15. Despite its similar-sounding name, the taser—developed in the 1970s by a nuclear physicist who spent part of his work life at NASA—is not based on directed energy; it is a gun that fires not bullets but electrodes, which then conduct electric current through the victim’s muscles. The word “taser” is an acronym for “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle.”
16. H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898; Amazon Digital Services, Public Domain Book, 2012), 20, 25, 52, 73, 104.
17. William J. Fanning Jr., “The Historical Death Ray and Science Fiction in the 1920s and 1930s,” Science Fiction Studies 37:2 (July 2010), 253–74; David Zimmerman, Britain’s Shield: Radar and the Defeat of the Luftwaffe (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberly, 2013), 72–75. Winston Churchill, “Shall We All Commit Suicide?” Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine, Sept. 24, 1924, quoted (though dated as 1921) in Zimmerman, Britain’s Shield, 61.
18. A. P. (Albert Percival) Rowe, One Story of Radar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948/2015), 6.
19. Zimmerman, Britain’s Shield, 76; Rowe, One Story of Radar, 6–7; B. A. Austin, “Precursors to Radar: The Watson-Watt Memorandum and the Daventry Experiment,” Int. J. Electrical Engineering Education 36 (1999), 366–67, www.bawdseyradar.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Wilkins-Calculations.pdf (accessed Apr. 22, 2017); David E. Fisher, A Summer Bright and Terrible: Winston Churchill, Lord Dowding, Radar, and the Impossible Triumph of the Battle of Britain (Berkeley, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005), 66–68.
20. Rowe, One Story of Radar, 6.
21. Giovanni de Briganti, “2015 Ushers In the Era of Laser Weapons,” Defense-Aerospace.com, Jan. 5, 2014, www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/feature/5/159975/2015-ushers-in-era-of-laser-weapons.html; Aaron Mehta, “Laser Weapons Ready for Use Today, Lockheed Executives Say,” Defense News, Mar. 16, 2016, www.defensenews.com/story/defense/innovation/2016/03/15/laser-weapons-directed-energy-lockheed-pewpew/81826876/ (accessed Apr. 22, 2017).
22. Bob Preston, Dana J. Johnson, Sean J. A. Edwards, Michael Miller, and Calvin Shipbaugh, Space Weapons Earth Wars (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2002), 25, 30.
23. David Wright, Laura Grego, and Lisbeth Gronlund, The Physics of Space Security: A Reference Manual (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005), 2, 5.
24. See, e.g., Yasmin Tadjdeh, “Directed Energy Weapons Gaining Acceptance Across U.S. Military,” National Defense, Aug. 2016, 38–39, digital.nationaldefensemagazine.org/i/708228-aug-2016/39; Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., “Lasers Vs. Drones: Directed Energy Summit Emphasizes the Achievable,” Breaking Defense, June 23, 2016, breakingdefense.com/2016/06/lasers-vs-drones-directed-energy-summit-emphasizes-the-achievable; Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., “The Laser Revolution: This Time It May Be Real,” Breaking Defense, July 28, 2015, breakingdefense.com/2015/07/the-laser-revolution-this-time-it-may-be-real. Freedberg’s 2015 piece quotes Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, who “lived through Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and the Airborne Laser—but this time, he thinks, lasers really are becoming reality.” In the following paragraph, however, the author says that’s “not an easy case to make” and quotes a former head of the Missile Defense Agency, retired Lieutenant General Trey Obering, saying, “DE [directed energy] was right around the corner in 1976. It was right around the corner in 1986. It was right around the corner in 1996.” A clearinghouse for responsible information on directed-energy technologies for mostly military but also civilian use is Wave Front: The Directed Energy Newsletter, published by DEPS, the Directed Energy Professional Society, www.deps.org/DEPSpages/newsletter.html. (All accessed Apr. 22, 2017.)
25. Preston et al., Space Weapons Earth Wars, 128.
26. The futurist Herman Kahn (Dr. Strangelove) used this phrase as a book title in 1962 and again in 1985.
27. In 1946 the Air Force was still the Army Air Force, and LeMay was its R & D director, but the National Security Act of 1947 created the Air Force as an independent branch. In 1948 LeMay became the first commander of Strategic Air Command. Many Americans who lived through the era of the Vietnam War will remember General LeMay for his advice about North Vietnam: “My solution to the problem would be to tell them frankly that they’ve got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.” From LeMay, Mission with LeMay: My Story (New York: Doubleday, 1965), quoted in, e.g., Alfonso Narvaez, “Gen. Curtis LeMay, an Architect of Strategic Air Power, Dies at 83,” New York Times, Oct. 2, 1990. Less widely known is his statement about war in general: “But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.” “Race for the Superbomb: People & Events: General Curtis E. LeMay (1906–1990),” American Experience, www.pbs.org/wgbh//amex/bomb/peopleevents/pandeAMEX61.html (accessed Apr. 22, 2017).
28. Buchheim articulates the Eisenhower administration’s dualistic view of space efforts: “The statesman, endeavoring to promote world peace, can see both a hope and a threat in astronautics. International cooperation in space enterprises could help to promote trust and understanding. Astronautics can provide physical means to aid international inspection, and thereby, can help in the process toward disarmament and the prevention of surprise attack. Astronautics can also lead to military systems which, once developed and deployed, may make hopes of disarmament, arms control, or inspection more difficult to fulfill.” Quoted in Sean N. Kalic, US Presidents and the Militarization of Space 1946–1967 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2012), 44.
29. Ronald Reagan, “Address to the Nation on Defense and National Security,” Mar. 23, 1983, transcript, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, www.reaganlibrary.archives.gov/archives/speeches/1983/32383d.htm (accessed Apr. 22, 2017).
30. Steven R. Weisman, “Reagan Proposes U.S. Seek New Way to Block Missiles,” New York Times, Mar. 24, 1983.
31. “Boost-phase intercept has the big advantage, especially for small states, that is for North Korea, that you can get close. You can intercept before the missile has stopped burning—maybe 250 seconds, four minutes after it ignites—and you can do that really quite comfortably with the warning that we’ve had since 1970 from our defense support program satellites. You could launch an interceptor very comfortably 100 seconds after the ICBM starts burning. The collision, [or] the intercept, would be made comfortably before the missile got up to full speed, so it wouldn’t fall anywhere near the United States. If you intercepted 10 seconds before the end of powered flight, it would fall 5,000 kilometers short.” Sherry Jones, “Missile Wars—Interview: Richard Garwin,” Frontline, PBS, 2002, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/missile/interviews/garwin.html (accessed Apr. 22, 2017).
32. Burton Richter, “It Doesn’t Take Rocket Science,” Washington Post, July 23, 2000, quoted in Mary H. Cooper, “Missile Defense: Should the U.S. Build a Missile Defense System,” CQ Researcher, Sept. 8, 2000 (accessed Apr. 22, 2017).
33. John M. Broder, “ ‘Brilliant Pebbles’ a Last Hope?: ‘Star Wars’ Stakes Future on Mini-Missile Concept,” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 29, 1989. See also William J. Broad, “What’s Next for ‘Star Wars’? ‘Brilliant Pebbles,’ ” New York Times, Apr. 25, 1989.
34. James A. Abrahamson and Henry F. Cooper, “What Did We Get for Our $30-Billion Investment in SDI/BMD?” National Institute for Public Policy, Sept. 1993, 8, 2, 5, www.nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/What-for-30B_.pdf (accessed Apr. 22, 2017).
35. “Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Budget Slashed, Funds Earmarked,” CQ Almanac 1990, 46th ed. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1991), 619–93, library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/cqal90-1111525 (accessed July 22, 2016); Michael R. Gordon, “Pentagon Curbing Public Data on ‘Star Wars,’ ” New York Times, Jan. 26, 1987.
36. Barry Grass, “CISER Survey: Top Scientists Oppose SDI 8–1,” Cornell Chronicle 18:11 (Nov. 6, 1986); Steven Soter, “SDI Survey,” Science 235:4791 (Feb. 20, 1987), 831; Philip W. Anderson et al., “Open Letter to Congress,” Mar. 12, 2986, in Marshall
W. Nirenberg Papers, Profiles in Science, National Library of Medicine, profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/JJBBSJ.pdf (accessed Apr. 22, 2017); John Kogut, “Say No to a ‘Dumb, Dangerous’ Program,” The Scientist 1:7 (Feb. 23, 1987); William Sweet, “Science Wars over Star Wars,” Editorial Research Reports 1986, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1986). For a nontechnical narrative about the people and stories behind Star Wars, see William J. Broad, Star Warriors: A Penetrating Look into the Lives of the Young Scientists Behind Our Space Age Weaponry (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985).
37. “SDI Debate: Is the Strategic Defense Initiative in the National Interest,” Nov. 18, 1987, C-SPAN, Program 532-1, www.c-span.org/video/?532-1/sdi-debate (accessed Apr. 22, 2017).
38. Dimitri K. Simes, After the Collapse: Russia Seeks Its Place as a Great Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), chap. 1 at www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/simes-collapse.html (accessed Oct. 23, 2017). This is Simes’s translation/paraphrase of a statement made in private conversation by Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, a former chief of the General Staff as well as Gorbachev’s military advisor.
39. Bradley Graham, “Rumsfeld Pares Oversight of Missile Defense Agency,” Washington Post, Feb. 16, 2002; Missile Defense Agency, “Airborne Laser Test Bed Successful in Lethal Intercept Experiment,” news release, Feb. 11, 2010, www.mda.mil/news/10news0002.html; Jim Wolf and David Alexander, “U.S. Successfully Tests Airborne Laser on Missile,” Reuters, Feb. 12, 2010, www.reuters.com/article/usa-arms-laser-idUSN1111660620100212?type=marketsNews (accessed Apr. 22, 2017). Also see generally Laura Grego, George N. Lewis, and David Wright, Shielded from Oversight: The Disastrous US Approach to Strategic Missile Defense, Union of Concerned Scientists, July 2016.
40. There is much variation in terminology used for orbiting space rocks, based on size, location, and material constituents. For an overall look at asteroids, comets, and impactors, see Neil deGrasse Tyson, “Killer Asteroids,” in Tyson, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier, ed. Avis Lang (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), 45–54. Many asteroids explode in the upper atmosphere. For instance, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, which relies on a network of sensors to pick up the “infrasound signature” of nuclear detonations, detected twenty-six explosions between 2000 and 2013 that were caused by asteroids rather than nuclear detonations. Most exploded high above Earth, but several did hit. There was a six-hundred-kiloton impact in Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, and asteroid impacts greater than twenty kilotons in Indonesia in 2009, in the Southern Ocean in 2004, and in the Mediterranean Sea in 2002. None of these was detected in advance. B612 Foundation, “B612 Foundation Releases Video at Museum of Flight Earth Day Event Showing Evidence of 26 Atomic Bomb Scale Asteroid Impacts Since 2000,” news release, Apr. 22, 2014, b612foundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/B612_PR_042214.pdf (accessed Apr. 10, 2018).
41. Center for Near Earth Object Studies, “CNEOS Is NASA’s Center for Computing Asteroid and Comet Orbits and Their Odds of Earth Impact,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory, cneos.jpl.nasa.gov; NASA, “Planetary Defense Frequently Asked Questions,” www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/faq (accessed Oct. 23, 2017).
42. Carl Sagan and Steven J. Ostro, “Dangers of Asteroid Deflection,” Nature 368 (Apr. 7, 1994), 501.
43. Preston et al., Space Weapons Earth Wars, 41–42, 173–83.
44. See Mika McKinnon and Mia Risra, “A Scientist Responds . . . to Deep Impact,” io9, June 10, 2015, io9.gizmodo.com/a-scientist-responds-to-deep-impact-1709206458 (accessed Oct. 24, 2017).
45. At the Asteroid Deflection Research Center (ADRC) at Iowa State University, under the aegis of NASA, work has been proceeding on the Hypervelocity Asteroid Intercept Vehicle (HAIV), a two-part craft that would be launched by rocket, like any other missile. Upon nearing the target, it would rely on cameras and sensors for a reliable aim. First, the “leader spacecraft” would hit the surface of the object, creating a shallow crater and destroying itself in the process; then the “follower spacecraft” would make its way into the crater and detonate its nuclear explosive device deep within, where it would have the maximum effect. The yields under consideration range from 300 kilotons to 2 megatons. See Bong Wie, “Optimal Fragmentation and Dispersion of Hazardous Near-Earth Objects: NIAC Phase I Final Report,” Sept. 25, 2012, 14, www.nasa.gov/pdf/718394main_Wie_2011_PhI_NEO_Mitigation.pdf (accessed Apr. 22, 2017).
46. Strana. Ru, “Russia K-19 Nuclear Submarine Saved the Globe from Third World War,” trans. Leila Wilmers, Pravda. Ru, July 6, 2006, www.pravdareport.com/history/06-07-2006/83000-submarine-0/ (accessed Apr. 22, 2017).
47. Command and Control, dir. Robert Kenner, American Experience Films, PBS, 2016, www.commandandcontrolfilm.com, based on Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (New York: Penguin, 2013), see esp. 225–26, 325–34, 425–27. See also, e.g., Neil Denny, “Interview: Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control,” Little Atoms 1, Jan. 17, 2016, littleatoms.com/interview-eric-schlossers-command-and-control; Scott D. Sagan, “On the Brink? How Safe Are Our Nukes?” American Scholar (Autumn 2013), theamericanscholar.org/on-the-brink/#.V-gW5CRoBdk; Eric Schlosser interviewed by Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh, “How the U.S. Narrowly Avoided a Nuclear Holocaust 33 Years Ago, and Still Risks Catastrophe Today,” Democracy Now!, Sept. 18, 2013, transcript at www.democracynow.org/2013/9/18/how_the_us_narrowly_avoided_a (all accessed Apr. 22, 2017). Between 1950 and March 1968 alone, there were at least twelve hundred “significant” US nuclear incidents, according to a study by Sandia Labs (Schlosser, Command and Control, 327).
48. NASA, “New Desktop Application Has Potential to Increase Asteroid Detection, Now Available to Public,” Asteroid Redirect Mission, release 15-041, Mar. 15, 2015, www.nasa.gov/press/2015/march/new-desktop-application-has-potential-to-increase-asteroid-detection-now-available; B612, “Our Mission: Dedicated to the Discovery and Deflection of Asteroids,” b612foundation.org/our-mission/#sentinel-mission (accessed Apr. 22, 2017); Edward T. Lu and Stanley G. Love, “Gravitational Tractor for Towing Asteroids,” Nature 438 (Nov. 10, 2005), 177–78.
49. Michael Krepon with Michael Katz-Hyman, “Space Weapons and Proliferation,” Nonproliferation Review 12:2 (July 2005), 325. Krepon stresses the need to distinguish between “residual” or “latent” capabilities and developed, “dedicated” space warfare capabilities, hence his reference to “specifically designed and flight-tested.”
50. Alexei Arbatov, “Preventing an Arms Race in Space,” in Outer Space: Weapons, Diplomacy, and Security, ed. Alexei Arbatov and Vladimir Dvorkin (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2010), 87.
51. Andrew Cockburn, “The New Red Scare: Reviving the Art of Threat Inflation,” Harper’s 333:1999 (Dec. 2016), 25. Cockburn cites a quote from Ivan Selin, director of the Strategic Forces Division in the Pentagon’s Office of Systems Analysis, who was fond of saying, “Welcome to the world of strategic analysis, where we program weapons that don’t work to meet threats that don’t exist.”
52. Vladimir Dvorkin, “Space Weapons Programs,” in Outer Space, ed. Arbatov and Dvorkin, 31–45; Viktor Mizin, “Non-Weaponization of Outer Space: Lessons from Negotiations,” in Outer Space, ed. Arbatov and Dvorkin, 52–53; Matthew Evangelista, “The Paradox of State Strength: Transnational Relations, Domestic Structures, and Security Policy in Russia and the Soviet Union,” Int. Organization 49:1 (Winter 1995), 14–17; Joan Johnson-Freese, Heavenly Ambitions: America’s Quest to Dominate Space (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 39; Matthew Mowthorpe, The Militarization and Weaponization of Space (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 70. Of interest in the present context is Evangelista’s discussion of physicist Richard Garwin’s role in the drafting of treaty language re the limitation of ASAT weapons, following Garwin’s having met Soviet physicist Evgenii Velikhov at an early 1983 meeting between a Soviet delegation and the US National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on International Security and Arms Control (14–16).
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53. Dvorkin, “Space Weapons Programs,” in Outer Space, ed. Arbatov and Dvorkin, 35.
54. For more on dazzling, blinding, jamming, and spoofing, see Wright et al., Physics of Space Security, 117–30.
55. Samuel R. Delaney, Babel-17 (1966; repr. Open Road Media, 2014), loc. 1256–57.
56. The complete text of all UN treaties, principles, and resolutions regarding space law is available through the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/index.html. The foundational Outer Space Treaty came into force in 1967; see www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/introouterspacetreaty.html. Efforts against weaponization came later; see, e.g., UN General Assembly, “Resolution 62/20: Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space,” Dec. 5, 2007, www.oosa.unvienna.org/pdf/gares/ARES_62_020E.pdf. (All accessed Apr. 23, 2017.)
57. The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs began to address concerns about space debris officially in 1994 and eventually produced a set of recommendations titled “Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines,” which were endorsed by the General Assembly in 2007 but remain voluntary. For UNOOSA and the UN’s approach to space debris, see www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/topics/space-debris.html; www.un.org/en/events/tenstories/08/spacedebris.shtml. For “Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines,” see www.unoosa.org/pdf/publications/st_space_49E.pdf. See also NASA’s publication Orbital Debris Quarterly News, orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/quarterly-news/newsletter.html/. See UN Office at Geneva, Conference on Disarmament: Introduction to the Conference, www.unog.ch/80256EE600585943/(httpPages)/BF18ABFEFE5D344DC1256F3100311CE9?OpenDocument; CD Documents Related to Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space, www.unog.ch/80256EE600585943/(httpPages)/D4C4FE00A7302FB2C12575E4002DED85?OpenDocument. (All accessed Apr. 23, 2017.)
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