The U.S. military shot down one of its own spy satellites this week. The satellite (like our military policy itself) was dysfunctional and the Pentagon’s originally-stated 
reason for the shoot-down was the fear that its fuel supply would survive re-entry, land in a populated area, and possibly expose people to lethal chemicals. Once the deed was done, however, that rationale started breaking down, at least judging by what I heard of the coverage (from NPR’s Pentagon reporters, who are pretty close to being official spokespersons). The next day the military was suggesting, though its press surrogates, that the fuel wasn’t all that dangerous and that, in any case, chances of its falling near civilization were around 3 out of 100. (Good thing, too, since as of Thursday morning they couldn’t be certain they had destroyed the fuel tank.) Of greater concern to them at that juncture was the possibility that components of the satellite’s surveillance technology would fall into the “wrong hands”, such as those of the Russians and the Chinese. (You heard right – the Russians and the Chinese. Apparently it’s 1960 again.)
Okay, so… Russia and China are our adversaries again. Good to know. And it appears that this is where the Pentagon sees a significant threat of war, at least according to what their officials were feeding NPR the other day. Per that report, they are worried about the integrity of our satellites and how vulnerable they are to attack. I will admit to being somewhat taken aback when one “senior official” the NPR reporter had dinner with is reported to have asked rhetorically, “How do we care for our satellites? How do we protect them?” W.T.F. – if war breaks out with the Russians or the Chinese, the last thing I’m thinking about is their fucking satellites. Here we’re threatened with nuclear obliteration, and these guys are obsessing over whether Russia can take down our Blackberries and ATM machines! Glad they’ve got their priorities straight. (Being burned to a cinder is bad enough, but what if I don’t get that important e-mail on my PDA???)
Anyway… no reason to be surprised that they’re more concerned with caring for their satellites than for the human race. By Friday of this past week, the newspapers were running stories about how this shoot-down was a crucial test of our “missile defense” capability. Missile defense is, as you likely know, that amazing system we’ve been spending tens of billions of dollars developing and deploying that, while not so good at shooting down incoming missiles, provides excellent protection for favored military contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. The satellite story morphed into basically a P.R. bonanza for Raytheon, inventor of the famously ineffective Patriot missile (much touted during the Gulf war as a tremendous success, the Patriot was later shown to have failed consistently and even to have erroneously targeted one of our own planes). Assuming the Pentagon is telling us the truth when they say the missile struck its target (i.e. assuming a lot), the system may be marginally useful if our adversaries start lobbing broken-down spy satellites at us with more than a week’s notice.
Lawd-o-mighty. How will we care for our poor ATM satellites then?
luv u,
jp
