Gonzaga Debate Institute 2011 Mercury China Coop Aff
Status Quo Uses Security Logic (1/2)
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- Status Quo Uses Security Logic (2/2)
Status Quo Uses Security Logic (1/2)Chinese ASAT tests mobilize the security regime of the United States in order to control space Coyle, World Security Institute senior advisor to the president, 7 (Phillip E – Center for Defense Information Senior advisor and defense analyst, The Chinese Satellite Destruction: What’s next, http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=3835&from_page=../program/document.cfm, Access: 6/30/11) AC In a recent analysis for Harvard’s Neiman Watchdog, CDI Senior Advisor Philip Coyle challenges reporters to ask the important questions facing the international community in light of China’s recent ASAT test. Why has the United States been blocking arms control in space? Doesn’t the United States, with its heavy dependence on space satellites, have the most to lose? The Chinese anti-satellite test on Jan. 11, 2007, has stirred up the American media and the U.S. Congress. In this test, China launched an anti-satellite missile and hit a seven-year old Chinese weather satellite, the Feng Yun 1C, in polar orbit, at an altitude of 530 miles. According to Aviation Week, which first reported the test, the attack occurred as the weather satellite passed over the Xichang Space Center, a major Chinese space launch center. Hundreds of news articles have decried the Chinese test and California Rep. Duncan Hunter, who is running for president, has called for the United States to build a system to pulverize enemy missiles launched toward U.S. space assets -- not only military satellites, but U.S. commercial satellites as well. Arizona Sen. John Kyl urges the U.S. Missile Defense Agency to begin building a space-based test bed which would include both kinetic and directed-energy components, saying, “The best way to protect our satellites...is to ensure that the [enemy] missiles never leave the atmosphere.” Not mentioned as often is that the United States and Russia have conducted dozens of anti-satellite tests, going back to the early 1960s. In 1985, the United States Air Force destroyed a U.S. Solwind satellite with a two-stage air-to-space missile fired from an F-15A Eagle jet fighter as it zoomed to 80,000 feet, a test which demonstrated that anti-satellite weapons could be launched from aircraft. As recently as 1997, the Pentagon conducted an ASAT test using a ground-based laser which showed that even a relatively low power laser can temporarily blind a satellite. Considering this long history, why has there been such an outcry over this recent Chinese test? Space Junk For one thing, space is more crowded than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Not only are there over 800 actively functioning satellites on orbit of which the U.S. accounts for slightly over half, but today there are about 18,000 pieces of space garbage bigger than an orange whizzing around out in space, about 10,000 of those in Low Earth Orbit (or up to roughly 1,200 miles in altitude). The recent Chinese test smashed their weather satellite into a multitude of new space junk. Many operational satellites will now pass through this new debris field, including some of China’s own satellites. The new debris could damage operational satellites, puncture solar arrays, and even threaten the International Space Station. Worse still, as the amount of space junk grows, some scientists predict a cascading effect where new debris could collide with older space junk. This chances setting off a kind of chain reaction that threatens to wreck nearby satellites. But China knew all this and conducted its test anyway. According to an unnamed U.S. official as reported by CNN, the Chinese had tried on three prior occasions and failed each time before finally achieving their successful intercept on Jan. 11. Why did China conduct this test and does it mean a new arms race in space? U.S. Space Domination Policies In effect, responding to years of sword rattling by the United States, with this test China said to the United States, “Wait a minute. Not so fast.” For the past six years, the Pentagon and the U.S. military have been touting a muscular policy of space dominance and space superiority to control space. The U.S. Space Command Joint Vision 2020 of 2000 puts it succinctly, “Robust capabilities to ensure space superiority must be developed just as they have been for land, sea, and air.” To illustrate this policy, the Joint Vision 2020 document uses an artist’s rendition of a massive space-based, high-power laser zapping Iran. The Pentagon visualizes space as a platform for prompt global strike capabilities that could threaten the entire world. As explained in the Air Force Space Command Strategic Master Plan for FY 06 and beyond, “A viable, prompt global strike capability, whether nuclear or non-nuclear, will allow the U.S. to rapidly and accurately strike distant high-payoff, difficult-to-defeat targets. This capability provides the U.S. with the flexibility to employ innovative strategies to counter adversary anti-access and area denial strategies. Such a capability will provide warfighting commanders the ability to rapidly deny, delay, deceive, disrupt, destroy, exploit, Status Quo Uses Security Logic (2/2)and neutralize targets in hours/minutes, even when U.S. and allied forces have a limited forward presence.” The Threat The path to devoting significant U.S. military resources to space control was established in early 2001 by the first Rumsfeld Commission Report with its apocalyptic warnings of a “Space Pearl Harbor.” Kahlil Gibran said that the fear of need is greater than the need itself, and today, Pentagon planners take this type of hand-wringing threat for granted, as though it already exists, and that war in space is just as “inevitable” as war on land, sea, and in the skies. The Pentagon isn’t content without a good threat, and the Chinese ASAT test played right into their hands, especially the U.S. Air Force which can now use this test to claim that the U.S. faces an urgent threat in space, a threat that current defense budgets do not adequately address. As noted in the Wall Street Journal, it was China’s gift to the Pentagon. Ironically, the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2008 defense budget, just released but determined before the Chinese test, actually reins in Air Force spending in space, an area of the DOD budget which has been plagued with cost overruns and delays. We don't own space We don't own space. It's not ours. But when the U.S. military talks about space dominance, space superiority, and space control, as they do regularly, they are behaving as if they think the Pentagon does own space, and doesn’t need to consult with anyone else about how space should be used. Fed up with U.S. braggadocio, China felt they needed to flex their muscles too. 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