A Militarized Space?

Should Space be crowded with military equipment? No? But the United States of America makes it inevitable.

Just as the United States of America did everything possible to make life difficult, across the board, for the Soviet Union and for any Communist or Socialist government in the last 100 years, using subversion, terrorist acts and assassination attempts, so Washington continues to force the Russian Federation to spend vast sums on the militarization of space.

The tactic of the USA against the USSR was clear: create all conditions for the country and political system to be isolated, using acts of terrorism, murder, piracy, using anti-democratic means if necessary, anything goes in a world of political hypocrisy and lunacy defended pathologically by Washington and the neo-conservative elite which dominates policy both in the USA and its lackeys.

When the Soviet Union transformed (not "collapsed") into the Russian Federation of today (after the removal of the stooge Yeltsin by the patriot Putin), did the United States of America effectively try to help the fledgling government?  Or did it try to invade the country economically and culturally, creating the conditions for a crippling foreign debt to dictate the needs of an economic management from abroad?

Did the NGOs sent by the USA, for example to Chechnya, for instance to help in the de-mining of the country, actually contribute towards the de-mining process or did they teach the terrorists to set mines in the paths of the Russian authorities? For some reason the NGOs in Russia have been under suspicion for many years.

And so the militarization of space becomes the new element of the post-cold-war, which has finished as far as Moscow is concerned, as far as the majority of Europe is concerned. But is it so in London and Washington, where perpetual conflict generates more revenue than perpetual peace?

What is the situation? According to Lieutenant-General Vladimir Popovkin, Commander of the Space Troops of the Russian Federation, Russia has more than 100 space vehicles in several orbits, monitoring the state and the acts of other Russian and foreign vehicles. In fact, these vehicles compose the Strategic Defense Initiative which Russia already had when President Reagan was speaking about setting up the same system for the USA in the 1980s.

The militarization of space is as desirable as is the existence of nuclear weapons on Earth. However, with a more and more belligerent Washington, the Russian Federation is forced today, as the USSR was in the past, to accompany the technological developments as they arise, otherwise it runs the risk of placing itself in danger.

For this reason, Russia cannot rest on the laurels of its anti-missile shield but rather, she must develop systems capable of equaling the constant initiatives of the Unites States in terms of offensive capacity, because it is, and has always been, from the USA that the action comes, provoking the reaction of those able to do so. Among the systems being developed by Russia is the new generation of heavy rockets, Proton-M.

Nowadays, connections between the Conventional Armed Forces and the A.F. Mozhayskiy Military Space Academy are more and more frequent, not because of  an innate desire by Moscow to dominate the world, but rather due to the necessity to guarantee the national security of the Russian Federation. In the words of the Russian Defence Minister, Sergey Ivanov, "Without the militarization of space, it is absolutely impossible to speak about increasing the mobility of the armed forces or to create precision weaponry".

For this reason the militarization of space occurs on different levels for different reasons. First, it is necessary to be able to detect hostile objects launched from foreign countries and destoy then while they are still in space. Secondly, it is of fundamental importance to watch the vehicles launched by suspect countries so as to prevent acts of space piracy.

Thirdly, the actions of potential rivals have to be controlled and fourthly, the tele-command and coordination systems of military hardware are today necessarily placed in space and not on the ground.

For this reason, the militarization of space by the Russian Federation is a necessity, to guarantee the national security of the country. A good example of the type of operations that oblige Moscow to be in a constant state of alert is the FALCON programme, a joint initiative of DARPA/USAF (United States Air Force).

FALCON means "Force Application and Launch from CONtinental United States",
while DARPA means "Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency".

Defense? Or attack?

FALCON will have three phases. Phase 1 will govern the development of conceptual designs, during which the contractors will receive around 500,000 USD each. In the second part of this phase, the contractors will receive between 1,200,000 and 1,500,000 USD each to develop a test for a Hypersonic Weapons System to be transported on a vehicle capable of taking a half-ton payload of weaponry into space.

In Phase 2 (2004-2007) the vehicles will be tested in hypersonic flight, in an attempt to create a vehicle which can destroy targets (civilian or military) at a distance of 9,000 nautical miles in a time span of less than two hours.

Phase 3 (2007-2009) will provide demonstrations of the said weapons systems in flight.

For this very reason, what alternative does the Russian Federation have, faced as always by a neo-conservative elite in Washington which has as its core business the weapons and energy industries?

Moscow's real focus, as always, has been another. In the words of the ex-Foreign Affairs Minister, Igor Ivanov, last year, Russia follows a policy of demilitarization of space and defends the banning of military equipment and systems in this area.

The response buy the United States of America to this statement at the time was the unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty (Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty) signed with the USSR in 1972, declaring that they needed to develop an anti-missile system, banned under the treaty Washington had signed.

It is due to this type of attitude that space has to be militarized, more and more instead of less and less, until there is a change of attitude by Washington.

In conclusion, for every action, there is a possible reaction and it is important to underline who are the ones who act and who are those who react.

Maybe the only advantage in this diabolical race which is going to create systems akin to Armageddon is the fact that finally we are able to protect ourselves against a strike by a small meteorite or asteroid. But just this.what a pitiful comment on two thousand years of supposed development.

Would it not make more sense to travel together, on a basis of us being a community of brothers living around a common lake? Or would this be too beautiful a notion for mankind to believe in?