SATELLITE
SHOOT DOWN NOTHING MORE THAN
ANTI-SATELLITE TEST
For Immediate
Release
Contact: Bruce Gagnon 207-443-9502
The planned Pentagon shoot down of the
wayward U.S. military satellite is
nothing more than an opportunity to test
new Star Wars anti-satellite weapons (ASAT)
technology says the Global Network
Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in
Space.
“The Bush administration is magnifying
the risk to justify the testing of new
dangerous and provocative offensive
space warfare technologies,” says Bruce
Gagnon, Coordinator of the Global
Network, which is based in Maine.
“At the time when we need to be
constraining space debris-creating ASAT
testing, this test will throw open the
door to a new arms race in space.”
The Strategic Command’s (StratCom)
high-tech Global Operations Center,
buried beneath Offutt AFB in Omaha,
Nebraska, will play the lead role in
coordinating the ASAT test. StratCom now
heads all military space operations
since merging with the U.S. Space
Command in 2002.
"The decision to destroy the American
satellite does not look harmless as they
try to claim, especially at a time when
the U.S. has been evading negotiations
on the limitation of an arms race in
outer space," a Russian Defense Ministry
statement has concluded.
For many years Russia and China have
gone to the United Nations General
Assembly with a resolution calling for a
treaty to ban all weapons in space. The
U.S. and Israel have annually voted
against the treaty while every other
nation in the world supports such a new
legal ban on space weapons. The U.S.
aerospace industry says that Star Wars
will be the largest industrial project
in the history of the planet Earth.
Global Network board member Stacey
Fritz, Coordinator of No Nukes North in
Alaska where so-called missile defense
interceptors have been deployed says, “A
culmination of events this month reveals
the true direction of space weapons
technology. China and Russia have
formally proposed a new ban on space
weapons on the heels of polls showing
widespread public support for such a
treaty in both the U.S. and Russia. Not
only does the U.S. refuse to consider
the ban, but also after denying for
years that these systems have offensive
capabilities, the rogue Bush
administration proposes to demonstrate
missile defense's anti-satellite
technology. The doors of the Trojan
horse are spilling open and the new arms
race is on."
Three U.S. Navy Aegis destroyers,
outfitted with missile interceptors,
will fire at the satellite as it falls
back to Earth from positions just off
Hawaii. These same Aegis ships are now
being home ported by the Navy throughout
the Asian-Pacific region giving the U.S.
the ability to encircle China’s coast.
These Aegis ships could give the U.S.
the ability to intercept China’s twenty
nuclear missiles that today are capable
of reaching the west coast of the
continental U.S. The Pentagon has been
war-gaming a U.S. first-strike attack on
China, set in 2016, for the past several
years. In that attack the Aegis ships
would negate China’s nuclear retaliatory
force by intercepting their missiles in
the boost phase.
The Global Network is made up of more
than 140-affiliated peace groups around
the world working to halt the
nuclearization and weaponization of
space.
For more information see
http://www.space4peace.org
- END -
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear
Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org
globalnet@mindspring.com
http://space4peace.blogspot.com
(Blog)
|