For a little over a year (20 December 2019) the armed forces on which the Pentagon can count have increased from five to six: the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Coast Guard and the Air Force have been added Space Force (United States Space Force or Ussf). To be picky, there were more than five uniformed bodies at the Pentagon’s disposal before, because the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps form two independent entities, which would bring the total of American Weapons to eight. ; however the last two mentioned are not fighting bodies, they only deploy doctors and scientists, so the United States Space Force, whose raison d’etre is to attack the enemy from space, is the only real new arrow in addition to the arc of the Pentagon.
If the Ussf is new, America’s commitment to the competition for the domination of extraterrestrial space is not, a competition that began in the 1950s against the Soviet Union, continues today with Russia and China, and tomorrow it may concern India, Japan and maybe, who knows, even a Europe detached from NATO (“it’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future”, physicist Niels Bohr said with irony).
Magazine Limes dedicates the first issue of 2022 precisely to the struggle to conquer and use space for military purposes, understood as an orbit more or less close to the Earth but also as the Moon. The title of the monographic issue is “Space is used to make war on us”, and obviously it is not a question of provocation but of observation. Powers aiming for supremacy cannot ignore this prospect, because the combination of space or lunar military bases and “direct energy” weapons (ie lasers and the like) will make any target on our planet vulnerable – with the partial exception of submarines. nuclear missile launchers, which an adequate layer of water will continue to protect; but they too must emerge, sooner or later.
Where are we with military competition in space? Limes He tells it in detail but immediately puts his hands forward: “The mass media are full of stories of Chinese and Russian hypersonic missiles – writes geopolitical analyst George Friedman in the magazine – and of how these weapons are changing the balance of military power. The US Department of Defense says it is having a hard time keeping up with the schedules of the two rival nations. But America has been working on hypersonic rocketry since the 1990s; I wrote a whole chapter of my 1996 book myself, The Future of War, on this type of weapon. It is hard to believe that the Pentagon has not made much progress in this program in the meantime and that the Chinese and the Russians have suddenly overtaken it. Nonetheless, it is possible that the United States has made a hole in the water. It is also possible that the Defense will use the issue to obtain more funding from Congress, while keeping the progress made under wraps. As for Beijing and Moscow, they try every possible means to appear powerful and intimidate ”.
Shouting “wolf” claiming that America is in conditions of tragic insecurity, practically doomed if the Pentagon budget is not massively increased every year, is a joke that has been renewed for decades, despite the fact that that budget has been only half of the world military spending and that the rest is mostly headed by American allied countries. However, even the alternative hypothesis, that of the hole in the water by the USA, cannot be discarded a priori, American technological failures have not been lacking in recent years: for example, the F-22 fighter planned in 750 units, whose production ceased in 2011 at 187, it is not a successful example (99% of defense officials will tell you otherwise, but the difference between 750 and 187 is a number that speaks volumes); some doubts could also be legitimate about the F-35, given that in July 2020 the US Air Force started buying the F-15s that the F-35 should have replaced for years (also on this point the military experts deny the problem, but the doubt remains for us, at least allow us that).
To stick to the spatial issues it deals with Limes of January, even the Space Shuttle was not a successful example: if the program was concluded without a new space shuttle replacing it, and we returned to the previous launch system by means of missiles, it means that the solution of the shuttle was not judged valid by NASA.
An interesting chapter is the analysis that Limes devotes to cooperation between Russia and China in the space sector; the magazine notes that it is, in essence, a blood donation from Moscow to Beijing, “research projects in the framework of which Russia has generally helped China overcome technological bottlenecks”. It is not that the Russians have a vocation to do so, but from their point of view (taste or mistake) they believe they are doing it in reaction to a perceived Western hostility. Given that all this results in a strengthening of China, perhaps (we repeat: perhaps) in the West we could ask ourselves whether it is appropriate to continue like this or it is better to try a different approach with Russia, for this and for other reasons. sanctions, pressures and warnings; Henry Kissinger has been saying this for years, and in the community of international politics analysts he is in the minority but not isolated in the proposal to find a power compromise over Ukraine, which in his opinion should not be included in NATO now or ever, and on this point Russia (according to Kissinger and others) must be reassured.
In the January issue Limes it also looks beyond Earth’s orbit and the Moon and takes into consideration journeys and colonies on Mars. We note that for some time now there has been no mention of 2030 as a goal for the landing of men and women on that planet. For now, space medicine tells us that the human physicist is unable to withstand the long stay required away from Earth for the outward journey, the return and even a short stay on Mars, and one wonders if and when things are going to happen. they can never change. Robots currently perform the tasks required of them in space exploration at great distances from Earth’s orbit very well, and it is certain that they will infinitely multiply their work capacities in the years and decades to come. Will sending men and women to Mars, instead of robots, really be necessary? Yes on the romantic level, but on the economic, scientific and military one it is to be doubted, whether robots will be able to do everything better and faster and at lower costs, without the need to jeopardize the lives and health of astronauts. , without inflicting exorbitant physical and psychological stress on them and without requiring tons of water, food and oxygen as a shopping basket.
Instead Elon Musk says that we will go to Mars, he will be right.