David J. Williams

Last night the U.S. bagged its first satellite since 1985. The debris is still up there, but the political fallout is just beginning. Three things seem clear enough at this point.

#1: No Ifs, Ands, or Buts, This Was an Anti-Satellite/Anti-Missile Test: The claim that we had to blast this thing out of the sky due to the risk of hydrazine spraying all over some schoolyard was bullshit, pure and simple. This was an absolutely golden opportunity to show off some tech that’s already proven it can do the job: the SM-3 missile has been tested successfully before against incoming dummy warheads. Only this time it nailed a satellite (albeit at a slightly higher altitude). Proving that national missile defense can do more than just bag missiles . . . .

#2: It Was Also a Message: China and Russia introduced new text for a treaty banning space weapons earlier this month. This was the U.S. answer.

#3: With More Than One Audience: National missile defense (aka “Son of Star Wars”) has prospered under eight years of Bush II. It represents a fairly significant component of the military-industrial complex at this point, and its champions are understandably concerned about budget axes, particularly as the nation sails into ever choppier economic waters. While the sat shootdown would never have been greenlighted had the U.S. leaders not wanted to send a “diplomatic” message (per #2), there were a lot of people at the Pentagon licking their chops at the prospect of getting to demonstrate in the most public way possible just what they’ve done with all the money they’ve been given. One more reason why you can be pretty sure they didn’t think they’d miss.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 12:38 pm and is filed under Weaponization of space. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.