Free Republic

FAIRBORN — The Air Force wants to make launching satellites as routine as flying airplanes. It also wants missile-fast planes that can strike targets or deliver Marines anywhere on Earth, officials said Tuesday. To that end, the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is seeking closer ties with the emerging commercial space industry to make the Dayton region a leader in the field. AFRL is wooing the new industry as it seeks to ease the cost and difficulty of reaching space, and the effort is bringing space entrepreneurs to town — at least for visits and tours.

There are good lexicographic reasons not to use terms like “the military geography of space” or “the terrain of space warfare”. In both case the words “geography” and “terrain” have their origins in the Greek and Latin terms for Earth. If space can be described as anything, it is definitely “not of the Earth.” The term “space as a theater of war” is still not completely satisfactory, but for the moment it will have to do. Cislunar space, give or take a few million kilometers, is for the next few decades the only place where space warfare is going happen....

The US Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) spaceplane-like Micro-X vehicle is to undergo windtunnel-based full-flight trajectory aerodynamic loading trials from the third quarter of this year. The Micro-X is a demonstrator for a reusable second stage vehicle that could be launched on an expendable or reusable first stage. There have been five versions of the Micro-X first stage so far and one of the second stage. Technologies yet to be developed to realise the Micro-X vehicles are reusable auxiliary power sources, accessible and maintainable avionics, non-expendable igniters and coking-free rocket engines. Hypersonic aerodynamic and aeroheating testing of Micro-X vehicles will...

The announcement by the US Air Force that it was radically overhauling the approach being used for procurement of Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) missions (Aviation Week, March 13, 2006) represents not merely a change in a single program’s procurement strategy but the death of an entire philosophy, that of “commercial launch.” Following the loss of the Challenger, the US had to quickly reinvigorate its entire expendable space launch industry. Of necessity, this primarily consisted of resuming production of the same boosters that had been in production for over 25 years. However, within a couple of years of the revival...

Whether someone is flying an airlifter, sending an e-mail or surveying a new runway, chances are space-based weather forecasting, navigation or communications systems helped make it possible. In fact, the Air Force is boldly developing new systems that will revolutionize how warfighters worldwide conduct operations, said Dr. Ronald Sega, undersecretary of the Air Force. One of his responsibilities is to oversee the Air Force’s space operations, something he is uniquely familiar with, having spent six years working for National Aeronautics and Space Administration and, after becoming an astronaut, two successful missions into space. Dr. Sega said integrating new space systems...

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is asking Congress for hundreds of millions of dollars to test weapons in space, marking the biggest step toward creating a space battlefield since President Reagan's long-defunct ''star wars" project during the Cold War, according to federal budget documents. The Defense Department's budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 includes money for a variety of tests on offensive and defensive weapons, including a missile launched at a small satellite in orbit, testing a small space vehicle that could disperse weapons while traveling at 20 times the speed of sound, and determining whether high-powered ground-based...

As a US combatant commander prepares for battle, he might need a close, up-to-date look at what is happening on the ground. He may need to put more “eyes” on a particular area. If so, a call may go out to Air Force Space Command, with the question: What have you got? Today, Space Command could use only those systems that are already overhead. Developing, launching, and certifying a new one would take years. By 2010, however, Space Command may well have another option—to swiftly prepare and launch a small satellite that will survive only long enough to meet the...

It’s time to admit that the 2001 decision—in keeping with the recommendations of the second Rumsfeld commission—that made the Air Force the “Executive Agent for Space” has just not worked: not due to any malfeasance or corruption or lack of good will, but simply because the USAF has other priorities. The Air Force is all about airpower. Before World War Two, when it was still the Army Air Corps, its leaders believed that America needed airpower. In the grand scheme of things, they were completely vindicated, and no one more so than Hap Arnold, the Chief of Staff for air...

The military's role in deterring attacks on commercial satellites is set to be strengthened in the first broad overhaul of U.S. space policy in a decade, a U.S. official said on Wednesday. The policy would remove any ambiguity about official responsibility for figuring out who was behind any attack on U.S.-owned commercial satellites, said Air Force Col. Anthony Russo, head of the U.S. Strategic Command's space division. Russo said recent drafts of the policy, which he said could be announced within months, did not rule out weapons in space. Instead, they speak of taking "all appropriate measures to defend our...

KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M., Jan. 24 (UPI) -- U.S. Air Force scientists have developed a deployable optical telescope to fit into a typical rocket body. Their efforts will eventually produce significantly improved tactical imagery supporting the joint warfighter on the battlefield, the Air Force said Tuesday. Positioning three delicate, circular mirrors to one one-thousandth of the width of a human hair consistently challenged scientists at the Space Vehicles Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M, the USAF said. For five years they have studied the deployable optical telescope, a 1.5 meter (approximately 4.9 feet) in size demonstrator, which represents...

After spending more than $1.3 billion of both federal and Lockheed Martin money on the X-33, which was sold as the first step towards a shuttle replacement, the whole idea of reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) seems pretty discredited. Today, both NASA and the Defense Department have given up on the hope that an RLV can be built anytime soon. Radically lowering the cost of access to space is now said to be just a pipe dream. Inside the US government, the belief reigns that a single stage to orbit (SSTO) or a two stage to orbit (TSTO) RLV that would...

The US Air Force has just put out a request for proposal for a "Gaming and Training Environment for Counter Space Operations." In other words, they're ready for Ender's Game. Or maybe Space Wars. The proposed intent of the software is to develop tactics, techniques and procedures relating to four key tasks: detect, identify, track and disrupt activities from space vehicles. In part, the request states:

The cost and engineering problems the Air Force is having with their space programs and in trying to train a solid cadre of qualified and effective space personnel are all too familiar. Now it seems that, on a smaller scale, the Navy is stuck with a similar dilemma. This problem could become more serious in the future since, unlike the Air Force, the senior Navy leadership may not even be aware that there is anything wrong. Ten or fifteen years from now, if the President and the Secretary of Defense determine that the US needs a separate “Space Force”, the...

On Wednesday September 14th on Capitol Hill, a relatively new organization called the e-Parliament held a hearing on space security. While it had many of the trappingz of a House or Senate hearing, it was more like one of the increasingly popular Washington pseudo-events designed to resemble a real US Congressional hearing. Despite the presence of a few token conservatives, participants were overwhelmingly left-of-center opponents of America’s potential development and deployment of space weapons for space control, space strike or missile defense purposes. As in a real Congressional hearing, the parliamentarians from Europe, Latin America, Australia, Ghana, and Japan took...

Over the last thirty years or so the left has tried, with varying degrees of success, to create loud and bitter controversies over various weapons and concepts that the Defense Department wants to create or build. In the 1970s they succeeded in convincing Jimmy Carter to cancel the neutron bomb. In the 1980s they failed to prevent Ronald Reagan from deploying the so-called Euromissiles or in forcing him to agree to a nuclear freeze. In these cases, they did manage to create enough friction so that even when these weapons were deployed the Administration and its allies suffered considerable political...

For more than a decade, the military utilization of space has become all the more important in warfighting. Since the Gulf War of 1991, using space assets has enabled air, land, and sea forces and operations to be far more effective. Space power has changed the face of warfare. So much so, particularly for the United States, skirmishes of the 21st century cannot be fought and won without space capabilities. That reliance has led to a key action item for U.S. space warriors: How best to maintain and grow the nation’s space superiority and deny adversaries the ability to use...

BAIKONUR, June 2 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's defense minister Sergei Ivanov has confirmed the priority development of the Space Force. "The leaders of Russia and the defense ministry have always paid special attention to the Space Force. I want to confirm the priority and strategic nature of these actions," the minister said Thursday at the parade held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Baikonur spaceport. Ivanov stressed that the effective operation of the space center largely depended on close cooperation between the Russian military and the Kazakh colleagues. The first earth satellite, the first spacecraft with animals, the first...

General Tommy Power wrote that in 1962 in a secret telex explaining why the Air Force needed a manned spacecraft propelled into orbit by nuclear bombs exploded underneath it—fighting its way into space the whole time. Power was in charge of Strategic Air Command, and the Orion space battleship was obviously not approved, either by his bosses on the Air Staff or the Secretary of Defense. However, that kind of overheated warrior rhetoric has always existed in the US Air Force when it comes to space programs. A small segment of the Air Force space leadership has always been in...

WASHINGTON -- President Bush next month is expected to give the Pentagon broader authority to protect American satellites in space and could also grant the Air Force the green light to deploy space-based weapons, according to administration officials and defense specialists outside government.

The Air Force, saying it must secure space to protect the nation from attack, is seeking President Bush's approval of a national-security directive that could move the United States closer to fielding offensive and defensive space weapons, according to White House and Air Force officials. The proposed change would be a substantial shift in American policy. It would almost certainly be opposed by many American allies and potential enemies, who have said it may create an arms race in space. A senior administration official said that a new presidential directive would replace a 1996 Clinton administration policy that emphasized a...