Tag: Space Force

Weapons In Space

Yet More Madness from the Pentagon

BILL ASTORE

SEP 21, 2026

Last week, the Secretary of the Air Force announced the U.S. has weapons in space. As Ken Klippenstein has noted, the announcement was in effect a bid for more mega-billions for the U.S. Space Force. Here’s a helpful chart, courtesy of Klippenstein:

Aerospace Center for Space Policy and Strategy

Greater than 120%: now that’s a budget increase!

Zealots and opportunists are ruling us. The zealots actually believe that America’s security is best attained through full-spectrum dominance, including space dominance. The opportunists don’t care one way or the other–they’re just pursuing the golden flow of money emanating in a steady stream from the Trump administration in the cause of that dominance.

Greed and bellicosity are the fundamental problems. These men (I’d wager they’re all men) define everything in terms of conflict and dominance. They are Klingons, proudly so, without a Klingon sense of honor. To mix movie references, they are imperial stormtroopers seeking their own Death Star wonder weapons.

Space should be a realm for exploration and inspiration, a place for humans to grow further in knowledge and wisdom. These morally impoverished souls are ruining space even as they poison the earth. 

Again, it’s not just about space weapons. It’s a major money- and power play by America’s youngest service, the U.S. Space Force, complete with proposed fascistic uniforms for its “guardians” based on the movie “Starship Troopers.”

Love the jackboots

There just wasn’t enough money/influence for U.S. Space Force in its primary mission of defense and deterrence, so now it’s all about war fighting and weapons. That’s where the real money is at, and the Space Force wants a bigger slice of the fiscal pie, irrespective of the risk of a war in space.

We’re clearly entering a new “space race,” not a quest as in the 1960s to put a man on the Moon to upstage the Soviets, but one where the U.S. attempts to occupy and dominate space while projecting power, i.e. killing people, from orbit. U.S. weapons in space will provoke other countries like Russia and China to respond in kind; the proliferation of weapons, some likely controlled by AI, will greatly increase the likelihood of major disruptions in vital satellite communications here on earth–and that may be the least of our problems if satellites monitoring nuclear forces are disrupted.

Pete Hegseth’s “Department of War” is creating an escalatory dynamic that makes a war in space much more likely and the U.S. far less safe–yet another “war of choice” inflicted on the world. As the saying goes, it’s worse than a crime, it’s a mistake, a most grievous one for humanity.

War Profits Soar as Diplomacy Sinks

W.J. Astore

I came across a remarkable stat while reading William Hartung’s latest article, “The Profits of War,” at TomDispatch.com. The giant military contractor, Lockheed Martin, received $77 billion in federal funds in FY2020 (Lockheed Martin builds the F-35 fighter jet), almost double the entire budget for the U.S. State Department (roughly $44 billion). So as President Biden gives speeches about favoring diplomacy over military action, he might want to consider how the Pentagon’s budget (and related spending on weaponry, including new nuclear weapons) is roughly 20 times that of the State Department. Biden once said, show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value. Looks like weaponry and war remains number one and job one. USA! USA!

I had to laugh when I saw this headline from the New York Times in my email this morning: “At U.N., Biden calls for diplomacy, not conflict, but some are skeptical.” Readers, I can’t fathom any skepticism about U.S. intentions, can you? We are a peace-loving nation. We just choose to show it by constantly building new weapons in a febrile quest for “full-spectrum dominance” as we showcase our global reach and global power with assassin drones and endless wars. Does any other country in the world have 750 overseas military bases in 80 countries? Does any other country in the world slice and dice the map into regional commands (Africa Command, Central Command, and so on) led by four-star generals and admirals? Proving the world is not enough, America now seeks to dominate space with our “Space Force” and virtual worlds like cyberspace.

Time to practice some “diplomacy” in space.

Remember how Teddy Roosevelt said to speak softly but also to carry a big stick? That needs to be amended. The U.S. policy for decades has been: Shout loudly and swing a big stick. And that “big stick” is the U.S. military, which routinely gobbles up more than half of the federal discretionary budget.

Let me know when the State Department’s budget soars to $750 billion and the Pentagon’s budget plunges to $44 billion and maybe I’ll believe Joe Biden’s words about the new importance of diplomacy in America.

A Trumped-Up Space Force

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Space exploration and exploitation isn’t what it used to be

W.J. Astore

Space, the “final frontier,” isn’t what it used to be.  In the 1960s and early 1970s I grew up a fan of NASA as well as Star Trek with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.  NASA was (and is) a civilian space agency, even though its corps of astronauts was originally drawn from the ranks of military test pilots.  Star Trek offered a vision of a “federation” of planets in the future, united by a vision “to explore strange new worlds,” venturing forth boldly in the cause of peace.  Within the US military, space itself was considered to be the new “high ground,” admittedly a great place for spy satellites (which helped to keep the peace) but a disastrous place for war.  (Of course, that didn’t prevent the military from proposing crazy ideas, like building a military base on the moon armed with nuclear-tipped missiles.)

Attracted to the space mission, my first assignment as a military officer was to Air Force Space Command.  I helped to support the Space Surveillance Center in Cheyenne Mountain Complex, which kept track of all objects in earth orbit, from satellites to space junk.  (You don’t want a lost hammer or other space junk colliding with your billion-dollar satellite at a speed of roughly 17,000 miles per hour.)  In the mid-1980s, when I was in AFSPACECOM, an offensive space force to “dominate” space was a vision shared by very few people.  I had a small role to play in supporting tests of an anti-satellite (ASAT) missile launched from F-15s, but those tests were curtailed and later cancelled as the Soviet Union, considered as America’s main rival for control of space, began to collapse in the late 1980s.

But that was then, and this is now, and the “now” of the moment is a new US military service, an offensive space force, proposed by the Trump administration as essential to US national security.  At TomDispatch.com, William Hartung provides the details of Trump’s new space force in this fine article.  As I read Hartung’s article, a thought flashed through my mind: We’re not the peaceful Federation of Star Trek.  We’re much more like the Klingon Empire.

In the original Star Trek, the Klingons were a highly aggressive and thoroughly militaristic species that was dedicated to dominating space.  They were proudly imperial and driven by conquest.  Trump, who with his bombast and barking and boasting would make a great Klingon, sees a “space force” that’s all military: that’s all about domination through aggressive action and better offensive weaponry.

Perhaps you’ve heard the saying: Everywhere we go, there we are.  Increasingly for America, that saying means: Everywhere we go, there our military and weapons are.  Even in space.

The “final frontier” of space, which in my youth was largely a realm of peaceful exploration, whether by NASA in the real-world or in the imaginary future of Star Trek, is now under Trump an increasingly militarized place.  This is so because our minds, perhaps humanity’s true “final frontier,” have also been thoroughly militarized.

A war-driven people will bring war with them wherever they go.  If the Vulcans (like Mr. Spock, who was half-Vulcan) are smart, they won’t reach out to humans if and when we find a “warp” drive that allows us to travel much faster than the speed of light.  Logical and peaceful beings that they are, perhaps they’ll quarantine earth and humanity instead.  Maybe with the Vulcan equivalent of a big, fat, beautiful wall?