Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Credit: U.S. Air Force

CNN is ready to drop on the TV watcher a special report – “War in Space: The Next Battlefield” – airing Tuesday, November 29^th at 9 p.m. Eastern Time.

“The stakes couldn’t be higher. How the US responds to this new threat could determine who wins the defining conflict of the 21st century,” explains a CNN overview on the television show.

The first X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle waits in the encapsulation cell of the Evolved Expendable Launch vehicle on April 5, 2010 at the Astrotech facility in Titusville, Fla. Half of the Atlas V five-meter fairing is visible in the background.
Credit: U.S. Air Force

Advanced capabilities

Those featured in the show include: Gen. John Hyten, head of US Strategic Command; Gen. William Shelton, former head of Space Command; and Peter Singer, who advises the Defense Department on space threats and authored “Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War,” which runs through a scenario of space war.

America is “quietly developing advanced capabilities” that could, some day, have defensive or offensive missions in space, explains a CNN promo on the show.

Sounding the alarm

New weapons include the US Navy’s Laser Weapons System, or LAWs, the US military’s first operational laser weapon now deployed in the Persian Gulf on board the USS Ponce. Also, add in the X-37B, a pilotless space drone resembling the space shuttle without windows or a cockpit, a craft that has already flown multiple missions to space, CNN explains.

Russia and China are making rapid advances, with some of the most senior military commanders sounding the alarm that this is a war — the next world war and the first to extend beyond the confines of Earth – one that America could lose.

For more information on this CNN production, go to:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/28/politics/space-war-us-military-preparations/index.html

Credit: The University of Pennsylvania Press

Heavenly ambitions

For more information on this topic and related issues, take a look at this book, Heavenly Ambitions – America’s Quest to Dominate Space by Joan Johnson-Freese, Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College.

Chapters include: “Space: The Final Cold War Frontier”; “Space Weapons: Fact and Fiction”; and “Globalizing Space.”

Resources

For more information on this book, published by The University of Pennsylvania Press, go to:

http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14608.html

Listen to this podcast by Johnson-Freese at:

http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/podcast/pp_podcast_johnsonfreese.mp3

Also, check out the latest from Johnson-Freese, Space Warfare in the 21st Century: Arming the Heavens.

This book examines the recent shift in US space policy and the forces that continually draw the US back into a space-technology security dilemma.

The dual-use nature of the vast majority of space technology, meaning of value to both civilian and military communities and being unable to differentiate offensive from defensive intent of military hardware, makes space an area particularly ripe for a security dilemma.

For more information on this offering, go to:

https://www.routledge.com/Space-Warfare-in-the-21st-Century-Arming-the-Heavens/Johnson-Freese/p/book/9781138693883