TECHNOIR (6 page)
Then Gagnon received an unexpected phone call. It was a lawyer from Florida’s American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU lawyer right away told him: You and your family are being spied on by NASA, the Air Force and the Brevard County Sheriff’s Department, which basically is a bunch of good ‘ole boys from near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where Gagnon had often protested. He would soon find out this posse of spies had conducted background checks on him and his son. The spies were also monitoring the arms-control web site he ran, and attending Kennedy Space Center protests incognito; protests he had coordinated.
Gagnon instincts, once again, had warned him right: There’s a lot of people out there who don’t think too highly of him or what he does. The 50-something Gagnon directs the
Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
from his office in Maine. The Global Network’s aim is to stop all weapons, along with any nuclear powered technology, from ever being deployed past Earth’s atmosphere and into space. He established the Global Network in 1992, and today it is considered one of the fastest-growing peace activist groups across the globe. The Global Network has chapters in 170 countries. Gagnon’s resume also includes guest lectures at scores of high-profiled universities, and his writings have been published in prominent newspapers and magazines. He’s also a hero of sorts in parts of Europe and Japan.
“We’re a small organization with meager resources,” said Gagnon from his Maine office during an interview for this book. “They feel threatened by us? That tells us something.” The ACLU filed a number of Freedom of Information seeking records that may reveal the entire scope of the government’s probe. “NASA states, in these documents, that they (also) have ‘confidential sources’ in Britain and Belgium monitoring Global Network activities,” said Florida ACLU attorney Kevin Aplin to this reporter.
Why would the Pentagon, home to the world’s greatest and smartest warriors, be so interested in a small, bare-to-the-bones peace activist group? Force. “Space weapons,” says Gagnon, a veteran of the US Air Space is militarized with spy satellites, but space is not weaponized, for example, with “Battlesats” or killer satellites loaded with lasers or missiles. However, putting weapons in space, or creating weapons that can destroy targets in space, is the arms race for the 21st century, say experts. An arms race that was re-ignited by the Bush administration, China, and to a lesser degree, Russia. An arms race that has US aerospace industry drooling for more. Building constellations of Battlesats, for example, could mean hundreds-of-billions of dollars for the industry.
It is believed that there are no weapons in space at the moment. But currently there are weapons on the ground that have the proven capability of taking out targets in space. Weapons that have already made aerospace giants such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and their executives, very, very rich.
Putting weapons in space, however, is a considered a “Global Taboo” by scores of nations. Probably because many will never have the know-how or the money to build such weapons to counter the US, China and Russia. For several decades now, the UN has tried to help broker anti-space weapons treaties. And during the 2000s, the US brushed them off. In fact, the Bush administration unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty made with the former Soviet Union in 1972. The treaty’s intention was to limit missile defense, such as deploying anti-ICBM technology – Battlesats – in space. It was a brash and cocky move; one that some critics said flushed 36 years of other agreements on nuclear nonproliferation down the latrine. Then in 2005 the Bush administration voted to block a UN resolution to ban actual space weapons – it was the first time the US had voted that way. To the rest of the world, it sure as hell looked as if the US was going to break one of mankind’s greatest taboos.
The ironic thing is mankind probably has already broken it. Space historians are confident the Soviet Union put weapons in orbit during the Cold War. Or they tried, and tried hard. Desperate to counter what they believed to be an emerging US space weapons threat, the Soviets in 1987 put their Polyus “laser space battle station” – aBattlesat – into orbit. The Polyus, a cylindrical craft that would orbit like a satellite, was equipped with a laser cannon, and another laser that could blind any approaching ASAT (anti-satellite) weapons, and a third cannon that could release nuclear space mines. It could also release a cloud of Barium as another defensive measure. Shortly after liftoff, however, the Polyus malfunctioned, plunging into the South Pacific where it remains to this day. The Soviets also had a plan to arm one of their space stations with a high-powered machine gun that could take out airplanes and fighter jets.
Think of this scenario: You’re flying in an airliner and – without warning, considering there is no space radar – high-powered bullets begin punching huge holes into the cabin of the plane. Such thoughts have made peace activists across the world shake their heads in astonishment. Can’t the human race leave war out of space? Can’t space be used for peaceful purposes only?
Those are the basic beliefs (packaged in questions) behind the anti-space weapons movement. Scores of countries and millions of people embrace the mantra that space should be used for peaceful purposes only. But in the 21st century, the US military, especially the US Air Force and
US Space Command
, along with their partners in the US aerospace industry, have probably reached the point of no return. They believe whole-heartedly and without guilt that space will inevitably be weaponized with Battlesats and the like. They argue wherever man goes, so go his weapons. Why fight it?
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty
outlaws weapons of mass destruction to be deployed in space or on celestial bodies. But not weapons of selective destruction, says Gagnon, such as nuclear-powered Battlesats or Space Bombers. The Pentagon has taken advantage of this loop-hole, he says. But catching on to the Pentagon’s space desires, are Canada, China, Russia and India, which are seeking to overhaul the treaty and establish a new language that will limit space weapons. Yet some experts suggest China and Russia’s desire for a new treaty is a strategy to divert attention away from their own space combat research.
Nevertheless, there are two countries opposing changes to the 1967 treaty – the US and Israel.
So how did the human race reach the edge of this chasm? Literally to the brink of the atmosphere? “Missile defense,” says Gagnon. He calls it the great ruse. The Big Lie. Perhaps the biggest sham of all time.
“The so-called missile defense system, the idea of having a bullet-hit-a-bullet in space to protect the continental US or Japan is a Trojan Horse,” says Gagnon. “That's why Bush was not concerned that missile defense testing did not go well. The true purpose of this arms-program is to control and dominate space. And whoever controls space will control the Earth.”
But not just the Earth, adds Gagnon. If the US were to someday dominate the heavens with Battlesats, it will have the ability to strike anywhere on Earth – at a moment’s notice. Something many officers in the Pentagon desire, considering it now takes the US at least one to two days to strike a target anywhere on the globe. Think about it – Osama bin Laden might not have gotten away (that’s if he wasn't allowed to get away, a theory even members of the US military have wondered about). But Gagnon says US plans go farther than “Global Strike” capabilities, much farther. If the US dominates Earth’s orbits, they would control the “Earth-Moon gravity well,” he says. The US would gain control of these shipping lanes of the future. Shipping lanes? Yes, says Gagnon, so to make sure the US controls Helium-3 (see next chapter).
“The US has made no secret of the fact that it considers space to be the military high ground,” he says. “If you master space you can control the world. The US is already calling itself ‘Master of Space’ [US Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado refers itself as such]. Other nations will react by considerably increasing their arsenals and many treaties will be broken or at risk. How long will it be before weapons are stationed in space – to be aimed at any target anywhere on Earth? How long before the Star Wars fantasy becomes a grim reality?”
Within the next twenty to forty years, he suggests. For starters, the US military’s plans to dominate Earth’s orbits are right out in the open, says Gagnon. For instance, take the Pentagon’s doctrine called “
Full Spectrum Dominance
,” he says. Officially made public in May of 2000, just a few months before the Bush administration would take office, the concept of Full Spectrum Dominance means the U.S. wishes to dominate a conflict at every level – control the Earth with conventional military forces; control the seas with the Navy; control the sky with the Air Force; and now control space with new technologies under development today. A few years later, in the
Strategic Master Plan FY 2006 and Beyond
,
US Space Command made all of this quite clear: “While our ultimate goals are truly to ‘exploit’ space through space force enhancement and space force application missions, as with other mediums, we cannot fully ‘exploit’ that medium until we first ‘control’ it.”
According to the
Center of Defense Information
(CDI), a Washington-based space-weapons think tank, missile defense is the most expensive US weapons program of all time – $120 billion spent since President Ronald Reagan called for an antimissile shield in 1983. At the moment the US
Missile Defense Agency
or MDA is working on 12 separate programs. Some of which are ready to be deployed and can blow up targets in space. Such as the THAAD, or the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (See below for more detail of US space weapons).
Nevertheless, the Pentagon insists it is not researching space weapons – it’s researching missile defense, they contend. Thus there’s no need for a space weapons treaty, they add. Gagnon says don't play the fool. The Pentagon has spent $120 billion (and that’s just the unclassified spending) and worked countless man-hours on a weapons program that hasn't truly produced anything of value to the civilian or the warrior on the battlefield. Another reason missile defense is a Trojan Horse is because they have nothing to show for all the money they've spent, says Gagnon. What they're getting for spending $120 billion is “dual use” technology and they (secretly) know this, he adds. Missile defense technology is both defensive and offensive. Thus US taxpayers’ dollars are creating something the tax payer may not want, an arsenal of space weapons, he says, instead of paying for what they really need. New roads, bridges. and the rehabbing of countless schools.
The Center for Defense Information leans politically left, and like Gagnon, some of their arms-control experts also support the dual-use hypothesis for missile defense. “So many missile defensive capabilities have inherent, offensive applications as well,” said Theresa Hitchens for this book, director of the CDI.
For an example of dual use, take Pearl Harbor’s USS Lake Erie, a guided-missile cruiser which is armed with the Aegis missile defense system. The Aegis fires interceptors like the THAAD and has an impressive record knocking out dummy Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). In 2008, however, the USS Lake Erie and its Aegis obliterated a satellite as it orbited over Hawaii, littering low-Earth orbit for eternity, unless the mess is cleaned up. The Pentagon claimed their spy satellite had malfunctioned and needed to be taken out. The Aegis – which is the name of Zeus’ shield – has been equipped on 18 US warships, giving the US the ability to attack nearly any target in Earth’s orbits.
The desire to put weapons in space and building such weapons is not a 21st century phenomenon. Since World War II and through the Cold War both the US and the Soviet Union researched missiles, lasers and satellites that can strike in space, and be based in space or on Earth. They were being designed, for instance, to shoot down satellites or make them go deaf, dumb and blind. In fact, in 1985, the US in a test, shot down a satellite with a missile launched from an F-15. Such an event wouldn’t occur again until 2007, when the Chinese obliterated one of their own satellites with a ground-based missile. Members of Congress all of sudden were bellowing about how vulnerable US satellites are. A year later the US countered the Chinese when the USS Lake Erie and its Aegis system shot down the spy satellite.
Both shoot-downs foreshadow what the future of war will be. To win at modern warfare, you need to have eyes and ears constantly circling the globe. Battlefield communication, force location, spying, terrain recon, GPS, and guiding missiles to their target from hundreds of miles away, are just some combat functions powered by satellites within Earth's orbits. “Information superiority” they call it. The Pentagon's mantra is, it’s not that you need to have satellites to win a war, you have to have satellites to win a war. So if one warring side had the ability to make another side – especially the US – go both blind and deaf, they’re going to do it, and they’re researching this, especially Russia and China.
If China were to one day want its “Lost Province” back (known to us as Taiwan), the first thing they might do is give the order to shoot down as many US satellites as possible. China has fired ground-based lasers at US satellites before. Blinding them, and not destroying them. It would take a tremendous amount of energy to actually send a laser through the atmosphere and then damage a satellite. The US, however, is very close to having this capability.