sunflower

11/12/2007
by John Byrne

$100 million from sub-missile program

Buried in the 621-page House-Senate conference report on the Defense Department appropriations bill -- and page A19 of Monday's Washington Post, is a $100 million request to enhance space warfare.

As if it didn't already have enough work in Iraq, the Pentagon plans to divert funds from an appropriation to improve submarine-launched Trident missiles to develop a "global strike" program which would allow the US to target and dispatch a "precision-guided" warhead anywhere in the world within two hours.

"The new program, dubbed Falcon, for 'Force Application and Launch from CONUS,' centers on a small-launch-vehicle concept of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency," veteran intelligence reporter Walter Pincus reveals in today's paper. "The agency describes Falcon as a 'a reusable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV) capable of delivering 12,000 pounds of payload at a distance of 9,000 nautical miles from [the continental United States] in less than two hours.'"

"The vehicle would be launched into space on a rocket, fly on its own to a target, deliver its payload and return to Earth," he adds. "In the short term, a small launch rocket is being developed as part of Falcon. It eventually would be able to boost the hypersonic vehicle into space. But in the interim, it will be used to launch small satellites within 48 hours' notice at a cost of less than $5 million a shot."

Falcon is part of the $459 billion military bill before Congress.

Pincus says the House and Senate also added $100 million beyond Bush's request for "space situational awareness," legal jargon for protecting US satellites in space and being able to attack "the enemy's satellites."

"Enhancing these capabilities is critical, particularly following the Chinese anti-satellite-weapons demonstration last January," the House-Senate conferees wrote in the report, referring to a January incident in which the Chinese targeted and destroyed a weather satellite in orbit.

An earlier iteration of this story characterized the space vehicle as a satellite, which it is not under a strict definition of the word.

www.rawstory.com

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“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act”.

George Orwell

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The owners of this country know the truth. It's called the American Dream....'cos you have to be asleep to believe it.

George Carlin

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r...m8fo8ne6xy.gif

brian_wilbanks

wasn't there some treaty signed about weapons in space?

CosmicRocker

there was with the old Soviet Union.
China has recently tested anti-satellite weapons

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Traveling Wilburys (l to r)

Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Roy Orbison
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sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
going to the candidates debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
when you got to choose
every way you look at it you lose

Mrs. Robinson - Simon and Garfunkle

Heretic

There is a ban on orbit-borne nuclear weapons as well as ICBM interceptors, but not conventional.

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"Enough!!" -so rang Barack Obama's voice off the walls of Mile High Stadium

BillCosby

Leftover legacy

The White House is now delving into U.S. military space policy and what it sees as the need to reshape current national space policy, a leftover legacy document from the Clinton Administration.

Clinton's unclassified National Space Policy was issued in September 1996. Among its proclamations: "Consistent with treaty obligations, the United States will develop, operate and maintain space control capabilities to ensure freedom of action in space and, if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries. These capabilities may also be enhanced by diplomatic, legal or military measures to preclude an adversary's hostile use of space systems and services."dance

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Preventive war is not war!!!!Counter-terror is not terror

Heretic

Denying freedom of action in space doesn't require an orbit-borne weapon system. At best it means samll orbital satellites [retrofitted from repair satellite probes] which can dock with larger satellites and, in the case of a militarized system] push the larger satellite into a decaying orbit and cause it to burn up on reentry.

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"Enough!!" -so rang Barack Obama's voice off the walls of Mile High Stadium