Pentagon officials and a recent unclassified assessment by the director of national intelligence say that both Russia and China have already tested or deployed systems such as ground-based high-energy lasers, anti satellite missiles or maneuverable satellites that could be used to disrupt American space assets.
The Pentagon is rushing to expand its capacity to wage war in space, convinced that rapid advances by China and Russia in space-based operations pose a growing threat to U.S. troops and other military assets on the ground and American satellites in orbit.
Details of the push by the Pentagon remain highly classified. But Defense Department officials have increasingly acknowledged that the initiative reflects a major shift in military operations as space increasingly becomes a battleground.
No longer will the United States simply rely on military satellites to communicate, navigate and track and target terrestrial threats, tools that for decades have given the Pentagon a major advantage in conflicts.
Instead, the Defense Department is looking to acquire a new generation of ground- and space-based tools that will allow it to defend its satellite network from attack and, if necessary, to disrupt or disable enemy spacecraft in orbit, Pentagon officials have said in a series of interviews, speeches and recent statements.
The strategy differs fundamentally from previous military programs in space by expanding the range of offensive capabilities — a far cry from the never-built 1980s-era Strategic Defense Initiative proposal, for example, which was focused on using satellites to protect the U.S. from nuclear missile strikes.
“We must protect our space capabilities while also being able to deny an adversary the hostile use of its space capabilities,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, the chief of space operations at the Space Force, the agency created in 2019 as a new division of the Air Force Department to lead the effort, said in March. “Because if we do not have space, we lose.”
I guess we do need to counter potential threats from other counties, but this extension of the arms race does not bode well.
@Activi5tImpalaDemocrat2wks2W
Exactly.
What could possibly go wrong.
@WorriedOilGreen2wks2W
They seem to keep coming up with schemes to divert money that would otherwise help improve the lives of Americans, and divert it to military toys! There’s a housing crisis, debt crisis, poverty etc, but they’re spending billions on military toys and dreams. They tell regular people to “tighten their belts,” while they’re freely pouring money into grand and fantastic experiments and games.
@FondPretzelsLibertarian2wks2W
Amazing how, no matter what happens, there is always a new threat which requires another 15 figure outlay by the American people.
How can we say Russian space activity is a threat when they can barely manage to fund a war with Ukraine?
The military industrial complex continues.
Disastrous on global scale. So much is based on location based services - knocking out navigation satellite systems will be bad for business, military and civilians alike.
Can countries in these fractious time negotiate a reasonable treaty to safeguard the interests of ALL humanity? Probably not but worth a try.
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