ARMS TRADE RESOURCE CENTER
Pentagon Brass and Military Contractors' Gold
By Leslie Wayne
The New York Times, June 29, 2004
Edward C. Aldridge's storied career exemplifies the dizzying spins of the revolving door between the Pentagon and its military contractors. He has been secretary of the Air Force, president of the McDonnell Douglas Corporation and, most recently, an under secretary of defense.
Now, he is a member of the Lockheed Martin Corporation board, a detail that did not prevent him from being named to head President Bush's commission on space exploration. Lockheed is one of NASA's biggest contractors, and only Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, objected and called for Mr. Aldridge's removal, complaining of conflict of interest.
But Mr. Aldridge, who receives $155,000 a year from Lockheed and owns $115,000 in company stock, stayed put. Last month, the commission called for privatizing much of NASA. One of the biggest potential beneficiaries is United Space Alliance, a Lockheed company that operates the space shuttle and does more business with NASA than any other contractor.
More: http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/updates/062904.html[/URL][/QUOTE]
And finally, from the [b]Union of Concerned Scientists[/b]:[QUOTE][i]space weapons[/i]
For nearly a half-century, the cooperative and peaceful use of space has yielded immense benefits to humans worldwide. Although space has been "militarized"—military satellites have been deployed for purposes ranging from the verification of arms control treaties to providing targeting information to military forces on Earth—it has not yet been "weaponized." Despite Cold War tensions and the technical capability to do so, no nation has deployed destructive weapons in space or destroyed the satellites of another nation.
However, this norm may be breached in the near future. The Bush administration appears to have a serious interest in anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, and the Pentagon has announced its intention to pursue a testbed for space-based missile defenses by 2008. The testbed deployment would entail putting one or more missile-targeting interceptor satellites into orbit.
Weapons in space are likely to be politically destabilizing. They may threaten the commercial, scientific, and military use of space, all without clearly reaping their intended security benefits. The international community, notably including Russia and China, Canada, and the countries of the European Union, supports creating a treaty to ban weapons from outer space. Serious multilateral discussion about "rules of the road" for space is needed.
Which rules and norms are established is especially important for the United States, the country most reliant on space assets. The United States owns and operates the vast majority of satellites orbiting today, and space has become critical to US economic, scientific, and military interests. Though the United States and the former republics of the Soviet Union have long dominated the use of space, currently many states are investing in space assets and have developed or are developing the ability to use space peacefully.
Insight into the Bush administration’s troubling plans can be found in the January 2001 report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, chaired by Donald Rumsfeld shortly before he became Secretary of Defense. Although the report stresses defensive space operations, it endorses also the notion of "space control" and specifically calls for anti-satellite technology, stating that "The U.S. will require means of negating satellite threats, whether temporary and reversible or physically destructive."
More (including a link to the above-mentioned report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space management and Organization): [PLAIN]http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/space_weapons/index.cfm[/URL][/QUOTE]
