International cooperation, openness, and transparency were three of Obama’s stated goals of diplomacy on entering the highest office of the United States government. One must ask the question: should these ideals not be extended into space? Any free republic-minded individual would concur. With the operation of the USAF’s X-37B space plane, we are witnessing anything but the extension of these concepts intergalactic planetary.
The X-37B is anything but an enhancement to cooperation between nations, openness, and transparency. If nothing else, it takes us further from this ideal and into the abyss of an extended cold war, which now bears more resemblance to so-called star wars ad nauseam. The 29-foot Boeing-made, X-37B was launched in April and is set for a nine month deployment. The spy space plane changes orbits and is most likely capable of detecting and flying to certain orbiting targets of interest to US intelligence. Its creation is in apparent response to the Chinese decimation of one of its own satellites in early 2007.
Like the space shuttle, only smaller and more maneuverable, the robotic space plane can ostensibly carry anything from small deployable robots to laser technology (directed-energy weapons, to use the US military’s own obtusely drawn out vernacular) to munitions in a large payload bay. The USAF declines to comment on specific details of what the X-37B’s mission actually is, which worries foreign powers in no small measure. All the USAF has said officially about the space plane’s mission is that it will, “…take a payload up, spend up to 270 days on orbit. They’ll run experiments to see if the new technology works.” Meaning what exactly?
Other nations are worried about the spy plane’s ability to potentially spy on their own satellites and possibly to “hi-jack” their hardware (through the use of deployable space bots, if they exist) and trick them into “seeing” something that isn’t there or more importantly not seeing what is there; any potential threat, for example. Moreover, other countries are threatened by the fact that whenever they use their own “dual-use” technology the US and other countries have the ability to check on what they are actually doing. But when the US does it, it goes unaccounted for by other countries and—this is what should scare John Q Taxpayer the most—by the citizens of the United States of America. The size and powers of the US government under the Obama administration are expanding exponentially and the scariest part of all is, it is increasing its expansion in many ways unbeknownst to the American public.
It is a bygone era in which the public saw the inner workings of the US government, understood its foreign policy, and, perhaps most importantly of all, witnessed and comprehended how it spent its taxpayer dollars. Obama vowed to change all this, to offer a transparent and accountable government, reduce the national debt and deficit. Halfway through his first term in office, the verdict is in and clear for all to see: Obama has done none of this, has broken every promise in this arena, and worse, he has done the very opposite of what he promised.
In an administration that is arguably more closed than the prior Bush administration or even the Nixon administration, Obama has brought little more than high-level corruption (which he demonstratively does nothing to correct till it becomes public knowledge), incompetence, and malfeasance to the government. Moreover, he has done little to assuage the admittedly damaged US reputation overseas, but instead has further damaged it with an administration that is as incompetent as it is mired in secrecy and double-dealing.
While promising to promote “responsible behavior in space,” Obama’s actions, specifically with the space plane, have stood in direct opposition to his words. Responsible to whom? one might ask. Accountable to whom? Obama no longer concerns himself with such questions, blinded as he is in his overwhelming obsession with his own abstract concepts of personal and political power.
(Photos: Boeing and USAF)
