Gray Rinehart
03-12-2008, 06:20 PM
My old boss, whom I would like to see become active in this forum, sent me this link to a brief video of Senator Obama (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl32Y7wDVDs) discussing his intentions of reducing the nation's readiness and weapons capabilities. His naive comments about nuclear weapons we can deal with in another place, but here let's focus on:
I will not weaponize space.
Not to overstate the obvious, but space is already weaponized. Not, perhaps, in the form of constantly orbiting weapons platforms, but then again we haven't seen many proposals for those, have we? But in the form of dedicated platforms necessary to our national defense, space is weaponized. And in the form of recently demonstrated anti-satellite capability that challenges the Senator's "unproven missile defense systems" line -- and that we argued elsewhere were already evolving -- the use of weapons in and near space is here today, and probably here to stay.
We suspect that this is more rhetoric than substance, which is what we've come to expect from most candidates. Good thing the Anti-Candidate (http://www.graymanwrites.com/gm-anticampaign.html) doesn't go in for that sort of thing. ;)
I will not weaponize space.
Not to overstate the obvious, but space is already weaponized. Not, perhaps, in the form of constantly orbiting weapons platforms, but then again we haven't seen many proposals for those, have we? But in the form of dedicated platforms necessary to our national defense, space is weaponized. And in the form of recently demonstrated anti-satellite capability that challenges the Senator's "unproven missile defense systems" line -- and that we argued elsewhere were already evolving -- the use of weapons in and near space is here today, and probably here to stay.
We suspect that this is more rhetoric than substance, which is what we've come to expect from most candidates. Good thing the Anti-Candidate (http://www.graymanwrites.com/gm-anticampaign.html) doesn't go in for that sort of thing. ;)