NewsMax.com/Washington Times
Thursday, Feb. 8, 2001
The Pentagon is warning that reliance on space technology is America's Achilles heel, which Communist China and Russia are intent on exploiting and attacking. According to the Thursday issue of the Washington Times:
That was the scenario laid out by Vice Adm. Thomas R. Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and George J. Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, at the intelligence community's annual world threat briefing Wednesday.
This was the first time American intelligence officials have discussed in public the space-warfare threat facing the United States.
Because the U.S. military relies so heavily on satellites and space-based sensors for communications, intelligence, reconnaissance and command-and-control of forces all over the world, the three-star admiral said, "future adversaries will be able [by 2015] to employ a wide variety of means to disrupt, degrade or defeat portions of the U.S. space support system.
"China and Russia have across-the-board programs under way, and other smaller states and non-state entities are pursuing more limited – though potentially effective – approaches."
Trent concurred, adding that "our adversaries well understand U.S. strategic dependence on access to space.
"Operations to disrupt, degrade, or defeat U.S. space assets will be attractive options for those seeking to counter U.S. strategic military superiority."
U.S. experts have reported that China is already developing ground-based laser weapons and electronic-pulse weapons capable of blinding or destroying American satellites.
Both Wilson and Trent told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee they cannot verify that China is keeping its word given to the United States that it would curb sales of its missiles and weapons of mass destruction to other counties.
Seated between Wilson and the State Department's intelligence chief, Thomas Fingar, the CIA director laid out a sobering assessment of what confronts the United States from abroad:
• Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden and his terrorists pose "the most immediate and serious threat" of attacks on Americans on American soil.
• Not only is the Islamist Taleban regime in Afghanistan providing a safe haven to bin Laden, but also it is engaging in drug trafficking.
• The threat from long-range ballistic nuclear missiles is confined no longer just to Russia and China but now includes North Korea, Iran and possibly Iraq.
• Risk of "full-scale war" between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region, now "unacceptably high," could lead to a regional nuclear conflict.
• Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia is reverting in several ways to a Soviet-style government, undermining democracy.
Didn't you hear? President Bush has proclaimed OBL is nothing to worry about anymore, he's "nearly irrelevant". See how powerful we are. Time to move on to bigger and better things.