My criticisms of factual flaws in CFR (“Council on Foreign Relations – “A Resource for nonpartisan Information and analysis”) web posting (http://www.cfr.org/publication/12454/china_ups_ante_in_space.html) on space weapons, from correspondence with author Mike Moran:

JimO-1 ref Reagan’s“space-based missile defense, …” As I read it, his proposal makes no mention of ‘space based’ architectures.

MORAN: THE SPEECH WAS THE FIRST PUBLIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF SDI, A PROGRAM WHICH ADVOCATED A SHIFT AWAY FROM A PURE POLICY OF DETERRENCE TO ONE WHICH FACTORED IN BOTH SPACE AND GROUND BASED MISSILE DEFENSES. YOU'RE BEING UNREASONABLE AND DELIBERATELY COY.

JimO-2: There you go again. The factual issue is whether Reagan called for a space-based architecture, as you originally wrote. Later design work certainly considered (and rejected) such an option, but I seem to recall that Reagan did not then or ever call for such an architecture (and you seem to concede the point by not refuting it factually, which would have been easy if your original statement had been accurate). It is by no means unreasonable or coy, IMHO, to insist on people’s statements being reported accurately.

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JimO-1: I object to the statement, “Beginning with Ronald Reagan’s 1983 proposal for space-based missile defense, the military’s share of U.S. space spending has quadrupled. “

MORAN: DOD'S PUBLISHED SPACE BUDGET WENT FROM ABOUT 6.5 BILLION TO 17 BILLION IN THE PERIOD BETWEEN 1983 AND 2005. HOWEVER, FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS ARTICLE, WE INCLUDED BUDGET APPROPRIATIONS FOR SPACE- AND MISSILE-SHIELD RELATED R&D. THAT MAKES THE "QUADRUPLED" CLAIM QUITE CONSERVATIVE.

JimO-2: I’d say the claim is, to the contrary, quite liberal.

Passing by the implied causation of the Reagan speech and the military space budget increases (since the chart shows a beginning of a major military space increase in the Carter administration), there’s the more serious problem with use of the word ‘share’, and your attempted justification of it by referring to absolute budget figures.

The ‘share’ of civilian-military budgets was about 50:50 in 1981-1982, and by 2002-3, was about, by that chart, 50:50. Where is this ‘quadrupling’ of the share?

If you defend it by pointing to the quadrupling of the dollar amount, then by NOT reporting a proportionate increase in the NASA budget (and in other federal agency space expenditures, such as NOAA, not counted on the chart), you are misinforming by misreporting, by omission. And if you wish to make the figures for ‘military space’ more alarming by adding in ALL missile defense spending, why not add in all surface-to-surface missile acquisition and operating costs, too – including the Navy’s nuclear missile submarines?

I suggest this ‘rubber boundary’ is a gimmick – by choosing what to include and what not to include in what you CALL ‘military space spending’, you can achieve a desired result.

If you really wish to include all space spending to assess the military share, why don’t you include commercial space spending, launch services and comm. sats, for example, and ground support for these space systems and for commercial navigation satellite services? If you had a desired outcome in mind from the beginning, this probably never occurred to you – or you found ad hoc justification to ignore it (because it has come to dominate both civilian and military government spending). This is a statistical game.

As to the chart’s rise in military space in the years after 2003 (which are projections, not actual expenditures – note the date of the report), you are free to blame this on George Bush – but the chart shows Reagan (and SDI) innocent of the instigation of the alleged (and non-existent) quadrupling of military space spending “share”.

And didn’t you notice the dollar values are not adjusted for Carter-era (and other) inflation?

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JimO-1: space shuttle mission military share

MORAN: IN THIS CASE, I THINK YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. IT WILL BE CORRECTED. THE DATA I USED WAS BADLY OUTDATED. I THANK YOU FOR POINTING THIS OUT.

JimO-2: How is blaming the data as ‘badly outdated’ deflecting the responsibility for the error?

Data doesn’t misrepresent itself, people misrepresent data. Are you saying it’s nobody’s fault?

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JimO-1: Complaint about statement, “Still, so far, ‘No nation has deployed destructive weapons in space,’ notes the Union of Concerned Scientists,..

MORAN: IT SEEMS TO ME WHAT UCS IS REFERRING TO ARE 'OVERT' DEPLOYMENTS. THE U-S HAS DONE A LOT MORE IN SPACE THAN YOU OR I KNOW ABOUT, TOO, I'M SURE.

JimO-2: OK, so you are saying, we don’t really have any evidence that the US has done stuff like the Soviets did (cannon on manned space station, orbital killer-satellites, etc), but you are “SURE” it has. This, it seems to me, is a faith-based (read: “ideological”) conjuring up of argument based on non-facts. And I note your facility at flexibly redefining what ‘deployment’ means to make previous statements, when shown to be in error, still ‘true’ if the meaning of the words can be modified. I guess it all depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is, as they say.

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JimO-1: “You write: “But some in the United States viewed the initiative as a threat to the country’s freedom of action (link: Space Review). “ This is really outrageous. The link is to my essay on space treaties, which you completely misunderstood and have misrepresented. I don’t fuss about threats to US ‘freedom of action’ – I wrote about the push to sign a treaty that uses words that have no commonly-agreed-on meaning and is not subject to verification. I’m sorry you chose to dodge those points, but I think I can understand why – they are difficult to answer, and so in the world where such advocates control the agenda, they just aren’t mentioned.

MORAN: YOU CLEARLY VIEW THE DIPLOMATIC TRACK AS A RUSE - IT COMES SCREAMING THROUGH IN YOUR PIECE. WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY OBJECT TO HERE?

JimO-2: I still object to your misrepresentation of my article, which you now seem to justify on the basis of an opinion you attribute to me. Actually, I would argue I have far more respect for the arms control treaty process, since I don’t see it as grandstanding but as a tool for national security – and while the US, by federal law, becomes robustly bound by such treaties even as interpreted by federal courts in response to privately-instigated complaints, no other major space player is remotely subject to such scrutiny and enforcement, so why should THEY care what the treaties actually say (or mean)? All of my specific issues with the utility of currently proposed space weapons control agreements, issues of fundamental definitions and verification and transparency – those you have ignored, sadly but not surprisingly.