Space war is coming — and the U.S. is not ready – Politico

by | Apr 9, 2018 | Blog

Blog Editor’s Note: The best way to prepare for something bad that might happen is to make sure when it does, it causes the least damage possible. We have the technology today to ensure that, with a minimal investment, when GPS goes away the nation can keep on going with only minimal discomfort. We have yet to make that investment.

POLITICO Illustration/Getty and iStock photos

Politico

Space war is coming — and the U.S. is not ready

‘We are now approaching a point where “Star Wars” is not just a movie,’ one government adviser warns.

By BRYAN BENDER and JACQUELINE KLIMAS

War is coming to outer space, and the Pentagon warns it is not yet ready, following years of underinvesting while the military focused on a host of threats on Earth.

Russia and China are years ahead of the United States in developing the means to destroy or disable satellites that the U.S. military depends on for everything from gathering intelligence to guiding precision bombs, missiles and drones.

Now the Pentagon is trying to catch up — pouring billions more dollars into hardening its defenses against anti-satellite weapons, training troops to operate in the event their space lifeline is cut, and honing ways to retaliate against a new form of combat that experts warn could affect millions of people, cause untold collateral damage and spread to battlefields on Earth.

“We are now approaching a point where ‘Star Wars’ is not just a movie,” said Steve Isakowitz, CEO of The Aerospace Corp., a government-funded think tank that serves as the military’s leading adviser on space.

He said the U.S. can no longer afford to take its dominance for granted.

“That supremacy in space has enabled us to have the world’s greatest war-fighting capability … whether it is our soldiers on the field, our drones that fly overhead, our bombers that travel around the world, intelligence we collect,” he told POLITICO. “More and more every day, literally, we become more dependent on it.

“And our adversaries know that,” he added in an interview.

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