Weapons Systems
War’s Brave New World
by David Isenberg
March 1st, 2010
From the Partnership for a Secure America
It’s a brave new world out there, but I don’t think it is the one Aldous Huxley had in mind when he wrote his famed book in 1932.
What Huxley gave us was a frightening vision of the future. And in one sense, though not the one Huxley was writing about, that vision is becoming reality. I refer to the expanding role of robots in war.
The most visible aspect of this is the use of aerial drones such as targeting Al Qaeda militants with Predator drone strikes. Predictably, some places, such as the Weekly Standard, think this fine and dandy, and worry only that we do not use them more for which they criticize President Obama. That is ironic as the President has authorized more drone attacks in the first year of his term in office than Bush did in his entire presidency.
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Watch What They Spend, Not What They Say (Missile Defense)
The Obama administration says missile defense isn't as important as it used to be. Its budget says otherwise.
By Fred Kaplan
From Slate.com
Thursday, Feb. 4, 2010
When Defense Secretary Robert Gates laid out his $708.2 billion budget proposal this week, he also submitted a 48-page document called the "Ballistic Missile Defense Review." Reading this review, you might think that Gates was slashing the missile-defense program. You'd be wrong.
Gates writes of "a new course for spending" that is responsive to "budgetary constraints." He says he won't deploy any system until it passes realistic tests. (In more than a decade of development, no BMD system has been subject to any realistic tests, and none has passed more than half of the rigged ones.) And he's moving away from exotic technologies based on "unrealistic concepts of operation" and designed for threats that won't exist for a long, long time, if ever. Gates says that the program will deal with threats as they evolve. But, he adds, this does not require us to push ahead with missile defenses "at the same accelerated rate" as we have "in recent years."
There's a mismatch, however, between Gates' words and his actions. His proposed missile defense budget for fiscal year 2011 amounts to a staggering $10.4 billion. This is $2 billion less than George W. Bush requested (and received) for missile defense—his most cherished military program—in his last year as president. But it's $700 million more than Gates himself received in FY 2010.
The program is getting more expensive and, in some respects, more exotic—not less.
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Can space weapons protect U.S. satellites?
By Yousaf Butt | 22 July 2008
From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Article Highlights
- While offensively potent, space weapons don't offer any defensive capabilities that could protect U.S. satellites.
-In fact, there are many other smarter, more cost-efficient means in which to safeguard Washington's enormously important space assets.
-Whether intended for defensive purposes or not, a U.S. push for space weapons could signal to its adversaries that they, too, need to strengthen their space capabilities, potentially igniting another arms race.
Both presumptive presidential nominees--Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama--have called for strengthening and/or increasing the number of international treaties and institutions to combat proliferation should they be elected president. An important new pact for them to consider is an agreement that restricts the weaponization of space. Not only are space weapons expensive and provocative, they're also useless: They simply cannot protect us.
Over the years, many voices in Washington have called for green-lighting space weapons as a way of neutralizing the threat to U.S. satellites. For instance, the 2001 U.S. Space Commission report warned against a "Space Pearl Harbor" and advocated that, "The [United States] must develop the means both to deter and to defend against hostile acts in and from space." It went further to suggest that the Defense Department "vigorously pursue the capabilities . . . to ensure that the president will have the options to deploy weapons in space."
Throughout this debate, it's almost taken as an article of faith that space weapons can be defensively useful. Yet, there's little technical basis to support this belief: While certainly offensively potent, space weapons are defensively ineffective.
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