Three cheers for United States science!

By Aussiegirl

Here's a fascinating article from the American Thinker on a super-secret space warfare system that is now mothballed. The United States still leads the world in brilliant scientists, and that's a blessed thought to face the future with.

The American Thinker

A formerly secret system for orbiting satellites and (implicitly) conducting space warfare has been revealed. A stunningly complex and sophisticated “black project” was developed, utilized to an unknown degree, and is now mothballed – all without Congressional debate or public knowledge. The incredible technological capabilities of the United States are revealed to be able to accomplish in secret what others could not achieve in public.

[...] The truth seems to be that sustaining a technological edge in military technology requires exploring many concepts that turn out to be dead ends. And even the dead ends may have application in new systems and the public may never hear of it. Suddenly, the “wasted defense dollars” file seems a bit lighter

[...] One Pentagon official suggests that the Blackstar system was “owned” and operated by a team of aerospace contractors, ensuring government leaders’ plausible deniability. When asked about the system, they could honestly say, “we don’t have anything like that.”

So we may have “privatized” development of this top secret program to contractors, far less accountable to the public. Which is the point with a secret program.

The article mentions work done at a variety of contractors. Work was definitely not kept within one company for secrecy. Little is learned about how so many companies could be involved and still remain secret. But I suppose every major aerospace contractor has provision for a “skunk works” capability within its operations.

Anyone the least bit interested in military technology should read the article. Despite secrecy of some data, there is a rich picture drawn of how a massive secret program works.

COMMENTS:

At 10:53 AM, scribe said...

Throughout our whole history, nearly all of our armaments manufacturing and research was privatized--like Boeing, Lockheed, MacDonald Douglas to name just a very few. The government has never been a manufacturer, nor should be. Only in socialized governments does the government run the manufacturing, and usually not very efficiently.

Secret research programs on armaments have gone on for decades without Congressional approval. Can you imagine Congress keeping any secret?

However, the real danger to our technological edge comes from another sector. For instance, too many of our scientists are foreign-born. Just compare the number of foreign students are in our science and math departments in the universities with the number of American students. Americans are in a minority. Why are fewer Americans going into science and math?

In addition, many of our corporations that have built our weapons and computer technology in the past are becoming rare as our manufacturing capabilities are being moved overseas. For instance, try to find an American manufacturer that can make the IC chips that are stuffed in PC boards. There are very few here that can do it for a reasonable price. So nearly all the chip manufacturing is now done in China, Taiwan, Korea, or Japan. In case of war, we would be stuck without any trusted suppliers of electronic parts. In some electronics application foreign made chips can't be used at all for security reasons.

Also, there are much fewer Americans who are computer programmers and coders than in previous years, but there are floods of foreign born ones. This is not good for us.

Furthermore, as more and more of our manufacturing has been moved overseas, a whole generation of skilled toolmakers, sheet metal workers and other highly skilled manufacturing operations people are being forced out of their jobs or into early retirement. The younger generation is not learning these highly vital skills, partly there are fewer jobs to apprentice for, and more importantly, our public school system fails to teach the math and shop skills necessary for these positions.

At 8:05 Aussiegirl said...

But we continue to produce lawyers and liberal arts majors at prodigeous rates! My dear sainted mother who has an unerring eye for cultural developments noted this a few years ago when she attended a college graduation ceremony for a relative. She was disgusted to see that so few science and engineering degrees were awarded, but when the time came for the Liberal Arts majors a big whoop and holler went up as the vast majority of the student body stood up enmasse. You'd think they'd be embarrassed to have skated through four years of Mickey Mouse classes, usually picking the easiest ones and avoiding any classes where they might be challenged.

It's amazing that parents spend such enormous sums of money for what amounts to in most cases a meaningless education consisting of PC courses that even in Liberal Arts courses or in English lit classes impart little of even the greatness of classical Western thought and art. Dead white males just aren't taught anymore.