Pigs in Space

A May 24th New York Times article was critical of the U.S. Air Force's desire to put offensive and defensive weapons in space. Among other things, it said, "What the Air Force has in mind is shrouded in secrecy and euphemisms."

Murky, obscure jargon is a standard feature of military rhetoric. That's how the Pentagon keeps the public fearful of "emerging threats" and from figuring out just what the military is up to: making false justifications for grabbing an ever increasing piece of the national budget.

No service is better at this sort of thing than the United States Air Force. Since its creation as a separate branch after World War II, the Air Force has tried to convince anyone who will listen that aerospace power makes all other forms of military power obsolete. Their critics point out that decades of tangible evidence indicate otherwise.

Air Force counter-arguments usually state that aerospace power failed to be solely decisive in any given conflict because we didn't use it the right way, or we didn't use enough of it, or that it didn't work because the big old Army and Navy meanies in charge didn't want it to work.

Now, relegated to irrelevance in the Global War on Terror, the Air Force argues that aerospace power will work if we just put it up a little higher. This is typical of the arms race we're creating with ourselves; the false promise of "military transformation" that says flying tanks, swimming airplanes, eighteen-wheeled ships, and tire irons hurled down from space will accomplish our national aims in ways that previous weapon systems have failed to do.

What the transformation vision ignores is that all forms of military power--aerospace and otherwise--are becoming obsolete as tools of national power. Economy, information, and diplomacy have eclipsed them. The rest of the world has caught on to this reality. Within twelve months, according to Janes Military Industry, America will spend as much on defense as the rest of the world combined.

In theory, the bi-lateral arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was the thing that forced the Evil Empire to collapse under its own weight. Today, it appears the U.S. is bound and determined to implode on itself by engaging in a unilateral arms escalation, spending itself into the dirt while rest of the world sits on the sidelines and chortles.

JLH