Increasing risk of Space Weapons

THE INTELLIGENCE DAILY
BACK TO REALITY: UNCENSORED NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Ref: http://www.inteldaily.com/news/173/ARTICLE/10251/2009-04-01.html
Space Race Increasing Risk of Nuclear War
By Sherwood Ross

(The Intelligence Daily) -- An unchecked race to militarize space is underway that is “increasing the risk of an accidental nuclear war while shortening the time for sanity and diplomacy to come into play to halt crises,” an authority on space warfare says.

By 2025, the space capabilities of the leading space powers---the U.S., Russia, India and China---will be roughly equal “due to information sharing in a globalized economy,” says noted space researcher Matt Hoey in an exclusive interview. Hoey is international military space technology forecaster who provides analysis on issues related to technology proliferation and arms control. He is also a former senior research associate at the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies and has contributed to publications such as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and the Space Review.

Through their military and commercial research facilities, the world’s military powers are pursuing development of a reusable, unmanned, hypersonic, space-strike delivery platform that “would permit rapid precision strikes worldwide in 120 minutes or less,” Hoey said.

The strike platform could loiter in near-space or in low earth orbit and assault terrestrial targets at incredible speed “with a nuclear or conventional payload and then return to any base in the world on demand,” he explained.

While “there will not be a dedicated ‘space war’ in our lifetimes or our children’s,” Hoey said, “we are likely to witness acts of space warfare being committed…in concert with other theatres of combat” on land, sea, and air and cyber space.”

Hoey said his research analysis suggests, “Back and forth escalation regarding military space capabilities would fuel each nation’s respective space industries as would commercial space races driven by national pride.”

“If these systems are deployed in space we will be tipping the nuclear balance between nations that has ensured the peace for decades,” Hoey continued. “The military space race will serve the defense industry much like the cold war and this is already being witnessed in relation to missile defense systems.”

Hoey pointed out the arms control community “is still trying to put the nuclear genie from decades ago back in the bottle” and adds “once this new genie (space war) is out it is not going back in anytime soon, either.”

The five treaties governing space “are highly outdated,” Hoey said, notably the milestone “Outer Space Treaty” of 1967. Theoretically, the U.S. is also bound by The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 that declares our “activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind.” (Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), in introducing a bill to ban the weaponization of space, charged the Bush administration with breaking with that policy by “putting weapons in outer space to give the U.S. the power to control the world.” Kucinich charged “the Air Force is seeking permission to put both offensive and defensive weapons in space.”)

Hoey said the research community is expecting space warfare systems to come from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Air Force Research Laboratories (AFRL). But instead of doing straight military R&D in-house, the Pentagon is funding civilian research that has dual-purpose use capabilities---civilian applications as well as military.

Because military space race technologies are the same as those needed to explore the heavens, service the international space station and defend against threats from near earth objects, the civilian-military partnerships “present the most challenging dilemma for the arms control community,” Hoey said. That’s because arms control proponents cannot object to their military applications without also opposing “technologies that benefit mankind.” And he warned this will continue to be the case as long as existing treaties fail to differentiate between commercial and military space technology.

Because their overlap is “overwhelming,” Hoey noted, in that “systems that destroy can also create and facilitate discoveries,” it behooves the international arms control community to act before our military and commercial industries become “inextricably integrated with military space systems and unable to extract themselves.”

Hoey said the defense community is actively scouting students still enrolled in high school who have demonstrated a talent in aerospace, cryptology and computer security for military research, “in an attempt to compete with emerging science and technology rivals such as China and India.” This would place future generations who dream of discoveries on a fast track towards the defense industry, Hoey said, even if they land jobs in the private sector. As dual-usage progresses, far more space technology roads will lead to careers that contribute to the development space warfare-enabling technologies.

Companies engaged in nanotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence are also being wooed by the military with fat checks, Hoey said. “These (space exploration and space warfare) systems are being developed through multi-tiered collaborations that include NASA, the Defense Department, universities, big defense contractors and small space start- ups. “The work force consists of military scientists and engineers, students, scientists, and even foreign nationals” ultimately enabling technology proliferation globally.

For an arms control community that is focusing primarily on banning specific space weapons currently in development, nearing deployment, and in some cases already deployed, efforts should also be focused towards lobbying the international community to begin establishing rules of the road that differentiate between peaceful commercial space technologies and destructive military space applications before the lines between the two are irreversibly blurred, Hoey urged. By doing so, “next generation space warfare systems and space security threats can, as a result, be prevented long before they have a chance to further undermine peace in outer space and increase the probability of nuclear war,” he said.

(Sherwood Ross has worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and a columnist for wire services. He currently operates a public relations firm for worthy causes. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com Reach Hoey at Hoey@spacetransparency.org)

 

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  • U.S. NAVY TO CONDUCT MASSIVE ATMOSPHERIC EXPERIMENTAL TESTS
    By Rosalind Peterson
    September 9, 2009
    NewsWithViews.com

    Starting as early as today, September 15, 2009

    An article in Space.com (1) titled, “NASA Rocket to Create Clouds Tuesday” by Clara Moskowits, Staff Writer – September 14, 2009, was unexpectedly forwarded to me today.

    According to the article: “…A rocket experiment set to launch Tuesday aims to create artificial clouds at the outermost layers of Earth's atmosphere. The project, called the Charged Aerosol Release Experiment (CARE)…"This is really essentially at theboundary of space," said Wayne Scales, a scientist at Virginia Tech who will…study the physics of the artificial dust cloud as it's released…CARE is slated to launch Tuesday between 7:30 and 7:57 p.m. EDT (2330 and 2357 GMT) from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia….”

    “…CARE will release its (aluminum oxide) (2), dust particles a bit higher than that, then let them settle back down to a lower altitude.”What the CARE experiment hopes to do is to create an artificial dust layer,” Professor Scales told SPACE.com. "Hopefully it's a creation in a controlled sense, which will allow scientists to study different aspects of it, the turbulence generated on the inside, the distribution of dust particles and such." CARE is a project of the Naval Research Laboratory and the Department of Defense Space Test Program. The spacecraft will launch aboard a NASA four-stage Black Brant XII suborbital sounding rocket…Researchers will track the CARE dust cloud for days or even months to study its behavior and development over time…If CARE cannot launch Tuesday, the team can try again between Sept. 16 and Sept. 20, 2009…”

    The U.S. Navy, NASA, and the U.S. Defense Department have made a decision to conduct one or more an atmospheric tests, in order to create an aluminum oxide dust cloud without the permission and for the most part, the knowledge of the citizens of the United States. These aluminum oxide particles will eventually return to earth polluting our air, water and soils. The tests may damage the various atmospheric boundaries that protect life on earth – no one has any idea what damage this dust cloud and the testing on this dust cloud may do to our climate, agriculture, human health or the amount of infrared and UV radiation reaching the Earth.

    It is time to contact elected officials today and protest this action which may begin as early as today, September 14, 2009. The Navy is already conducting warfare testing in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico and has more ranges in the planning and permit stages. Senator Dianne Feinstein and Senator Barbara Boxer noted in a June 19, 2009. Letter to Dr. Jane Lubchenco, NOAA, U.S. Department of Commerce:

    “…the Navy plans to increase the number of its exercises or expand the areas in which they may occur, and virtually every coastal state will be affected. Some exercises may occur in the nation’s most biologically sensitive marine habitats, including National Marine Sanctuaries and breeding habitats…” This involves the decimation of more than 11.7 million marine mammals over five years and will increase with each new warfare testing range expansion.

    TESTING IN THE PACIFIC, ATLANTIC, GULF OF MEXICO, HAWAII & ALASKA
    TESTING INCLUDES, BUT IS NOT LIMITED TO:

    * Gunnery Exercises * Bombing Missions * Missile & Torpedo Firing * Underwater Detonations * Research & Testing * Vessel Sinking * Use of hundreds of toxic chemicals, like lead, mercury, tungsten, aluminum coated fiberglass (chaff), Airborne Obscurants like Red & White Phosphorus, fog oils, rocket and jet fuel emissions * Undersea Warfare Training Range Exercises (USWTR) * Mid and High Frequency Sonar Experiments * Both land and ocean exercises will use planes, drones, rockets and sonic booms * Other classified warfare testing experiments will be conducted in these areas.

    Now the U.S. Navy has decided that these experiments are not enough and have added atmospheric testing to their test list. Once again the public has been cut out of the debate, given little or no warning, and there are no Congressional hearings planned for any of these warfare and atmospheric tests.

    It is now time that we, the people, stand up and stop these tests. The Navy and the Department of Defense have to understand that they are not allowed to go to war on us and our oceans for any reason. It is time to make our elected officials aware that we are going to stand against these policies. Take action today – contact your elected officials and stop these new atmospheric tests and demand Congressional Hearings.

    For more information:
    Website:

    1 - U.S. Navy & NASA Dust Cloud Experiments May Begin on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 Live Science.com September 14, 2009 Article By Clara Moskowitz, Staff Writer
    2 - Space.com Strange Clouds Spotted at the Edge of Space by Jeremy Hsu, Staff Writer September 1, 2009
    3 - Space Station Crew Photographs Mysterious Clouds that Shine at Night by Tony Phillips Scinece.NASA.gov February 19, 2003
    4 - An Update on the Charged Aerosol Release Experiment (CARE) Paul A. Bernhardt - Paul.Bernhardt@nrl.navy.mil
    “…Plasma Physics Division, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC 20375 Abstract. The radar scatter from artificial dusty plasma is space will be studied using at chemical release during the Charged Aerosol Release Experiment (CARE) in August or September 2009. CARE will be launch from Wallops Island, Virginia on a trajectory that takes the care release module to an apogee of 360 km altitude for a release on the downleg at 280 km altitude. 110 kg of aluminum oxide particulates will be injected from a 2-meter long canister with the exit port pointed to the nadir. A 60 degree ½ angle cone of dust will be injected with a velocity of between 2 and 3 km/s. The dust will become charged in the ionosphere to form negatively charged dust particles. The streaming dust will provide a source for turbulence due to charge separation electric fields and to two-stream instabilities. Ground radars operating at HF, VHF and UHF frequencies will probe the release region looking for enhanced backscatter. The HF radar be digital ionosondes be located near the launch site. The VHF radar will be located on Bermuda looking perpendicular to the magnetic field lines. The UHF radar will be located at Millstone Hill in Massachusetts. At late times, the particles will for an artificial dust cloud that will settle to about 100 km altitude. The measurements during this later phase will provide data on the transport of charged dust by lower-thermospheric winds…”
    5 - Gelatinous Gelation in Aerosols; Non-Mean-Field Aggregation and Kinetics C.M. Sorensen and A. Chakrabarti Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas NASA Report 2008 Study [Link] [Link] [Link]
    6 - Virginia Tech – Wayne Scales Charged Aerosol Particle Experiments September 14, 2009 Search
    7 - MASS Spectrometry Talk
    8 - Professor Scales – Charged Aerosol Particle Experiments – H.A.A.R.P.
    9 - Could the H.A.A.R.P. Project in Alaska, NOAA, DOE, NASA, Air Force, Department of Defense, etc., be the reason for climate changes that have been escalating since the late 1980s, when the funds and technology allowed for the escalation of atmospheric heating and testing programs like NASA’s TMA Night Cloud tests using trimethylaluminum or the advanced testing of military weapons systems like star wars? NASA’s Night Clouds Atmospheric Testing Program:
    10 - The NASA / U.S. Air Force CRESS 1990 Press Kit outlines an atmospheric NASA testing program (linked to H.A.A.R.P. and the U.S. Air Force, that could produce the Vibrant Spectrums (auroras), referenced above, as shown in my poster pictures. In this program canisters are loaded with chemicals and superheated at different atmospheric levels. These canisters contain the following chemicals that could be polluting our air and are showing up with unusual spikes in drinking water supplies in across California (California State Department of Health, Drinking Water Division Water Test Results-Public Records, Sacramento, California):
    Aluminum, Barium, Strontium, Lithium, Calcium, SF6-Sulfur hexafluoride
    11 - Note that SF6 is a very potent, toxic gas. It has the energy-trapping potential of 25,000 times that of Carbon Dioxide. The EPA has taken action to restrict release of this dangerous greenhouse gas and yet it is being used in atmospheric testing programs.
    12 - Barium Releases March 22, 1976
    13 - Lithium Red Sky April 16, 1979 – Alaska Science Forum:
    14 - Alaska's Space Pyrotechnics – Alaska Science Forum – Barium February 18, 1985

    © 2009 - Rosalind Peterson - All Rights Reserved

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    In 1995, Rosalind, now retired, became a certified California United State Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency Agriculture Crop Loss Adjustor working in more than ten counties throughout California. Rosalind has a BA degree from Sonoma State University in Environmental Studies & Planning (ENSP), with emphasis on using solar power, photosynthesis, agriculture, and crop production.

    Between 1989 and 1993 Rosalind worked as an Agricultural Technologist for the Mendocino County Department of Agriculture. After leaving Mendocino County she took a position with the USDA Farm Service Agency as a Program Assistant in Mendocino, Sonoma, and the Salinas County Offices, where she worked until becoming certified as a crop loss adjustor for the State.

    E-Mail: info@californiaskywatch.com
  • Challenges loom as Obama seeks space weapons ban
    http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50O15X20090125
    Sun Jan 25, 2009 11:14am EST
    By Andrea Shalal-Esa - Analysis

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's pledge to seek a worldwide ban on weapons in space marks a dramatic shift in U.S. policy while posing the tricky issue of defining whether a satellite can be a weapon.

    Moments after Obama's inauguration last week, the White House website was updated to include policy statements on a range of issues, including a pledge to restore U.S. leadership on space issues and seek a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites.

    It also promised to look at threats to U.S. satellites, contingency plans to keep information flowing from them, and what steps are needed to protect spacecraft against attack.

    The issue is being closely watched by Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co, Northrop Grumman Corp, the biggest U.S. defense contractors, and other companies involved in military and civilian space contracts.

    Watchdog groups and even some defense officials welcomed the statement, which echoed Obama's campaign promises, but said it would take time to hammer out a comprehensive new strategy.

    Enacting a global ban on space weapons could prove even harder.

    For instance, it was difficult to define exactly what constituted a "weapon" because even seemingly harmless weather tracking satellites could be used to slam into and disable other satellites, said two U.S. officials involved in the area who were not authorized to speak publicly.

    Michael Krepon, co-founder of the private Henry L. Stimson think tank on space, cited recent reports that the Pentagon was using two smaller satellites launched in 2006 to fly near a dead missile-warning satellite and investigate what happened. The Defense Support Program satellite, DSP-23, built by Northrop, failed on orbit in mid-September.

    "This incident clarified how important it is to have rules of the road for technologies that could have many different applications," Krepon said. "There are lots of benign reasons to have a closer look at an object in space. But we all know that when satellites make close passes they could also do things that are not benign."

    Two years ago, China used a missile to destroy one of its own satellites in a test that raised worries about a new arms race in space. The incident may have created thousands of pieces of debris. Last year, the United States also destroyed one of its own satellites, saying its toxic fuel tank could pose a danger if it fell to Earth.

    MORE COOPERATION?

    A defense official, who also asked not to be named, said the Obama administration had not yet held briefings for top officials working on military space issues, but it was clear that the focus would shift toward more diplomatic initiatives.

    Work on classified projects involving an "active" military response to attacks against U.S. satellites might be halted in favor of more monitoring and passive protection measures, he said. He declined to give any more details.

    The Obama administration also faces tough decisions on many multibillion-dollar satellite programs facing cost overruns and schedule delays, particularly at a time when rapid increases in military spending are grinding to a halt.

    "There's still a lot of wiggle room" in the administration's statement on military space, said analyst Victoria Samson with the private Center for Defense Information. "But just the sheer fact that they are discussing it represents a real shift from the Bush administration."

    "It's not going to happen immediately, but it seems as though the wheels are in motion to initiate some sort of cooperative measure," Samson said.
    Another defense official, who asked not to be named, said the new administration would work through the complex military space issues during a defense review to be completed by September, and as part of a space report due in December.

    The new policy language used by the Obama administration was "impossibly broad," the official said. It also failed to acknowledge recent work by U.S. officials on guidelines for space debris and conduct by nations active in space.

    Even Obama acknowledged during his election campaign that achieving a global treaty banning weapons in space could be a daunting challenge. A simpler and quicker solution, he suggested at that time, might be a "code of conduct for responsible space-faring nations."

    In response to questions from the Council for a Livable World, Obama said one key element of any such code would be "a prohibition against harmful interference against satellites."
    (Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
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