U.S. AIR SPACE FORCE?
Thursday, December 5, 1996
Source: Drew Williamson
SOURCE: The Toronto Star - p.A23
DATE: Thursday, December 5, 1996
U.S. AIR FORCE MAY BE GOING SCI-FI
Plan has robot attack planes, killer laser beams
BY RICHARD SISK
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
WASHINGTON-The U.S. Air Force could morph into the Space and Air
Force under a strategic plan to win the next centuries wars. The
sci-fi-like Space and Air Force would feature robot at tack planes, killer
laser beams and sophisticated weapons systems expected to be able to hit
any target anywhere on Earth.
It also could win the perennial fight with the other armed services
for shrinking defence dollars.
The flight service is on a path of change "from an air force in to
an air and space force on an evolutionary path to a space and air force,"
Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall said.
Widnall's comments came as she outlined the plan called "Global
Engagement: A Vision for the 21st Century Air Force."
Global Engagement foresees new generations of robot-operated
unmanned air vehicles for surveillance and pinpoint strikes at enemy
forces, together with orbiting spy satellites for weapons guidance and
communication, and airborne lasers to zap incoming ballistic missiles.
The new technology would "offer an alternative to the kind of military
operation that pits large numbers of young Americans against an adversary
in brute, force-on-force conflicts," the air force plan said.
Defence analysts viewed that statement as a warm-up shot at the
army, navy and marines in preparation for next year's battle for long-range
budgets in the Quadrennial Defence Review by U.S. Congress.
"All the services are positioning themselves to try to walk away
from that review with me biggest share of the money," said industry
consultant Loren Thompson.
The other services will weigh in shortly with their own plans, as
"everybody scrambles to in sure that they come up with a mission
justification for their weapons," said retired army Col. Dan Smith at the
Centre for Defence Information.
"The service rivalries are more intense now because, supposedly, me
defence budgets are going to be cut," Smith said. The current budget range
is $250 billion to $270 billion (U.S.), he said.
Widnall called the dominance of space envisioned under Global
Engagement as revolutionary for warfare "as the invention of gunpowder or
the Manhattan Project," which produced the first atomic bomb.
The goal is "to build the ability to detect, track and eventually
target anything on the surface of the Earth," she said.
The air force has given a $1.1 billion contract to a joint venture
of Lockheed Martin, Boeing and the TRW Corp. to develop
an attack laser aircraft
The plane would be a modified Boeing 747 with a particle laser gun
mounted in the nose to destroy enemy ballistic missiles with high-energy
beams of light at ranges up to 480 kilo metres.
If the project is successful, the air force would buy seven more of
the laser aircraft after the year 2003 at a cost of another $6 billion.
But Thompson pointed to the enormous technical problems that must
be overcome in building a laser more powerful than any now in existence.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
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