Recently Retired USAF General Makes Claims About Advanced Space Technology

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Recently Retired USAF General Makes Eyebrow-Raising Claims About Advanced Space Technology

Recently retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Steven L. Kwast gave a lecture last month that seems to further signal that the next major battlefield will be outer space. While military leadership rattling the space sabers is nothing new, Kwast’s lecture included comments that heavily hint at the possibility that the United States military and its industry partners may have already developed next-generation technologies that have the potential to drastically change the aerospace field, and human civilization, forever. Is this mere posturing or could we actually be on the verge of making science fiction a reality?

Who Is Steven Kwast?
According to his official USAF biography, Lt. Gen. Kwast graduated from the United States Air Force Academy with a degree in astronautical engineering, and also holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Kwast previously served as Commander of the 47th Operations Group at Laughlin Air Force Base and the 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson AFB. Kwast boasts more than 3,300 flight hours in the F-15E, T-6, T-37, and T-38 and over 650 combat hours.

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Lt. Gen. Kwast most recently served as Commander of the Air Education and Training Command (AETC) at Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA), but retired in August. According to some reports, Kwast was prematurely relieved of his duties at JBSA and blacklisted for promotion after speaking out on space-related issues despite a service-wide gag order. Kwast declined to comment on the reports and retired on September 1, 2019.

Despite the controversy surrounding his removal from his post at AETC, some defense analysts and Lt. Gen. Kwast’s own supporters within the Armed Forces were suggesting prior to his retirement that he should be appointed as Commander of the Pentagon's budding Space Force. Kwast has published several op-eds in recent years pushing for the U.S. military to take on a greater role in space in order to ensure American economic dominance and what he sees as the continued proliferation of American values.

Gaining The High Ground In Space
Kwast delivered a lecture at Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C. on November 20, 2019, titled “The Urgent Need for a U.S. Space Force.” Kwast’s wide-ranging speech described the power of new technologies to revolutionize humankind, referencing the competitive advantage the discovery of fire offered to early humans and the strategic value that nuclear weapons offered 20th-century superpowers. When it comes to current revolutionary technologies, Kwast says the “the power of space will change world power forever” and that it’s up to the United States military to leverage that power:

Around the 12:00 mark in the speech, Kwast makes the somewhat bizarre claim that the U.S. currently possesses revolutionary technologies that could render current aerospace capabilities obsolete:

"The technology is on the engineering benches today. But most Americans and most members of Congress have not had time to really look deeply at what is going on here. But I’ve had the benefit of 33 years of studying and becoming friends with these scientists. This technology can be built today with technology that is not developmental to deliver any human being from any place on planet Earth to any other place in less than an hour."

https://www.zerohedge.com/technolog...s-eyebrow-raising-claims-about-advanced-space
 
Which side to we take when we go up against an earthly country and a terrestrial enemy?

The USA needs to spread the love. Going Global is not enough.
 
Doesn't shock me one bit that the US government would be in possession of advanced technology. I think they've been keeping that tech secret from us for years.
 
Sounds like the Falcon HTV2- though tests were not successful. The skin of the craft reached 3,500 degrees (it was made of carbon- steel would melt at 2,500- the skin disintegrated in the test flight).

https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/22/2967089/darpa-htv-2-results-mach-20

DARPA's HTV-2 aircraft test flight failed due to heat stresses at Mach 20

DARPA has released the findings from an independent engineering review board on what caused the Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV-2) to fail nine minutes into its August 11, 2011 test flight. On that day, the HTV-2 was planned to launch atop a Minotaur IV rocket in California and then be released to glide at up to Mach 20 (over 15,000 mph) before a controlled nosedive into the ocean.

DARPA has released the findings from an independent engineering review board on what caused the unmanned Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV-2) to fail nine minutes into its August 11, 2011 test flight. On that day, the HTV-2 was planned to launch atop a Minotaur IV rocket in California and then be released to glide at up to Mach 20 (about 13,000 mph) before a controlled nosedive into the ocean. Unfortunately, the arrowhead-shaped vehicle experienced an issue nine minutes into the flight and automatically descended into the sea. The review board says that that anomaly was due to the extreme heat of traveling at hypersonic speeds tearing apart the vehicle's skin, disturbing its aerodynamic stability and causing it to roll.

The flight was the second and last scheduled test for the HTV-2 (the first one in 2010 also failed nine minutes into the mission). DARPA is taking the results in stride, however: the agency says that the vehicle maintained controlled Mach 20 flight for three minutes, and was able to right itself after the first disturbances caused by the degradation of the HTV-2's skin — something that was "more than 100 times what the vehicle was designed to withstand." While there aren't any more flights scheduled for the HTV-2, DARPA says that it'll continue to do ground testing to try and improve the heat-stress models for high-speed atmospheric flight that failed to prepare the vehicle for this latest attempt. The original goal of the project was to be able to deliver an attack to anywhere in the world in less than an hour. See the video below for an overview of the vehicle's flight — had it gone to plan.

 
Thanks to the like of Blue Origin and SpaceX, technology is finally catching up with the dreams of military globalists.

https://www.armscontrol.org/print/3410

A good example of this, and perhaps the most fascinating essay in the compilation is by McCurdy, who recounts the history and obsession with military lunar bases since the 1940s and the U.S. military’s argument in particular for placing nuclear weapons on the moon. This argument saw lunar missiles as the ultimate deterrent against Soviet aggression but also warned that if the United States dallied and allowed the Soviets to seize it first, the consequences would be disastrous. This led to the U.S. Army’s Project Horizon, which came into conflict with the Air Force’s plans along the same lines. Much of this lunar military mania stemmed from applying flawed analogies of “high ground” on Earth to space and thus visualizing the moon as the ultimate high ground.

But Orange Man Bad works too.

XNN
 
Thanks to the like of Blue Origin and SpaceX, technology is finally catching up with the dreams of military globalists.

https://www.armscontrol.org/print/3410



But Orange Man Bad works too.

XNN

Don't forget about Reagan's "Star Wars" Space Defense Initiative. He wanted lasers and other weapons in space to shoot down incoming missiles (the technology could also be used to destroy other things like communications satellites).
 
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