BushCheney blow another disarmament treaty. They want to weaponize space.
Remember these headlines from last spring?
Pentagon: China’s anti-satellite test poses threat
U.S., Japan Criticize China for Testing Anti-Satellite Missile
Experts: US Should Worry About Chinese Anti-Satellite Device
Cheney: China’s anti-satellite test ‘not consistent’ with stated goal of a peaceful rise
All these headlines were of course highly hypocritical. The U.S. has tested anti-satellite weapons since the late 1950s and shot down one of its own satellites in 1985. The Soviets had a similar program.
As experts have pointed out, the U.S. missile defense system, especially the parts based on AEGIS cruisers, are useable as anti-satellite weapons.
This is now confirmed. The U.S. plans to shoot down a dead spy-satellite:
U.S. officials said Thursday that the option preferred by the Bush administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth’s atmosphere.
The satellite in question is a 4.5 tons spy-object that malfunctioned after it was launched in December 2006.
The media will explain that the satellite has to be shoot down so it doesn’t hurt anyone when it eventually returns to earth. The chances for anyone to be hit by satellite debris are zero. The military experts will rumour that this is about the sophisticated image sensor on board of the satellite which could fall into false hands. Again the chances for that are next to zero. The atmospheric reentry temperature is several thousand Kelvin and the satellite was not designed for reentry and to withstand such heat and deceleration.
So this seems to be Cheney’s answer to the recent offer by China and Russia for a treaty to ban arms in space (which includes the ban of anti-satellite measures):
China and Russia will submit a joint proposal next month for an international treaty to ban the deployment of weapons in outer space, a senior Russian arms negotiator said on Friday.
Valery Loshchinin, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations-sponsored Conference on Disarmament, said the draft treaty would be presented to the 65-member forum on February 12.
The now announced anti-satellite ‘test’ is a loud "FUCK YOU!" towards Russia, China and the UN.
Treaties are for bummers. Real men shoot down satellites – or their hunting companions.
As Donald Mahley, acting U.S. deputy assistant secretary for threat reduction, export controls and negotiations, said:
"Additional binding arms control agreements are simply not a viable tool for enhancing the long-term space security interests of the United States or its allies."
Cut the ‘allies’ part – the U.S. is the only country that opposes such a treaty.
The explanation for such Orwellian excuses is likely an active space based weapon program hidden somewhere in the hundreds of billions of unpublished Pentagon programs.
This makes us all feel safer, doesn’t it?
