UNITED STATES MISSILE DEFENCE SYSTEM "ON ICE"

SAY HELLO TO THE BUSH CO. 'ORBITAL BATTLE STATION'

The fight between the world powers to control outer space, or near-Earth space, will likely become the most decisive battle of the first half of the 21st century if the plans for a United States controlled 'orbital battle station' moves beyond the conceptual stage and becomes a reality.

In the early 1980s, US president Ronald Reagan unrolled the Strategic Defence Initiative, also known as 'Star Wars', which was supposed to use ground-based missiles, or lasers, to intercept incoming ballistic missiles. 'Star Wars' faded under repeated failures of the defence system, despite chewing up, literally, tens of billions of dollars in research and conceptual funding.

Now this concept is more commonly known as the Missile Defence System, and some in Bush Co. believe the defence system belongs in orbit around the earth, instead of on Terra. Thus is born the 'Orbital Battle Station'.

Earth based lasers to blind communications and military satellites, 'death rays' strapped to the underbellies of C-130s to fry tanks and town centres from 20,000 feet, raw sunlight reflected and concentrated in out space and beamed in heat rays directly into battle zones and now the Orbital Battle Station...all used to be the domain of science fiction, yet all are increasingly being dicussed and research-financed by the world's major defence contractors urgently searching for the ultimate weapons of future wars.

The concept of a harmonious world, where fair trade and dignified relations exist between all nations of the Earth is obviously beyond the grasp of any current group-think still obsessed with high-kill factor defence/offence weapons.

From Pajamas Media :

...the Bush administration is going to ask Congress for funding to begin development of an “orbital battle station” that will be able to attack enemy missiles in their vulnerable boost phase.

Each Battle Station would be a fairly large satellite that carried a number, perhaps 40 to 50 infrared guided “kill vehicles.”

On orders from the ground, the battle station would launch these kill vehicles, roughly about the size of a loaf of bread, at incoming missiles.

Professor Everett Dolman of the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama and the author 'Astropolitik - Classical Geopolitics in The Space Age' says that space based systems are “the only viable option for global defense against the most likely threats, such as an attack by Iran against Israel or by Pakistan against India.”

“The technology,” Dolman said, “for a basic orbital interceptor that could hit an ICBM in mid flight has been available to the U.S. for at least two decades. Indeed should the U.S. dedicate itself to a fast track development and deployment of several dozen networked anti-missile satellites, it could have a baseline capability in place within two years.”

The key issue ignored in all these discussions and debates is a simple one : Who exactly is going to launch a nuclear missile against the United States for no apparent reason? Knowing full well of the apocalyptic destruction they would bring upon themselves, their citizens and their neighbours and allies?

Osama Bin Laden?

Iran?

North Korea?

France?

This is another exercise aimed squarely at stealing hundreds of bilions of dollars from Americans, and their allies, for a weapons system that will never be needed as long as the United States handles its relations with all the countries of the world with respect, and dignity.

This is not the 1940s, nor is it the Cold War inflicted 1950s. Neither Russia, China, Iran or Venezeuala have acted in any way, beyond mouthing rhetoric that pleases the locals, that would even suggest they intend to destroy American cities.

Why would they want to kill American consumers of their oil, energy, food and entertainment products? They wouldn't, of course, and they don't want to.

But Americans aren't buying the hype of a mega-billion dollar missile defence system, it's a hard sell, because it doesn't yet work, and a missile defence system would have not stopped the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Missile defence is a dead concept to most Americans, so instead the Republicans controlled by the defence industries will mouthpiece Bush Co.'s 'Orbital Battle Station' not only as a priority, but a terrifying necessity.

Ironically, shoving a mothership full of mini-interceptors, or eventually mini-nuclear drones, into orbit is exactly the kind of space weaponisation that Russia and China have warned they will not tolerate.

So the overwhelming need for 'OBS' is created by the actual deployment of the weapons system that will counter the threat conjured up by the deployment of the weapons system in the first place.

It's a major achievement in the shaping of opinion and the blinding of rational thought that money is actually poured into the conceptualisation and development of such weapons systems.