Star Wars

 

A record release by Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, a Lennon-McCartney composition, reached number one in the NME chart in 1963. ‘Listen, do you want to know a secret, Do you promise not to tell.’ The USA apparently has a secret it wants to tell the world about, but it’s still a secret!

“We have weaponry that nobody has any idea what it is, and it is the most powerful weapons in the world that we have. More powerful than anybody even, not even close,” he (Trump) told journalists in the Oval Office.’ To adapt a popular Brady Bunch meme, Sure Donald.

Many people often say if the expense expended on various things viewed as negative and harmful were instead diverted toward world poverty or other damaging and destructive problems caused by capitalism then it would be a much more positive use of resources with far better outcomes.

Perhaps in some cases this might be a short term solution to particular issues. But it would not solve the underlying cause of the untold number of troubles resulting from capitalism.

Now the USA is planning to spend billions on a new version of Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defence Initiative.

‘The US possesses technology that can “manipulate” and “bend time and space,” White House innovation czar Michael Kratsios has claimed .Kratsios delivered the remarks at the Endless Frontiers Retreat in Austin, Texas, just weeks after being confirmed as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

He emphasized President Donald Trump’s ambition to usher in a new “golden age of America,” which includes fostering scientific research and the application of cutting-edge technologies. According to Kratsios, the US can emerge as a global leader by making “smart choices” regarding public funding and deregulating innovation.

“Our technologies permit us to manipulate time and space. They leave distance annihilated, cause things to grow, and improve productivity,” he stated, without elaborating. Later in his speech, Kratsios insisted that overcoming the “sclerosis of the state” would enable Americans to achieve “scientific discoveries that will bend time and space, make more with less, and drive us further into the endless frontier.”

Trump himself has recently alluded to advanced technologies not yet revealed to the public. Last week, he claimed China would hesitate to escalate trade tensions with the US partly due to the existence of secret weapons in the American arsenal.

“We have weaponry that nobody has any idea what it is, and it is the most powerful weapons in the world that we have. More powerful than anybody even, not even close,” he told journalists in the Oval Office.’

‘President Donald Trump is building a Golden Dome missile defence shield, which will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to cover the entire globe and monitor enemy threats to the US.

The state-of-the-art defence structure could be up and running as early as 2026, with Elon Musk's SpaceX company partnering with software maker Palantir and drone builder Anduril to build key parts of the Golden Dome, six sources told Reuters. 

SpaceX's integral involvement in the project - which is expected to cost Musk $10 billion - would include building and launching more than 1,000 satellites around the globe to sense missiles and track their movements. 

Another trailblazing fleet of around 200 attack satellites armed with precision missiles or lasers would then bring down threatening enemy missiles, according to sources.  

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has emerged as a leading contender to develop a significant portion of US President Donald Trump’s proposed ‘Golden Dome’ missile defence shield, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

In January, Trump signed an executive order for developing a missile defence system akin to Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’. The president cited a missile attack as “the most catastrophic threat facing the United States.”

The proposed system envisions launching between 400 to over 1,000 tracking satellites, complemented by approximately 200 armed satellites equipped to intercept incoming missiles.

Musk’s rocket and satellite company is partnering with software maker Palantir and drone builder Anduril to build key parts of the Golden Dome, sources told the outlet. While SpaceX is expected to focus on the tracking component, the weaponization aspect may involve other contractors.

SpaceX has reportedly introduced an unconventional subscription-based model for its segment of the project, whereby the government would pay for access rather than own the infrastructure outright. This approach has reportedly raised concerns within the Pentagon regarding long-term costs and control over the system.

Musk’s dual role as a contractor and senior adviser to the president has also prompted scrutiny from members of Congress, who have expressed concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Earlier this month, Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen introduced a bill that would prohibit awarding government contracts to companies owned by special government employees, such as Musk.

The Pentagon is in the early stages of the project, with initial capabilities anticipated by 2026 and full deployment projected only after 2030, according to Reuters. The overall cost for Golden Dome could reportedly run into the hundreds of billions of dollars.’

The below is from the Socialist Standard March 1986

‘...Star Wars is officially known by the euphemistic title of Strategic Defence initiative. The declared intention is to place a "dome'' or “umbrella" around the United States, making it immune to attack from ballistic missiles launched from Russia. Existing anti-ballistic missile systems work on the principle of destroying or disabling the incoming warheads as they re-enter the earth's atmosphere over their target. Star Wars envisages this as simply the third line of defence in a far more sophisticated network. The first element of this would be to attack the missile boosters just after they are launched and before they release individual warheads, which would in turn be the subject of the second set of interceptors. If each layer of defence destroys 90 per cent of its targets, only 0.1 per cent of the warheads launched will reach their destination.

It is the first part of this network — against the booster phase — that represents the biggest innovation and is most dependent on new technology. Various kinds of beam weapons have been proposed to accomplish this aspect, including such exotica as X-ray lasers. All would be incredibly risky and expensive — one proposal, for instance, would require for its functioning the use of at least one-fifth of the entire American electricity output. Add to this the fact that whatever system is chosen would be of enormous complexity, could never be operationally tested and would have to work perfectly at the first time of asking. It is no wonder that many leading American scientists have flatly stated that the whole Star Wars project is technically just not feasible.

The arguments about Star Wars display the logic of the madhouse, but this after all is the logic of capitalism. The American government's justification for Star Wars is that it is. in Reagan's words, "about peace, not war". With the US supposedly immune from nuclear attack, there would be no further place for the deterrence doctrine of "mutual assured destruction" (MAD), which nuclear ideologues claim has so far kept the nuclear peace. Instead there would, it is claimed, be a real incentive on all sides for drastic reduction of nuclear weapons and their eventual complete abandonment.

Sceptical critics have pointed out a number of flaws in this cosy picture. One is that if the Russian rulers saw as imminent the installation of an impregnable nuclear shield over the United States, they might be minded to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike first; Star Wars would then have triggered, not prevented, nuclear war. Another shortcoming in the Reaganesque logic is due to a change of emphasis which has taken place in the Star Wars plans. In place of the original vision of watertight security, realisation of the problems with this has caused its replacement by the idea of almost total security — a leaky umbrella, as it were. But this radically changes the options available, for the revised version is only useful for defending military targets (though this has naturally not been stressed in US government propaganda). The reason for this is that if only a single warhead out of one hundred launched at a city gets through to its target, that city is destroyed. But even the leakiest umbrella may be able to delay the destruction of missile silos long enough for a retaliatory nuclear strike to be launched. In addition, a leaky umbrella might suffice to beat off an attack from any Russian response to an American first strike — which would make such a first strike a more "attractive" proposition to American hawks. It should be noted, too, that Star Wars offers no defence against low-flying cruise missiles or submarine-launched missiles.

It should not be thought, however, that Star Wars represents the first step in the militarisation of space, for this is something that was achieved long ago. Over three thousand satellites have been placed in orbit since Sputnik I in 1957. and three-quarters of these have had military purposes. Of the huge sums of money spent every year on space research by Russia and America, about half is on military work — not taking account of the fact that much work done for civilian reasons may have military applications. The simple idea of dropping bombs from satellites is out of the question (the bomb would simply continue in orbit) but ballistic missiles, spy satellites and anti-satellite weapons are all very real.

Even under capitalism, though, not all uses of space are military. Satellites already provide masses of other kinds of information about the earth: the position of mineral deposits; the routes of oil slicks and icebergs; developments in the weather; the effects of soil erosion; the likely location of earthquakes; and so on. Some of the information which can be gathered in this way is incredibly detailed. For instance, healthy and diseased wheat reflect infra-red radiation to very different degrees, thus making it entirely feasible for satellites to provide data leading to discovery of the amount of diseased wheat growing in a particular area.

Satellites are also useful for communications purposes, such as international telephone calls. In addition, they can monitor for distress signals. One such system is said to have saved over two hundred lives (in maritime emergencies and forced aircraft landings) in a two-year period. Such undertakings demonstrate that the global co-operation envisaged in a socialist society is not at all outlandish. All the information obtained from space could then be used for the benefit of humanity, not to defend the wealth and power of a few.

There are, of course, international treaties concerning space. In 1967. the United Nations negotiated the signing of the Outer Space Treaty which, for example, bans military bases on the moon. But it does not outlaw all military uses of space, nor does it define the crucial and vague term, "space”. A particular bone of contention is what is known as the geostationary ring. This is the area of space 36.000 kilometres above the equator: satellites located here remain fixed in relation to an observer on the earth, so that they never set or rise, thus offering obvious advantages from a communications point of view. At present "slots" in this geostationary ring are allocated by a branch of the International Telecommunications Union. But in 1976 a group of representatives of countries on the equator met and issued a declaration to the effect that any country on the equator automatically owned that portion of the geostationary ring that was directly above it. Thus are capitalist property rights extended into the vacuum of space.

Which brings us back to Star Wars. The first reactions of Western European rulers were consternation and disarray. The French government opposed the whole idea, the British government was divided (Thatcher for, Howe against). Then came the news that $26 billion was earmarked for Star Wars research over the next five years, and that some of this might be coming Europe's way. Already. Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh has received a grant of $150,000 to work on optical computers. The French government is now encouraging French companies to compete for a share in these research funds. But there is no doubt that the bulk of the money will go to the large American arms manufacturers such as Rockwell, Boeing and Lockheed.

What a waste it all is. All the resources and know-how which, throughout the world, are devoted to "perfecting" the means of killing could so easily be devoted to ending hunger and poverty. But to do that means campaigning not for a change of government or for nuclear disarmament, but for the only line of defence against war — the establishment of socialism.’

Paul Bennett

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