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| Home Front: Tech |
| Debate on Secret Program Bursts Into Open |
| 2004-12-11 |
| An intense secret debate about a previously unknown, enormously expensive technical intelligence program has burst into light in the form of scathing criticism from members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. For two years, the senators have disclosed, Republicans and Democrats on the panel have voted to block the secret program, which is believed to be a system of new spy satellites. But it continues to be financed at a cost that former Congressional officials put at hundreds of millions of dollars a year with support from the House, the Bush administration and Congressional appropriations committees. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the panel, denounced the program on Wednesday on the Senate floor as "totally unjustified and very, very wasteful." Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, later called it "unnecessary, ineffective, over budget and too expensive." Neither senator would say much more about what he was referring to. Even in private on Thursday, most Congressional and intelligence officials who were asked refused to comment about the name, purpose or cost of the program. But former Congressional and intelligence officials who oppose it said it would duplicate capabilities in existence or in development, as part of the country's vast network of satellites, aircraft and drones designed for eavesdropping and reconnaissance. Among the possibilities suggested by private experts, including John Pike of Globalsecurity.org, a research organization in Alexandria, Va., were that the system might be a controversial unproven program to launch a reconnaissance satellite that adversaries could not detect. Former Congressional officials said they would discount speculation that the debate had to do with any antisatellite space warfare capability... |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #12 FYI: All satellite programs are DoD. Look who launches and runs the satellites, and who they work for. And if this is a "high survivability" satellite program, its about time. The firs thing any adversary would want to do is blind us. Given the atrophy in ground assets as part and parcel of the atrophy of the military in the 90's (ex: the retirement of the SR-71, etc), people are unaware of how little we have except overhead assets available for our troops to gether intelligence. Its a danger we risk only at the risk of another Pearl Harbor, or a 9/11 on a continental scale. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2004-12-11 6:38:21 PM |
| #11 FYI: All satellite programs are DoD. Look who launches and runs the satellites, and who they work for. And if this is a "high survivability" satellite program, its about time. The firs thing any adversary would want to do is blind us. Given the atrophy in ground assets as part and parcel of the atrophy of the military in the 90's (ex: the retirement of the SR-71, etc), people are unaware of how little we have except overhead assets available for our troops to gether intelligence. Its a danger we risk only at the risk of another Pearl Harbor, or a 9/11 on a continental scale. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2004-12-11 6:38:21 PM |
| #10 T**** Sh*t for the dummycrats, we got the votes. I suspect this bird has something to do with SDI. |
| Posted by: Capt America 2004-12-11 8:21:35 PM |
| #9 America's dependency upon satellite based intelligence gathering is fundamentally unhealthy. Feet-on-the-ground tend to intercept more critical secret information. Our blindness that contributed to 9-11 is a solid example of this. During the Cold War our over-reliance upon satellites actually increased the danger of nuclear war. Had our relatively unsophisticated network of orbital stare-down mosaic arrays and other monitoring birds suddenly gone out-of-service, we might have been forced to "launch 'em or lose 'em." A single high-explosive projectile fired into "The Blue Cube" in Sunnyvale might have been able to precipitate such a crisis. That said, the value of orbital reconnaissance cannot be overstated. While it needs to be balanced with more conventional intelligence gathering methods, the KH series of satellites has provided us with critical and otherwise unobtainable data. Space based photography allowed Kennedy to correctly call Kruschev's bluff during the Cuban missile crisis. As to the current ado over this secret project; The technologically illiterate politicians who run this nation's government cannot be trusted to make wise decisions regarding our space based assets. However little I enjoy the military's tradition of budgetary mismanagement, I'd rather that America maintain its technological supremacy despite the cost overruns. Any new network of orbital monitoring systems will perforce be integrated with whatever missile defense shield that is built. Since this is part of a critical strategic initiative, it gets my vote. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-12-11 7:04:32 PM |
| #8 FYI: All satellite programs are DoD. Look who launches and runs the satellites, and who they work for. And if this is a "high survivability" satellite program, its about time. The firs thing any adversary would want to do is blind us. Given the atrophy in ground assets as part and parcel of the atrophy of the military in the 90's (ex: the retirement of the SR-71, etc), people are unaware of how little we have except overhead assets available for our troops to gether intelligence. Its a danger we risk only at the risk of another Pearl Harbor, or a 9/11 on a continental scale. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2004-12-11 6:38:21 PM |
| #7 Wonder if the bee in their bonnet is that this is a DOD program & not a CIA one ?? |
| Posted by: too true 2004-12-11 5:20:58 PM |
| #6 Gee, let's have a single point of failure for the war effort (oops we already have that, it's called ths disloyal opposition.) Isn't rockefeller from a red state - what the hell are they drinking? |
| Posted by: Douglas De Bono 2004-12-11 3:44:22 PM |
| #5 This sounds like it could be the battlefield internet we heard about a few weeks ago. High levels of redundancy would be integral to it. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2004-12-11 12:50:53 PM |
| #4 NYT: But former Congressional and intelligence officials who oppose it said it would duplicate capabilities in existence or in development, as part of the country’s vast network of satellites, aircraft and drones designed for eavesdropping and reconnaissance. Duplicate capabilities in existence? But that's the very point of military equipment. It needs to be redundant, so that if one system fails or is destroyed by the enemy, we continue to have coverage via the other systems. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-12-11 12:14:22 PM |
| #3 we need the teleporter we could send 6 Marines anywhere without worrying about the navy |
| Posted by: half 2004-12-11 11:30:36 AM |
| #2 The Zionist Death Ray Version 2.0 |
| Posted by: Matt 2004-12-11 11:24:06 AM |
| #1 More likely it is either a sigint bird or some sort of enhanced Jstars-on-a-satilite. |
| Posted by: N Guard 2004-12-11 11:23:08 AM |