by John Lasker
At first, it appeared there was a president in the White House who doesn’t believe in space dominance. President Obama declared during his campaign he would cut “unproven missile” defense and to “never weaponize space.” Those keeping a close eye on the weaponization of space rejoiced like other peace activists did during those heady days. Again, the world’s newest savior was going to keep the peace in Earth’s lower orbits.
But there’s a twist. Obama was Congress’s top recipient from missile defense contractors during the 2008 election cycle, according to Opensecrets.com, which monitors money’s influence on US elections and public policy. Obama was given $377,000, while Sen. McCain was a distance second, receiving $221,000. And for the first time since 1994, Congressional Democrats in 2008 took more money from the missile defense industry than Republicans. The Democrats were handed $4.6 million, while the Republicans were given $4.5 million.
During Obama’s campaign in the summer of 2008, Poland agreed in principle, but did not commit, to allow within its borders a US missile defense battery loaded with kinetic interceptors that can shoot down satellites. The move infuriated Russia and raised the specter of the Cold War. This prompted President Vladimir Putin to say US missile defense outposts so close to Russia will “upset…the nuclear balance.” This is missile defense, so what did he exactly mean by upsetting the nuclear balance? Simple. The kinetic interceptors that are planned to be based in Poland weigh 21,000 kg. They are also nearly as long as the Minute Man III, which make up a significant portion of the US’s nuclear arsenal. They also roughly share the same diameter as the proposed interceptor. If the US were to secretly put a nuclear warhead within the interceptor – which technically it could do – it would have a range of 6,000 kilometers. The proposed interceptor base in Poland is just a few hundred kilometers away from the Russian border. By 2009, however, the possibility of US missile defense batteries in Poland was squashed by the Obama administration. The heat with Russia cooled, for the time being.
Nevertheless, US missile defense plans remain foggy. For FY (fiscal year) 2009, and for the first time since 1993, a small amount of money ($5 million) was approved by the US Congress to study the prospect of “Space-Based Interceptors”, or killer satellites. Also for FY 2009, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in its request for funding, said they were seeking “the ability to neutralize man-made space environments.”
“It is a bold declaration that DARPA will be researching ways in which to affect other countries’ efforts in space,” said Victoria Samson, a space weapons expert with the Center for Defense Information. “By doing this sort of research under the radar, the Pentagon obviously figures it’s easier to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.”
Will President Obama keep his promise of cutting missile defense research and to never weaponize space, or will super-rich missile defense contractors have too much influence over the new President and Congress? It sure appears as if missile defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin have Obama on their puppet strings. For FY 2010, the Obama administration only cut $1.2 billion off the missile defense budget and the overall total remains around $10 billion – roughly the same yearly average total spent during the Bush administration. Then for FY 2011, Obama actually raised the missile defense budget by roughly $500 million from the previous year. Indeed, missile defense advocates breathed a sigh of relief; one high-ranking CEO saying missile defense is an “embedded core element of the US military” and is here to stay.
On the flipside, peace activists such as Bruce Gagnon say if US missile defense continues as is, war in and from Earth’s orbits is on (and above) the horizon. Want more evidence the US will someday weaponize the heavens? The Obama administration has called for a “new missile defense architecture” – one that calls for a greater emphasis on “space-engagement intercept layer.” As they say, promises are meant to be broken.
Here are several major missile defense programs some arms analysts and peace activists say could someday be “dual use” and thus space weapons. The following is used with permission from the Center for Defense Information and The World Policy Institute-Arms Trade Resource Center.
• The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) is a mobile-unit – an oversized truck actually – with launchers on its back end. THAAD fires “interceptors” into space that can destroy ballistic missiles, as well as atmospheric targets such as SCUDs. The interceptor has no munitions, and simply strikes a target with kinetic energy. The interceptor is roughly 6-meters long and about 8-inches wide and weighs over 1,200 pounds. Its rocket booster is 4-meters long and it’s “kill vehicle” – at the top of interceptor – is about 2-meters long. At the tip of the kill vehicle is an infrared sensor and within its shell is a navigational system. The THAAD’s kill vehicle could be described as a huge spike that can fly at 15,000 mph, with a range of 200 km and height of 150 km. In essence, kinetic energy that is most lethal. Lockheed Martin is THAAD’s main civilian contractor and it is scheduled for deployment in 2009.
• For the Navy and the Missile Defense Agency, the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system is their sea-based missile defense. Some space weapons experts call the Aegis-equipped USS Lake Eris mankind’s first space battleship. The Aegis, as described by MissileThreat.com: “At the heart of Aegis is the AN/SPY-1 radar system. AN/SPY-1 sends out beams of electromagnetic energy in all directions, thus allowing Aegis ships to track up to 100 targets simultaneously, while still retaining the ability to counter other air, surface, and submarine threats. AN/SPY-1 will be able to detect ballistic missiles as they rise above the horizon.” Like THAAD, the Aegis fires an interceptor, but from a launch pad system, not a silo system. The Aegis interceptor – the SM-3 – is also different in that it has a three-stage booster with its kill vehicle. GlobalSecurity.org states the SM-3 has produced an impact during testing calculated at 125 megajoules. “Equivalent to the force released when a ten ton truck traveling at 600 miles per hour hits a wall.”
• The Air Force and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) are close to developing “microsatellites”. Two of these have already been tested in space. There’s the XSS-11, which is no larger than the fridge in your kitchen. The Air Force claims it can dock with malfunctioning US satellites and make repairs. How about approaching enemy satellites and sabotaging them? DARPA is currently developing a robotic arm for the XSS-11, called the FREND, or the Front-end Robotics Enabling Near-term Demonstration. Theoretically, the FREND could blind enemy satellites by applying some type of eye-patch on cameras. The FREND also might someday pick a satellite apart and let it drift like a jigsaw puzzle forever and ever. The other well-known microsatellite is the NFIRE, which is also run by the MDA. The NFIRE is said to be able to track a ballistic missile by the heat of its rocket’s plume and was designed to be “fitted” with a missile-like kill vehicle. NFIRE was launched into space in 2007 – but without the planned kill vehicle – the Generation 2 KV. Arms-control experts had convinced the Senate to kill it, apparently. The MDA claimed the Generation 2 KV would fly directly near the plume of a ballistic missile and track it. An incredible feat to say the least; but the kill vehicle, don’t forget, could have a dual use. It could also be used as a kinetic interceptor and destroy satellites.
• The Missile Defense Agency’s $1 billon-dollar Sea Based X-Band Radar – built primarily by Boeing – is perhaps the strangest-looking ship to have ever cruised the Pacific. The alien-looking vessel is actually a revamped oil-drilling platform, and centered on its top is it’s most striking feature – a tremendous white globe that could engulf the middle of a soccer field. And from the top of this white cylinder to the water, is an intimidating void of roughly 20 floors. Hidden inside the inflated white ball is the clue to this ship’s ultimate mission: A radar dish so powerful it can decipher a real ballistic missile from a balloon that looks like a ballistic missile, claims the US military. The vessel is actually a new and important piece in the growing arsenal that is the US’s missile def
ense program. But it has a dual use, say space-weapons experts. It could also decipher space debris from any future “killer micro-satellite.” There are several other X-Bands across the globe; and if all are upgraded to maximum capacity, they could track over 300 targets at the same time, some less than a meter long.
• One former missile defense/space weapons program is the aptly named “Rods from God.” The rods being kinetic energy weapons – oversized metal spears a foot wide and twenty- feet long – fired by a Battlesat and propelled by gravity as they hurtle towards their Earthly target. The system was planned to be comprised of two satellites. One would house targeting hardware, the other the rods. When they’re ripping through the atmosphere the rods will be traveling at a speed of 11,000 meters per second and with the apparent blast force of a nuclear tipped ICBM. But with no radioactive flakes falling out of the sky post-impact. Preliminary tests, conducted in the New Mexico desert, of rods dropped from a high altitude resulted in a penetration of over 50-feet of Earth. Bunkers beware.
• President Reagan envisioned laser cannons on satellites with the power to melt through the skin of ballistic missiles as they traveled through space heading towards their rendezvous with large US metropolises. Space-based laser cannons, however, never made it out of the 1980s. But the Missile Defense Agency is working on a handful of high-profiled laser projects, nonetheless (see Chapter 10). Such as the Airborne Laser (ABL) aircraft. The aircraft is a Boeing 747 that has been gutted and turned into a literal flying laser cannon. In 2008, the aircraft test fired its “primary beam,” a megawatt-class High Energy Laser (HEL), which is a weapons-grade laser, meaning it can take out missiles, artillery shells and mortars. In 2010, the primary beam actually destroyed a ballistic missile during a test over central California. The ABL has two other lasers on board, for tracking and targeting. The “laser cannon” that fires the weapons-grade laser is actually an exotic, circular mirror, 1.5 meters in length that can rotate nearly 360 degrees. It is underneath a roundish protective cone that covers the plane’s nose. The lens directs the laser as it leaves the plane. The “cannon” also consists of a long mirrored tube that extends to the back of the plane where the laser is generated. There are several different kinds of US military lasers, and some work better in space than others. The ABL’s laser works in both space and the atmosphere and technically is called the Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser, or COIL. A laser created from a chemical reaction amongst chlorine, hydrogen peroxide and iodine, resulting in what the MDA calls the “killer laser beam.” A beam you can’t see. The ABL conducts this chemical reaction at the back of the plane in a set of six modules weighing, with chemicals added, a gut-busting, SUV-sized 6,500 pounds or 3,000 kg each. Part of the weight is a cooling system. Initially, the reaction produces a steam and light explosion that is allegedly fatal if standing too close. A explosion of light that creates a megawatt class laser with an actual total wattage believed to be roughly over 1 million watts. This is then funneled down the mirrored tube and out the front-end lens hitting any target at the speed of light. If the laser can stay on a ballistic missile, even for a few seconds, it should be able to melt through the metal skin of the hull creating a hole that would eventually lead to the missile’s destruction in-flight. There is also research ongoing to develop floating mirrors or “relay mirrors” – in the atmosphere and space – that could redirect the ABL’s laser across the globe or into space, which would give it the capability of shooting down low-earth satellites. The program, run by the MDA, is the Evolutionary Air and Space Global Engagement (EAGLE). The ABL has survived the Obama administration, but barely. It has cost $4.3 billion since 1994 and is said to be a long way from deployment.
• In the heart of Alaska and just north of Los Angeles, the US has two missile defense installations that are said to be close to operational, which probably means they could shoot down a constellation of satellites if need be. The two installations are part of the Ground-Based Mid-course Defense (GMD). The GMD’s prime contractor is Boeing, and like the Aegis and THAAD, the GMD is Earth-based and uses kinetic interceptors that are stored and fired from underground silos to take out ICBMs in their midcourse phase; when the missile is flying through space towards its target, a timeframe of about twenty minutes. The other two phases an ICBM goes through is the boost phase, which is right after lift-off, and terminal phase, when the ICBM re-enters the atmosphere. Boost phase lasts no more than 300 seconds, while terminal phase also lasts a short time at just 30 seconds. But during the mid-course phase the ICBM could release hundreds of decoys. Many experts believe the space decoy is a fundamental downfall of any anti-missile shield. No matter how many layers, how powerful your radar, trying to discern hundreds of targets in space and picking the right one or taking out dozens at a time may someday prove to be an impossible task. Which makes the GMD practically useless considering it only has the capability, due to its limited numbers of interceptors, to take out one or two ICBMs, say fired by a rogue state. Unless they have a death wish, why would a rogue state fire one or two ICBMs at the US or even one of its allies? The return address of any ICBM is undeniable. And if fired, the US will come back with utter devastation – no matter who launched it. So what are the chances a rogue nation fires one or two ICBMs at the US or our allies? Very, very small. This logic is another reason why the GMD is more space weapon than missile defense.
Chapter 4
Helium-3: Battlefield Moon
The resource that could spark a future war for the Moon
“Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives, and lifts our national spirit. So let us continue the journey.” – President Bush, 2004, announcing the US’s new plan to put a base on the Moon and use it as “stepping-stone” to Mars.
“I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the Moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit,’” later recounted Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin after being the second man to ever set foot on the Moon.
Back in 1998, representatives from Haliburton and Shell met with officials from NASA to talk, practically in secret. At Los Alamos, NM, no less, home to some of the most radical and exotic US military research ever. They met over the prospects of drilling on Mars and the Moon. From that meeting, Halliburton – the oilfields technology and services corporation once ran by Dick Cheney – came away with the idea of building a drill specifically for our two closest celestial bodies.
Why build a drill for the Red Planet and the Harvest Moon? And why “No-bid” Haliburton? Which still has a strong connection to one of its greatest beneficiary's, Dick Cheney, of course. Yes, that US Vice President, the one who tricked the world into thinking the US needed to invade Iraq for Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Bruce Gagnon, the space weapons expert who runs The Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, asks a rhetorical question: “Why do you think Haliburton is building a drill for Mars and the Moon?”
To monopolize the untold resources Mars and the Moon might offer? The question nearly answers itself, says Gagnon.
“There’s going to be a scramble for the moon by the Chinese, the Russians and the Americans. This is real. There’s going to be a conflict over it,” he says. “Who controls the Moon is going to be rich by unimaginable amounts.”
Perhaps those cards are in the future for mankind. But certainly mankind has history on its side as a warning. History in the form of an Iraqi insurgency. The Iraq insurgency erupted, in part, over Dick Cheney and his neo-conservative (also known as neo-liberalism) plans to privatize all of Iraq’s industries, including oil, which would be taken over by American giants such as Shell and Exxon. And while some may think that thousands of US troops and Iraqi civilians died in vain due to the Iraqi insurgen
cy, perhaps their souls won’t allow Cheney’s legacy and his offspring to trick us again. Hopefully on this planet and beyond.
This doesn’t mean, however, there won’t be a future when man goes to war on the very surface and within the orbits of Mars and Moon so to control the resources that can be mined and flown back to Earth. In fact, mankind has already predicted such a conflict will take place. In 1995, in a New York Times op-ed written by science writer Lawrence Joseph, he asks the question, “Will the Moon become the Persian Gulf of the 21st Century?” And if the US does not take action in regards to the Moon, Joseph wrote, “the nation could slip behind in the race for control of the global economy, and our destiny beyond.” Coincidentally, late in 2009, a US Air Force recruiting commercial that claims their technology isn’t “science fiction,” shows US troops tactically moving across a red and barren landscape that looks too much like Mars.
Resource wars for money, fuel and survival, will either end when the human race becomes extinct, or rage on forever and ever as humans migrate across the universe. A migration Carl Sagan predicted will undoubtedly occur because of man’s unwavering desire to survive, he theorized. But Sagan also conceded that our collective stupidity might do us in before we even migrate off the planet. The irony is it might just be a resource war that ends the human race.
Futurists and economists predict many nations, many years from now, will wage war for fresh water. It is almost inevitable if Global Warming and the Earth’s increasing population both continue to speed out-of-control toward unsustainable proportions, they contend. In our time, the resource mankind has shed so much blood for is oil. When the Spanish and Aztecs battled in the 1520s, it was for gold and land. In America 1860s, the Civil War was fought over free labor. In the heart of Africa during 1990s, a war was waged for coltan, a black metal needed to satiate the West’s craving for personal electronics. How about 100 years from now? When oil, natural gas and coal are ancient history. When wind and solar power are unable to support billions of people. What will mankind be fighting over then? A super-fuel from the stars? If you know anything about being human, and about greed and power, it’s possible.