surveillance operation each month, according to the NSC. Vital facts are then relayed to deployed Navy and Marine Corps forces.

The Air Force and Army Space Command carry out similar types of operations. Throughout the 1990s the Pentagon has utilized space-based surveillance satellites to help pinpoint targets for cruise missiles and other warplanes called into operation.

"Today, we primarily use space to enhance the operational effectiveness of our terrestrial forces," stated the commander of the U.S. Space Command. "Tomorrow, the contribution of space to the overall success of joint and combined military operations will only expand."

He added, "Global engagement will see certain terrestrial missions migrating to space. Worldwide surveillance, information dominance, NMD [National Missile Defense] and precision strike are a few examples. Space forces will be fully integrated with terrestrial forces to synchronize and multiply combat effectiveness. This includes getting the right information to the right people at the right time."

From the start the "civilian" space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has been aimed at giving U.S. imperialism this military advantage in space. It develops new technologies that the Pentagon can put to use and launches many of the military satellites. NASA, for example, has been testing out reusable launch vehicles that the Pentagon hopes can lead to the development and deployment of military space planes.  
 
Plans for testing new space weapons
The Bush administration is currently allocating funds and making plans to test a broad array of new weapons that would encircle the globe.

The aim of this system is to assert Washington's military dominance and, if it can be proven to work, to gain a nuclear first-strike force to blackmail and threaten countries that come into conflict with the U.S. rulers, including the workers states in northern Korea, Russia, and China, as well as its imperialist competitors, especially in Europe.

Pentagon officials elaborated on some of the plans for such a space-based system at a three-day conference in mid-July held in Huntsville, Alabama. The event was sponsored by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command.

"Twenty years after President Ronald Reagan created an international furor by proposing to place weapons in space, the Pentagon has put nearly every major element of the original program back in the center of its plans as part of a national missile shield," commented a July 22 New York Times article.

The plan involves putting in place a layered defense, in which a missile can be fired upon in various phases of its flight from land, sea, or outer space. The Pentagon is accelerating its development of chemical lasers that would fly in space or high in the atmosphere. It is also undertaking new research into launching thousands of interceptors into space and expanding the placement of sensor-laden satellites into orbit.

The space sensors would be part of the Space-Based Infrared System, or SBIRS. The idea would be to place a low-orbit cluster of 25 to 40 satellites--once described in Reagan's Star Wars plan as "Brilliant Eyes"--that would be equipped with infrared sensors to detect and track warheads after separation from their boosters. Funding for this program has been increased by more than one-third to $420 million in the 2002 military budget. A recent study by the General Accounting Office estimated the cost of this entire system to be about $12 billion.

These satellites will also be utilized to expand the U.S. military's spying and surveillance operations. They are to be part of a vast array of military satellites encircling the globe. A 1997 U.S. Air Forces Issues Book describes SBIRS as a system "that will meet United States infrared space surveillance needs through the next two to three decades." It includes "satellites in Geosynchronous Earth Orbit and Low Earth Orbit" as well as sensors "on satellites in Highly Elliptical Orbit."

The Pentagon has also announced plans to revive research on a program they describe as "Brilliant Pebbles." This involves placing as many as 4,000 small interceptors stationed in permanent orbit around the earth, any of which could be rapidly deployed as "kill" vehicles that would smash into a ballistic missile launched from below.

They will be "sitting up there, in orbit, available to use whenever," stated Robert Snyder, executive director of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. He added that the Pentagon was seeking an immediate allocation of $110 million to study how to put such a system in place. Their aim will be to conduct a test in space by 2005 or 2006. The original "Brilliant Pebbles" program was begun by the Reagan administration in the mid-1980s, and terminated in 1993 after $4.8 billion had been spent on it.

According to a Times article, "Critics of the current plan doubt the ability of the interceptors to function when left for long periods in space." Tom Collina, director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, commented, "They almost invite an enemy to develop antisatellite weapons to knock them out."

The U.S. military also plans to test space-based lasers that could be launched by satellites with their beams firing back into the earth's atmosphere to shoot down slow-moving warheads while they're still attached to the booster rocket. These lasers, which have so far only been tested on the ground, generate a flash of intense light that is designed to burn through a missile's booster and cause it to explode. This program "is expected to cost $3 billion to $4 billion through the shoot-down test," stated the Times, with a target date for launching sometime between 2008 and 2012.

This technology would also be deployed as part of an airborne laser system, in which lasers would be mounted to the nose of a modified Boeing 747 and fired at missiles boosting through the atmosphere. Briefing reporters on this project at the Alabama missile shield conference, Air Force Col. James Forrest projected that 747 planes would begin test flights next February. In 2003 the laser is slated to attempt its first shoot-down, aiming from a distance of 200 miles at a missile breaking through the clouds at an altitude of about 40,000 feet.
 
 
Related article:
Bush and Putin announce new steps on missiles  
 
 
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