D
dave_uk
Guest
http://www.thebusinessonline.com/modules/news/view.php?id=23925<br /><br />SENIOR Pentagon officials have warned Brussels that they will not hesitate to blow European Union satellites out of the sky if they are used against America by a hostile power such as China, The Business can reveal.<br /><br />In an astonishing confrontation at a private conference between the United States and the European Union (EU), European delegates insisted they would not be prepared to turn off or jam signals from their proposed Galileo navigation satellites, even if they were being used in a war against the US. In response, the US delegates replied that they understood this and intended - if faced with such a threat - to take whatever action they felt appropriate.<br /><br />Earlier this month, the EU announced that China had become a partner in its E3.5bn ($4.4bn, £2.4bn) Galileo satellite system. The state of Pentagon thinking on Galileo is confirmed in a US Air Force doctrine document obtained by The Business, issued on 2 August 2004. In a foreword, Peter Teets, under-secretary of the US Air Force, asks: "What will we do 10 years from now when American lives are put at risk because an adversary chooses to leverage the global positioning system of perhaps the Galileo constellation to attack American forces with precision?"<br /><br />The conference, on the "Future of Transatlantic Military Space Relations", was held at London's Royal United Services Institute, this month. A senior European delegate said: "The Americans were very calm. They made it clear that they would attempt what they called reversible action, but, if necessary, they would use irreversible action."<br /><br />The US would first try unilaterally to jam Gallileo's signals, but if this failed it would use attack satellites to destroy one or all of its units, in an unprecedented Star Wars-style raid.<br /><br />Galileo is a joint European