The Air Force's War on Us

One weird recent defense policy subplot is that the Air Force has acquired a large pot of money to produce propaganda ads aimed at convincing the American public that the Air Force is super-important and needs more money. The fruits, a demagogic, inaccurate, fear-mongering ad about our alleged vulnerability to missile attacks on satellites: See web-only content:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/05/the-air-forces-war-on-us/44764/ Noah Shachtman details the many ways in which nothing said in this ad is true. I'd also associate myself with what Robert Farley has to say. But let's also note that not only does this vulnerability not exist, but if some other country did shoot a missile at a civilian satellite there's nothing Space Command could possibly do about it -- they're not going to intercept the missile. What we'd have to do is retaliate against the perpetrator with perfectly normal atmospheric planes and missiles.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/05/the-air-forces-war-on-us/44764/