THE FUTURE IS NOW
by Fred Edwards
Feb. 22, 2008

China used a ballistic missile on Jan. 11, 2007, to shoot down one of its aging weather satellites. It seemed that the Chinese Foreign Ministry was unaware of this. Or did Chinese officials want to keep their intentions hidden in case of failure?

U.S. officials, on the other hand, openly declared their intention to shoot down a disabled American satellite before it could re-enter the earth’s atmosphere, and that’s exactly what happened. On Feb. 20 of this year, a single SM-3 missile fired from the USS Lake Erie, an Aegis-class cruiser, hit the dead satellite at 10:26 p.m. Eastern Time. The missile struck the satellite about 150 miles above earth while it was traveling more than 17,000 miles per hour. Military officials said they had hoped to rupture the satellite’s fuel tank to prevent 1,000 pounds of hazardous hydrazine from crashing to earth like a deadly bomb. Or did they want to prove to powers like China and Russia that the United States can destroy satellites — or missiles — at will?

Just how did we get here? Perhaps it began when a human being first grabbed a rock or a club to attack a fellow human. This launched humankind through multiple evolutions in warfare. Max Boot, in War Made New, cites four technologies that determined the course of warfare over the past 500 years: the Gunpowder Revolution, from 1500-1700; the first Industrial Revolution (from single-shot rifles to machine guns 1750-1900); the second Industrial Revolution, from biplanes to missiles (1900-1940); and the Information Revolution (from 1970 through today).

Colin S. Gray, however, proposes in Another Bloody Century, that, for the past two hundred years, “Revolutions in Military Affairs” produced the following ever-increasing lethal methods of warfare: mass participation by nations in arms (1792-1991); exploitation of the tools of the industrial revolution (1861-present); aerial warfare (1917-present); mechanization (1918-present); and development of nuclear weapons (1945-present).

With the nuclear capability came a policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) that, madly enough, assured the former Soviet Union that any nuclear attack would result in its own destruction. And on March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan presented a speech in which he proposed the United States develop a system to “intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reach our own soil or that of our allies.” Although critics dubbed Reagan’s plan “Star Wars,” hoping to discredit it, one can make the case that China rehearsed its Star Wars in Jan. 2007 and the United States held a dress rehearsal in Feb. 2008.

During the Cold War, some 1,000 nuclear missile silos had sprouted in America’s heartland. They, along with American cities, were fixed targets. Today, think of a fleet of U.S. ships strategically located on the world’s oceans, poised for offensive or defensive warfare in space.

Some critics may carp about planning for warfare in space. Well, no matter how Boot and Gray describe it, warfare has inexorably transitioned from a single rock thrown a few millenia ago through adaptation of every technological increase in power projection that has been produced by human ingenuity. And today, space is a strategic arena affecting the national interests of the United States. In military terms, space is critical terrain, and the power that controls critical terrain has the strategic advantage. Whether the U.S. shot down the disabled American satellite for aggressive display or for humanitarian reasons, or both, it brought us face to face with the future. And the future is now.
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The content of Crosshairs - Military Matters in Review may be copied or retransmitted for information purposes, but may not be used for any commercial purpose without my written permission. Please include this notice and credit the source as Crosshairs - Military Matters in Review by Fred Edwards.

Fred Edwards is a military columnist and journalist. He has contributed articles to more than two dozen periodicals and has written six books. His most recent are The Buffie Brigade and The Bridges of Vietnam: From the Journals of a U.S. Marine Intelligence Officer.

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