The United States Air Force is making the request to President Bush to pursue space based weapons. In 1996 President Clinton made it clear that the United States would not, under his watch, be seeking to develop or deploy such things. There is no legal frame work that would constrain the United States from deploying them. In fact even under the ABM Treaty there was nothing to prevent the US from doing so...so long as they were not intended to stop incoming ballistic missiles (re SDI: A View from Europe, a book I inadverantly permaborrowed from a friend that I have no idea where to find anymore).
What use would they be? Consider orbitting lasers. You could very easily deny a country use of their air space with them above 30k ft and probably, with technologies being developed, even below within moments of the start of a crisis. Enforcing the old 'No Fly Zones' would be a piece of cake and there would have been no need for deploying troops into Saudi Arabia...at least as far as the Blue Beanie Fighter Jocks are concerned.
Orbitable bombardment of fixed installations is possible, but the flying crowbars of SFnal fame are largely out. Namely that Thor doesn't work. However, I'd be happy to ditch the nukes, by and large, in favor of a few orbitting asteroids. Heh heh heh.
There are, of course, the traditional ABM related weapons as well.
There are other potential uses as well, but that's sufficient for now.
There are counters to these guys: the nominally discussed one is a ballistic missile with a lot of ball barings. That requires a bit more technical know-how than most countries have.
There are some interesting legal issues as well. All of the weapons in space will be unmanned. So, if Nation X takes out a laser battle sat, does that constitute an act of war? Are there precendents for such? If a nation on the sea tampers with mines or bouys is that an act of war?
Personally, I am all for putting weapons in space. It's going to happen at some point. I'd like to see it be to our advantage. We have the technological and economic edge as yet, so...
EXPLOIT IT!
Oops: Edit. Links here and here for the articles at the NY Times and CNN respectively.
What use would they be? Consider orbitting lasers. You could very easily deny a country use of their air space with them above 30k ft and probably, with technologies being developed, even below within moments of the start of a crisis. Enforcing the old 'No Fly Zones' would be a piece of cake and there would have been no need for deploying troops into Saudi Arabia...at least as far as the Blue Beanie Fighter Jocks are concerned.
Orbitable bombardment of fixed installations is possible, but the flying crowbars of SFnal fame are largely out. Namely that Thor doesn't work. However, I'd be happy to ditch the nukes, by and large, in favor of a few orbitting asteroids. Heh heh heh.
There are, of course, the traditional ABM related weapons as well.
There are other potential uses as well, but that's sufficient for now.
There are counters to these guys: the nominally discussed one is a ballistic missile with a lot of ball barings. That requires a bit more technical know-how than most countries have.
There are some interesting legal issues as well. All of the weapons in space will be unmanned. So, if Nation X takes out a laser battle sat, does that constitute an act of war? Are there precendents for such? If a nation on the sea tampers with mines or bouys is that an act of war?
Personally, I am all for putting weapons in space. It's going to happen at some point. I'd like to see it be to our advantage. We have the technological and economic edge as yet, so...
EXPLOIT IT!
Oops: Edit. Links here and here for the articles at the NY Times and CNN respectively.
No comments:
Post a Comment