In a shocking piece of news, NYTimes reported that US Air Force is seeking approval from President Bush for a national security directive which will enable the US Air Force to hold weapons in the space ..! It seems that Air Force is taking inspiration from Hollywood movies now .. But it should also look at the risks involved in the affair .. .
nbsp; Further to the report it says that no treaty or law can forbid them from doing so apart from spacing weapons of mass destruction. .! So far we have heard things like spy sattelites ( I dont know if they exists or work sufficiently cauz if they could then Osama shouldve been caught by now ..) and many sophisticated techniques which go unreported but this one can give rise to many controversies .. .. .
While the Air Force officials says its not about putting weapons in space, but to have free access in space ..! .. Oh yeah .. Now have a look at the things that will enable them to have “free access in space” : (Directly quoted from NYTimes)
A new Air Force strategy, Global Strike, calls for a military space plane carrying precision-guided weapons armed with a half-ton of munitions. Pentagon documents say the weapon, called the common aero vehicle, could strike from halfway around the world in 45 minutes.
In April, the Air Force launched the XSS-11, an experimental microsatellite with the technical ability to disrupt other nations’ military reconnaissance and communications satellites..
Another Air Force space program, nicknamed Rods From God, aims to hurl cylinders of tungsten, titanium or uranium from the edge of space to destroy targets on the ground, striking at speeds of about 7,200 miles an hour with the force of a small nuclear weapon..
A third program would bounce laser beams off mirrors hung from space satellites or huge high-altitude blimps, redirecting the lethal rays down to targets around the world. A fourth seeks to turn radio waves into weapons whose powers could range “from tap on the shoulder to toast,” in the words of an Air Force plan.
I was amused to read that this move was caused by Pentagon’s failure to build a missile defence system .. (Remember India was once considering to purchase the same NMD system from US of A ) But there is a fundamental difference between NMD and this Global Strike .. NMD was a defence mechanism but this is an offensive weapon .. NMD could’ve used to save people’s lives while this system can be used to take their lives .. And yet no one has voiced any concern yet ..
A sign of relief can be that this system is very expensive to build .. Estimates say that the cost of such system can be anything from 200 Billion to $ 1 Trillian .. But when the US can sponser a costly war in Iraq it can afford this too ..
I will end this post with a comment from Richard Garwin who is considered a repute in US Weaponery ..
Richard Garwin, widely regarded as a dean of American weapons science, and three colleagues wrote in the March issue of IEEE Spectrum, the professional journal of electric engineering, that “a space-based laser would cost $100 million per target, compared with $600,000 for a Tomahawk missile.”
“The psychological impact of such a blow might rival that of such devastating attacks as Hiroshima,” they wrote. “But just as the unleashing of nuclear weapons had unforeseen consequences, so, too, would the weaponization of space.
So true .. Imagine such things getting into wrong hands.. There will be no Steven Seagull to save us from the disaster …