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Congress recently approved $5 million for the exploration of a "space-based missile defense" as part of the 2009 Defense Appropriations Bill on Sept. 30, with the hope of finding an effective method to protect America's satellites.
Currently, the U.S. missile defenses are handled by the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, which has limited capabilities of stopping missiles from hitting major American cities.
The SDIO was initially made public by President Ronald Reagan during his 1983 speech dubbed "star wars" because it seemed to insinuate that the cold war would be moving into "weaponizing space."
The organization's main goal was to stop potentially inbound Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles or ICBMs, which were an extremely powerful and accurate version of the atomic bomb that could be launched from anywhere on the planet.
The SDIO experimented with everything from lasers to hypervelocity rail guns, but due to technological constraints and the absence of powerful computers during the 1980s, they settled for "Extended Range Interceptor," missiles that would be launched from Earth to intercept and destroy the incoming Soviet ICBMs. The extended range interceptors would also prove to be the most easily constructed and accurate missile defense system.
Not much has changed in missile defense tactics since 1983 except for the improvement of the interceptor missile and its homing system.
This recent congressional announcement to fund the improvement of our missile shield may be due in part to recent actions by the Chinese government.
In 2007, the Chinese government destroyed one of its weather satellites with a newly developed missile system.
Most of America's military networks, GPS missile guidance systems and army logistics depend entirely on satellites. If the Chinese government were to cripple our satellites, they would not only cripple the American military but also make our missile defense shield obsolete, due to the dependence on GPS satellites.
Military analysts never saw this vulnerability as one that could be taken advantage of, until the recent Chinese advancement on missile systems.
Developing a potential "space-based defense" would eliminate both the threat to American satellites and to America itself with an all inclusive system that would destroy any incoming missile. According to The Independent Working Group, a pro-space-based missile defense panel, a space-based program can be efficiently developed and tested at a maximum cost of $5 billion.
Some critics argue that "weaponizing space" would instigate a space war with the Chinese or even the Russians, but the fact still stands that there is a major flaw in our defense network that needs to be remedied in order to guarantee the general welfare and protection of the United States.
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