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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the may-you-live-in-interesting-times dept.

The LA Times (archive.fo) reports that the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes changes that could lead to the deployment of weapons in space:

President Obama has signed legislation that, by striking a single word from longstanding U.S. nuclear defense policy, could heighten tensions with Russia and China and launch the country on an expensive effort to build space-based defense systems. The National Defense Authorization Act, a year-end policy bill encompassing virtually every aspect of the U.S. military, contained two provisions with potentially momentous consequences.

One struck the word "limited" from language describing the mission of the country's homeland missile defense system. The system is designed to thwart a small-scale attack by a non-superpower such as North Korea or Iran. A related provision calls for the Pentagon to start "research, development, test and evaluation" of space-based systems for missile defense. Together, the provisions signal that the U.S. will seek to use advanced technology to defeat both small-scale and large-scale nuclear attacks. That could unsettle the decades-old balance of power among the major nuclear states.

[...] Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), who introduced and shepherded the policy changes in the House, said he drew inspiration from President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s, which was intended to use lasers and other space-based weaponry to render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." Known as "Star Wars," the initiative cost taxpayers $30 billion, but no system was ever deployed.

Other NDAA changes include a 2.1% pay raise for enlisted service members and officers, a boost of 16,000 more service members (to 476,000), restructuring of Tricare, and the final nail in the coffin for the Obama Administration's promise to close detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay. The bill also elevates the United States Cyber Command to the combatant command level, instead of a sub-unit of the Strategic Command, and addresses the recent National Guard bonus fiasco by requiring the Pentagon to prove that an individual soldier "did not accept their enlistment bonus in good faith", while allowing those who did make repayments to get a refund.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:45PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:45PM (#446788) Journal

    So as a species we'd rather risk nuclear annihilation of the planet than erase our borders and act as a single people.

    Depends on the act. But given the history of humanity, I think nuclear annihilation is probably preferable. I don't see the supposed benefit of acting as a single people, when most such acting has been an abominable grasp for power and the destruction of would be rivals.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @12:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @12:15AM (#446903)

    We need smaller states and MORE diversity, be it biological, ethnic, cultural, national, or societal.

    Having said that, I also believe we need more cooperation. If we could focus the brunt of the globalized world's industrial resources on getting into space and leveraging it to mine needed metals and minerals without further damaging the local ecology we could have the benefits of cheap and plentiful resources while also retaining what is left of the natural landscapes our ancestors got to visit, many of which have been clearcut or strip mined in the quest for more resources.

    Having said that, I do wonder about the long term issues from bringing minerals down to earth, since its effect on the mass of the earth and rotation speed cound be severe over time, depending on just how much stuff was deorbited to the surface, and what we did with it once here.

    Having said that, it would be preferable to the ecological nightmare we are rapidly marching towards utilizing exclusively non-renewable terrestrial resources (or unreplenished slow-growth renewable resources, such as timber and oil.)

    Being able to both agree to allow each state to live as they want, and collectively work towards the common goal of providing resources to all are impossible without a dramatic shift in the psychology oif much of the planet's thinking.