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THE TRUTH ABOUT BOEING'S NEW DIRECTION AND THE DECISION TO LEAVE SEATTLE: SPY SATELLITES, MISSILE DEFENSE AND SPACE-BASED WEAPONS As Europe's Airbus gets ready to build the much-anticipated A380 super-jumbo jet airliner, and with the recent corporate decision to leave Seattle, aviation experts wonder what will happen if Boeing loses its status as the world's No.1 airplane manufacturer and exporter? According to the April issue of The Industry Standard, "the newsmagazine of the internet economy", Boeing CEO Phil Condit says, "It doesn't bother me in the slightest. This is not a testosterone test." How can Condit come off as so glib about the realities of a serious corporate and economic challenge from Europe and Japan? The answer is in the new direction which Boeing is about to take. The corporate aerospace giant plans to concentrate on military defense contracts for the majority of the company's income, not on commercial activities as has been practiced in Seattle. In fact, despite 91,000 Northwest employees, the majority of Boeing's military production is based in St. Louis and Seal Beach, California. It's really that simple. Together, the two defense plants employ over 90,000 people and accounted for $20.2 billion in aerospace and military sales, nearly half of all Boeing sales in 2000. Boeing Space and Communications Division Vice President Carl O'Berry was forced to fend off accusations during a recent interview that his company was planning to establish a monopoly on weapons system infrastructure. O'Berry is a retired three-star general in the US Air Force. Dominic Gates writes in The Industry Standard that Boeing plans to invest $16 million in a defense information systems technology command center in Anaheim, where O'Berry claims $25 billion to $30 billion worth of defense "business opportunities" per year will result from a "windfall from the defense-oriented Bush administration." The key products of the St. Louis facility are the A-18 Hornet, AH-64 Apache, and the $200 billion V-22 Osprey Joint Strike Fighter program. The main focus in St Louis is on development, production and support of military aircraft and missles. In Seal Beach, the main projects include the development, support and production of space systems, missle defense systems, satellites, rocket engines and information systems. These are not commercial projects, in the sense that they are not creating products for the general public but for specialized corporate and government interests. Boeing expects $12 billion a year to be spent by the US government on missle defense alone. According to the April 2, 2001 issue of The Industry Standard(www.thestandard.com), Boeing plans to work with the United States Department of Defense on the following contracts, which they hope will earn stockholders billions of dollars over the next twenty years: 1) Project Code Name- "Government Information and Communications Systems" According to The Industry Standard writer Dominic Gates, the reality of this project is described by Boeing as: "Developing a 'network centric' warfare infrastructure for battle management." This would include networking with portable personal computer systems used to target and deploy weapons and for communication with satellites with GPS, and with command centers and other soldiers deployed on the battlefield. In an engineering industry magazine article entitled "Wiring Platoons For Battle"(Machine Design - March 1, 2001[www.machinedesign.com]) the publication printed photos of US soldiers with headsets, palm computers, and helmet-mounted heads up displays. The "Land Warrior" system is described by senior editor Stephen J. Mraz as a "computerized nerve center". This term inspires in some readers bizarre visions of half-human cybernetic soldiers marching off to battle with high-tech sensors instead of eyes and super-accurate weaponry like portable lasers guided by spy satellites in orbit high above the earth. According to Mraz, the entire portable computerized "Land Warrior" system runs Windows 2000 on a PC 104 card made by Ampro. The card runs a 166-MHz Pentium with 800 megabytes of flash disk for storage. The system self-destructs if tampered with. A GPS network and communications systems allow the soldiers to communicate with battlefield networks and get information on location from satellites. Even the M4 5.6 mm rifle with laser rangefinder has a built-in video system that can upload target images to network computers. 2) Project Code Name - "Missle Defense and Space Control" According to Boeing's own documents, this program involves the integration of missle defense systems, including the National Missle Defense program(for which Boeing is the prime contractor). These projects will also produce theater missle defense systems and space-based lasers. The National Missle Defense program is one of the pet projects of George W. Bush. NMD is former defense secretary Dick Cheney's favorite charity(besides the nuclear power industry) and they plan to spend billions of dollars of our tax money on this questionable scheme. US space-based weapons and missle defense programs have caused controversy between the US and China at a time when the two nations are already experiencing strained relations over spy technology due to a dispute over a US military spy plane. 3) Project Code Name - "Future Imagry Architecture" Again, the Boeing corporation's own information does not support such an innocent name for this series of projects. In actuality, this is all about a "major space reconnaissance system - a 'spy in the sky' digital imagery project - for the National Office." Boeing admits that these contracts could be worth $25 billion over the next 20 years. Spy satellites are already controversial with the public and with other nations but the US seems determined to spy on everyone and Phil Condit's people are happy to help with their classified space defense program, often referred to as the "Black Hole" where most of our public money goes to develop who-knows-what in the name of "national security", with no public oversight or accountability. 4) Project Code Name - "Connexion" Boeing executives will be reaping the rewards of their previous work with the military to design an antenna which will provide broadband internet access on commercial planes. The company projects "$5 billion in revenue over the next five years." 5) Project Name: "Classified Government Projects" (No information available.) Countless billions in profits may be involved but we don't have the right to know how our tax money is being spent and how much Boeing will make from these black budget ventures. Gates highlights in his article the fact that the Boeing corporation already has major defense contracts, including the Tomahawk cruise missle guidance system, satellites, AWACS(Airborne Warning and Control Systems) and other airplanes, unmanned surveillance aircraft, guided missles, GPS-equipped Combat Survivor handheld communication devices and other sophisticated items and weapons. For a view of what Boeing defense anaylists predict the future of warfare will look like, consider the following from Dominic Gate's article. He writes that folks like O'Berry see the coming battles as being fought largely on computers, with opposing sides sitting in front of large 3-D computer screens and communicating with all the combatants in the field via high-tech communications devices. The idea of computer geeks commanding the army as if they were simply video game characters seems somehow sterile and unnerving to many, but this is how the defense corporations see the future of war. Weapons could be targeted from thousands of miles away in safe underground bunkers, and in this way, commanders could avoid any of the dangers resulting from the battles they conducted. The Boeing corporation hascommitted its resources to developing high-tech defense projects. What this means for the commercial airline industry is uncertain at this point but CEO Phil Condit has announced that the company is ready to "dramatically reshape the way we do business." Committee For Government Accountabilitywww.thestandard.com |
