The largely secret project, parts of which have been made public through Air Force budget documents submitted to Congress in February, is part of a wide-ranging effort to develop space weapons, both defensive and offensive. No treaty or law forbids such work.
Incorrect. We just pretend it doesn't. Since November 2000 anyway.
...The laser research was described by federal officials who would speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the topic's political sensitivity. The White House has recently sought to play down the issue of space arms, fearing it could become an election-year liability.
Indeed, last week Republicans and Democrats on a House Armed Services subcommittee moved unanimously to cut research money for the project in the administration's budget for the 2007 fiscal year. While Republicans on the panel would not discuss their reasons for the action, Congressional aides said it reflected a bipartisan consensus for moving cautiously on space weaponry, a potentially controversial issue that has yet to be much debated...
Though futuristic and technically challenging, the laser work is relatively inexpensive by government standards — about $20 million in 2006, with planned increases to some $30 million by 2011 — partly because no weapons are as yet being built and partly because the work is being done at an existing base, an unclassified government observatory called Starfire in the New Mexico desert.
In interviews, military officials defended the laser research as prudent, given the potential need for space arms to defend American satellites against attack in the years and decades ahead. "The White House wants us to do space defense," said a senior Pentagon official who oversees many space programs, including the laser effort. "We need that ability to protect our assets" in orbit.
But some Congressional Democrats and other experts fault the research as potential fuel for an antisatellite arms race that could ultimately hurt this nation more than others because the United States relies so heavily on military satellites, which aid navigation, reconnaissance and attack warning.
In a statement, Representative Loretta Sanchez, a California Democrat on the subcommittee who opposes the laser's development, thanked her Republican colleagues for agreeing to curb a program "with the potential to weaponize space."
Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information, a private group in Washington that tracks military programs, said the subcommittee's action last week was a significant break with the administration. "It's really the first time you've seen the Republican-led Congress acknowledge that these issues require public scrutiny," she said.
In a statement, the House panel, the Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, made no reference to such policy disagreements but simply said that "none of the funds authorized for this program shall be used for the development of laser space technologies with antisatellite purposes."
Those tacky Democrats, leading the way to question Chancellor Rumsfeld's vision.
Satellites? Why aim so high to justify your pork? There are plenty of warm bodies to burn right here on the ground.
And Top Secrets?
You might have read about the laser programs and thermonuclear price supports, or the wonders of laser advertising by the Company to buyers in other governments, or building a better phaser, or several different varieties of high energy death rays somewhere. Certainly nowhere a reporter for the New York Pravda could find them, I'm sure.
As you might guess, Defense Tech has a good breakdown on the story- and it seems what the Company paper is in a huff about isn't really what the Northrop-Grumman boys have been playing with at all, but an elaboration of basic research technology used to photograph stars.
...As Ann Finkbeiner tells the story, in the early 1980s, Air Force scientists looked into the question of correcting for atmospheric turbulence to image Soviet spy satellites. They had the idea that to shine a laser against a layer of sodium in the mesophere (essentially the last layer of the earth's atmosphere) in order to measure the distortion from the ground up.
Measuring the atmospheric distortion allows a scientist to deform her telescope producing a clear picture. It's called adaptive optics. Think of it as looking at yourself in a funhouse mirror with glasses that are just as screwy, but precisely so in order to offset the effect of the mirror. (The pretty picture accompanying the NYT story does a good job of explaining.)
The Starfire Optical Range uses adaptive optics, mostly, to take pretty pictures of stars and the like (click here for a little astro-porn from SOR)...
That's right. Weaponize basic astronomy. Then posture and cut off funding for the science. Keep handing different bags money to the Company under the guise of National Security and under black budget table so they can build other weapons to sell back to the D.o'D., China, Russia, and Pakistan too.
The Indians will probably build it on their own for cheaper.
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