g.w.
03-02-2006, 02:22 PM
Bear with me, it'll take a few paragraphs to get to the title of this thread...
SWF Forum member Mike Lutton sent a link to a short article from Toffler Associates, found at http://www.toffler.com/publications/pub_space-high-ground.shtml. I wrote back that the 2nd paragraph,
"Today the United States requires nothing that only space can provide."
seemed internally inconsistent with the next-to-last paragraph:
"No reasonable person will assert that space has lost its 'raison d'etre,' or reason for being. It has a reason, and always will. Space assets perform unique tasks."
IOW, it appeared to me that the article didn't end up where it started to go.
So far, so good, when an office mate chimed in that "our inability over the last 15 years to deliver warfighting capabilities from space has hurt our credibility even to argue that 'Space is a mission.'" IOW, "it's not about a place or a mission, but about using space to deliver effects."
So now we're to the real subject of this thread. The idea of delivering effects makes me wonder if it hurts our credibility that space does "deliver effects," but that the effects are invisible? That is, the space effects are only obvious when they are absent; as long as they are there, the warfighters can take them for granted. I've used the "space is a utility" argument before: just as electricity and running water are "invisible" to us so long as they are working, and only become "visible" when we have problems with them, so too almost any space mission you might name: communications, weather and other remote sensing, navigation. As for missile warning, that's "invisible" to most people even when it's working perfectly!
I was researching Operation Anaconda as a possible story to include in an upcoming speech, and did a search in the UNCLASS report on the operation. "Space" showed up only in reference to "air and space," "airspace," and "battlespace." "Satellite" showed up NOT ONCE in the entire document. "GPS" showed up twice: once in reference to a controller using it to get coordinates, and once in reference to the fact that some of the Al Qaeda positions were found to have commercial GPS receivers. IOW, space was all but invisible in that engagement.
Actually, from that example I'm toying with the idea that space has yet to reach the tactical level of war; i.e., space is still a strategic asset. (Don't get me started on the nature of the "operational" level...that's another topic.)
I'll leave off there as food for thought. Best to all,
G
SWF Forum member Mike Lutton sent a link to a short article from Toffler Associates, found at http://www.toffler.com/publications/pub_space-high-ground.shtml. I wrote back that the 2nd paragraph,
"Today the United States requires nothing that only space can provide."
seemed internally inconsistent with the next-to-last paragraph:
"No reasonable person will assert that space has lost its 'raison d'etre,' or reason for being. It has a reason, and always will. Space assets perform unique tasks."
IOW, it appeared to me that the article didn't end up where it started to go.
So far, so good, when an office mate chimed in that "our inability over the last 15 years to deliver warfighting capabilities from space has hurt our credibility even to argue that 'Space is a mission.'" IOW, "it's not about a place or a mission, but about using space to deliver effects."
So now we're to the real subject of this thread. The idea of delivering effects makes me wonder if it hurts our credibility that space does "deliver effects," but that the effects are invisible? That is, the space effects are only obvious when they are absent; as long as they are there, the warfighters can take them for granted. I've used the "space is a utility" argument before: just as electricity and running water are "invisible" to us so long as they are working, and only become "visible" when we have problems with them, so too almost any space mission you might name: communications, weather and other remote sensing, navigation. As for missile warning, that's "invisible" to most people even when it's working perfectly!
I was researching Operation Anaconda as a possible story to include in an upcoming speech, and did a search in the UNCLASS report on the operation. "Space" showed up only in reference to "air and space," "airspace," and "battlespace." "Satellite" showed up NOT ONCE in the entire document. "GPS" showed up twice: once in reference to a controller using it to get coordinates, and once in reference to the fact that some of the Al Qaeda positions were found to have commercial GPS receivers. IOW, space was all but invisible in that engagement.
Actually, from that example I'm toying with the idea that space has yet to reach the tactical level of war; i.e., space is still a strategic asset. (Don't get me started on the nature of the "operational" level...that's another topic.)
I'll leave off there as food for thought. Best to all,
G