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Inspired by the Blitzkrieg, the War on Iraq, is planned around a strategy known as �Shock and Awe� in which between 300 and 400 cruise missiles would fall on Iraq each day for two consecutive days. It would be more than twice the number of missiles launched during the entire 40 days of the 1991 Gulf War."
The War on Iraq is designed to accelerate the weaponization of space. Smart bombs and cruise missiles are to to be guided to their targets by using the U.S. global positioning satellite system.
The 1991 Gulf War (War on Iraq I) can be considered the world�s first space war, a "Star Wars" fought with "smart-bomb" weapons whose guidance systems reside on platforms and satellites in outer space.
Like earlier "designer wars" - War on Iraq I (1991); War on Yugoslavia (1999); and War on Afghanistan (2001) - a 2003 War on Iraq II is designed by the Bush Administration to further its agenda of weaponizing outer space. By converting the U.S. global positioning satellite system, originally intended for civilian and "non-weapons military use", into a substantial component of its smart-bomb weapons system, the Bush Administration is functionally converting the global positioning satellite system into a spaced-based weapons system. Under any reasonable legal definition, "smart bomb" precision munitions and cruise missiles would be banned under a comprehensive, enforceable international treaty banning space-based weapons systems.
Moreover, with each successive programmed war since the 1991 War on Iraq, the United States has dramatically increased its perversion of the global positioning satellite system to a space weapons application.
"Precision-guided weapons represented only seven percent of all munitions used against Iraqi troops in the Gulf War, according to retired military officer Mike Vickers. Their share rose to 30 percent in the 1999 Kosovo campaign, to 60 percent in Afghanistan and was expected to reach 80 percent in Iraq, Vickers said." 1
To the permanent war economy, war itself is an industrial activity. Programmed designer wars -such as the planned war on Iraq, are carried out with the implacability of an industrial roll-out. War on Iraq II is designed to accelerate the weaponization of space, by using the U.S. global positioning satellite system, theoretically intended for civilian use. This U.S. strategy fulfills key components of Vision for 2020, the strategic doctrine by which the United States of America intends to dominate both Earth and outer space from space itself. According to Vision for 2020, "The two principal themes of the USSPACECOM (United States Space Command) Vision are dominating the space medium and integrating space power throughout military operations."2
The weaponization of space in the context of the War on Iraq, is reportedly planned around "a strategy known as �Shock and Awe�, conceived at the National Defense University in Washington, in which between 300 and 400 cruise missiles would fall on Iraq each day for two consecutive days. It would be more than twice the number of missiles launched during the entire 40 days of the 1991 Gulf War."3
Smart Bombs
Smart bombs constituted only 10 percent of the munitions dropped in the 1991 Desert Storm campaign. Military planners in the Pentagon have confirmed that smart bombs:
"will make up as much as 80 percent this time. U.S military officials say that increase will raise the effective firepower of an air wing by four times, letting it hit as many as 700 targets on a single mission. In Afghanistan, special forces spotters could call in bombing raids in as little as 20 minutes - compared with the 1991 war, when bombing orders were typed up daily and flown to aircraft carriers. Predator and Global Hawk unmanned planes will give commanders around-the-clock video views of the battlefield, something U.S. officials are counting on to improve their ability to knock out Iraqi missile launchers." 4
The unprecedented scale of weaponizing the global positioning satellite system has permitted U.S. military planners to create a Hiroshima-like space-based weapons system in "Shock & Awe.":
"One of the creators of this 'shock and awe' theory of battle, defense analyst Harlan Ullman, compares its desired effect with Japan in World War II, when that nation's fierce resistance crumbled after atomic bombs leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Psychologically, they could not appreciate that one bomb from one airplane could create that damage. They went from suicidal in their resistance to passive and benign,' said Ullman, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington." 5
"Shock & Awe" and the weaponization of the global positioning satellite system �which is to be tested in Iraq-- is taking place a year in advance of the next programmed deployment of a space-based weapons system for space. In December 2002, President George W. Bush ordered the Pentagon to have ready for use by 2004 a National Missile Defense System, initially based in Alaska near the Canadian border, for "defending American territory, troops and allies against attack by ballistic missiles." The National Missile Defense System has substantial space-based components, and represents a further step in the weaponization of space.
Beyond the National Missile Defense System, a new generation of deadly high tech space-based weapons are presently in the "planned testing and potential deployment" phase. These include (1) Electromagnetic and Radiation Weapons; (2) Kinetic Energy and Hypervelocity Weapons; (3) Laser Weapons; (4) Particle Beam Weapons; (5) Explosive Proximity Weapons;(6) 'Soft Kill' Jamming Weapons. If deployed, some of these new space weapons �which could be used against in Iraq-- may make "Shock & Awe" seem primitive and obsolete.6
Notes
1. "Hi-tech US weaponry could be used in conflict with Iraq," Agence France Presse (Jan. 1, 2003) as quoted in Spacedaily.com.
2. United States Space Command, "Vision For 2020,"
3. Sydney Morning Herald, January 24, 2003.
4. Craig Gordon, Washington Bureau, Newsday (New York, NY), February 16, 2003, "A High-Tech Show of Force; U.S. weapons aimed to 'awe'"
5. Ibid.
6. "The Law of War in Space," Air Force Law Review,March 13 2001.
Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, MEd has written extensively on the weaponization of space. He is a member of the No Weapons in Space Campaign (NOWIS), based in Vancouver, B.C. All rights reserved. Copyright A Lambremont Webre 2003. For fair use only/ pour usage �quitable seulement .