Air Force fear peddling met with more criticism

It seems I’m not alone in taking the Air Force to task for their new ad campaign. DANGER ROOM patches together a pretty scathing attack piece calling the ads ‘scare mongering:’

No one expects commercials to be word-for-word accurate — not even ads from the U.S. military. But a new Air Force commercial, about the perils of an attack in space, does more than stretch the truth, a bit. It snaps the truth into tiny little pieces, experts and former officers say — violating the laws of physics and common sense, while flying in the face everything that’s known about the world’s constellation of satellites.

“What if your cell phone calls, your television, your GPS system, even your bank transactions, could be taken out with a single missile?” the military ad asks. “They can.”

No, they can’t. Not unless there’s some new missile out there that can strike dozens and dozens of targets, spread out over thousands and thousands of miles.

There’s reality and then there’s this ad — they are mutually exclusive. For example, cell phones don’t rely on satellites. Neither does TV (unless you have satellite) or bank transactions. GPS is dependent on satellites, 24 to be precise. So for all that technology to be taken out by one missile — even though some of it isn’t even in space — would require the most lucky missile shot of all time.

“It is clear that the Air Force is preying on the lack of public understanding of the threat (and space in general) in an attempt to convince voters that space is important too and only the US Air Force can protect America in space,’ [former Air Force space officer Brian] Weeden notes. “After years of trying to convince the politicians that areas such as space situational awareness needed more funding and failing, the Air Force has turned to another method to get its message across: fear.”

Just so we’re all on the same page, the Air Force is spending our money trying to scare us with a scenario they made up in order to justify getting more of our money.

See also:

• Air Force trying to stay relevant - Part 1
• Air Force trying to stay relevant - Part 2
• Air Force wants liquefied coal to fuel jets