Space Industry Report Extends Geopolitics Out to the Moon

August 24, 2020                              (larouchepub.com)

• Last May, the US Space Force and Air Force Research Laboratory held a ‘space industrial workshop’ with 120 experts in government, industry, and academia. This resulted in a report released in July entitled: “State of the Space Industrial Base”, an unofficial assessment of industrial base supporting the US military in space.

• The report confirms a previous determination made in the National Security Strategy of 2017 that identified Russia and China as “strategic adversaries” of the United States. According to the 2017 report, “China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity.” In this new report, Space Force chief, General John Raymond, writes in the forward that this viewpoint extends directly into space.

• The new report also cites a 2019 report from the Air Force Space Command entitled: “The Future of Space 2060 and Implications for U.S. Strategy” stating that “China is executing a long-term civil, commercial, and military strategy to explore and economically develop the cislunar domain with the explicit aim of displacing the US as the leading space power. Other nations are developing similar national strategies.”

• According to the report, China plans to “lure U.S. allies and partners away from U.S.-led space initiatives, through its Belt and Road Initiative and plans for an Earth Moon Economic Zone” worth $10 trillion. Through this initiative, China intends to become the leading, global/space super-power by 2049, displacing the US in that role.

• The report predicts that “the first nation to establish transportation infrastructure and logistics capabilities serving GEO and cislunar space will have superior ability to exercise control of cislunar space and in particular the Lagrange points and the resources of the Moon.” “The job of the US Space Force is to provide “security and a stabilizing military presence” for the U.S. economic presence in this zone.”

• The report goes on to suggest that the US Air Force “should consider the degree to which this role should emulate the US Navy role in assuring the maritime domain. Clarity on this issue will drive commercial confidence for a more rapid expansion of U.S. space entrepreneurial activity.” It urges the USAF to have “an increased role in America’s return to the Moon” and its planetary defense could ‘accelerate America’s edge in asteroid mining and in-space transportation.”

• “The U.S. should develop a guiding national vision for long-term space industrialization and national space development to catalyze whole-of-nation efforts and enable the United States to compete and win now and into the future,” says the report. This would include providing safety of navigation services, secure commerce, and protect civil infrastructure in the space domain in order to foster opportunities for partnerships with companies to develop prototypes and to procure operational product services.

• The report concludes that the US Space Force needs to continue the “space leadership created by recent policy and organizational advances …as space activities expand beyond geosynchronous orbit.”

• [Editor’s Note]   What these studies and reports do not take into account is the fact that the United States military has had operational space fleets, using extraterrestrial propulsion technology, since the US Navy’s Solar Warden was deployed in the 1980s. Since then, the Air Force and NASA have both deployed their own secret space program fleets of advanced spacecraft and cislunar platforms. Other nations including China and Russia have done the same. So the real exopolitical space strategies go far beyond the alarmist geopolitical scare tactics found in these reports.

The report “State of the Space Industrial Base,” released last week by the Defense Innovation Unit, the U.S. Space Force, and the Air Force Research Laboratory, is, in effect, the space annex to the National Security Strategy of 2017. That document defines Russia and China as strategic adversaries of the United States. “China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity,” it claims on page 2. That outlook is extended directly into the space domain by this report, writes Gen. John Raymond, chief of the U.S. Space Force, in the foreword to the document.

The report itself flowed out of a space industrial base workshop that met in New Mexico in May and brought together 120 experts in government, industry, and academia; but the report that they produced is not an official policy document. Rather, it’s an assessment of the state of the industrial base along with a set of recommendations. Nonetheless, “it is important that we listen to these insights and evaluate the feasibility of implementing them in the advancement of national interests. America’s future in space is a partnership and, as with any partnership, communication is key,” Raymond writes.

In the introduction, the report cites an assessment produced by Air Force Space Command in 2019 entitled “The Future of Space 2060 and Implications for U.S. Strategy,” which itself was the product of yet another workshop. That report, among other things, complains that “China is executing a long-term civil, commercial, and military strategy to explore and economically develop the cislunar domain with the explicit aim of displacing the U.S. as the leading space power. Other nations are developing similar national strategies.”

“The U.S. is not alone in planning to return humans to the Moon or expanding the use of space,” the space industrial report says.

“China has announced its intention to do so by 2035. China 22 is committed and credible in its pledge to become the leading, global super-power, to include space, by 2049 marking the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic. A key component of China’s strategy is to displace the U.S. as the leading power in space and lure U.S. allies and partners away from U.S.-led space initiatives, through its Belt and Road Initiative and plans for an Earth Moon Economic Zone.”

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