MIT professor Theodor Postol recently – once again – took a dim view of recent statements by a high-ranking US military officer. He described General Milley’s warnings about the Chinese hypersonic weapons program as “grossly exaggerated” and said that, in his opinion, there were “a lot of idiots in the Pentagon who would only push the USA into a military confrontation with China”.
The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, claimed on October 27 that China, due to its successful test of a hypersonic missile (presumably the DF-17 or a derivative) had created a so-called “Sputnik moment” for the USA. He drew a comparison with the Russian “Sputnik Shock” of 1957, which triggered the space race during the Cold War and which the USA ultimately won with the moon landing in 1969. “Very worrying development”
General Milley said (during a TV interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Peer-to-Peer Conversations” on the David Rubenstein Show): “China’s development of a hypersonic weapon system and the test is very worrisome. I don’t know if it was a new ‘Sputnik moment,’ but I think it was very close. What we saw was a very significant event, it has our full attention. China is our main military threat.”
Critics: “Serious exaggeration“
Theodore Postol, media-renowned professor emeritus of science, technology and international security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), frequent critic of US military policy and top policy advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations in the 1980s, has now criticized General Milley’s statement to the web platform “Covert Action Magazine” with very harsh words. According to Postol, this was “a serious exaggeration”. “The launch of Sputnik in 1957 signaled that the Soviet Union was capable of competing with the US in space, and that was indeed a surprise. However, in the case of China and the testing of a hypersonic rocket, US intelligence agencies were already aware of this and knew that China was very advanced in science and technology. Far more than the USSR was believed to be at the time. This hypersonic missile does not threaten the US population in any way and does not give China a military-technological advantage. American space-based early warning systems can detect hypersonic missiles and mark them as no threat at all. The space-based early warning infrared systems also have the ability to detect hypersonic bodies as they descend into the atmosphere and are heated to very high temperatures.” https://militaeraktuell.at/china-flog-hyperschall-gleiter-rund-um-den-globus/ As a reminder, the maneuverable hypersonic re-entry vehicle circled almost the entire planet at five times the speed of sound after being released from a “Long March” missile, before falling into the sea near the planned target with an “insignificant deviation” of a few kilometers, assuming nuclear warheads. The USA would have no means of defense against a (theoretical) attack from the south in particular; US defenses are mainly “looking” at re-entry routes via the North Pole. Incidentally, China claims that the test was carried out with a spaceship, not a hypersonic weapon.
“Idiots in the Pentagon”
According to Professor Postol, General Milley’s statements show once again how “idiots in the Pentagon and political appointees are trying to push us into a military confrontation with China over nothing! At most, the test proves that the Chinese are a technological competitor to the US, but that has little to no relevance to adding significant nuclear strike capabilities.” Postol also noted that he does not think General Milley is a liar by any means, but he believes he “received false information from someone within the U.S. military or intelligence community” and did not know any better. “Milley is both an undifferentiated consumer of intelligence and someone who likes to ‘hype’ threats and is easily manipulated.”
Is it ultimately all about the money?
Asked about his motivation with regard to his years of criticizing the Pentagon and U.S. government, Postol said his experience as a science policy adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jim Watkins, from 1982 to 1984 left him with “a low appreciation for the accuracy of information provided by high-level government employees.” That would only have intensified over time. For example, when Colin Powell, who recently died in connection with Covid-19, gave his infamous speech on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to the UN in February 2003, Postol – then a Pentagon adviser – knew immediately that “every line in the speech was wrong and that Powell himself knew it”. In more recent days, Postol has attracted attention – sometimes on the Russian propaganda channel RT – with public/media criticism of the withdrawal from arms control agreements with Russia such as the INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) for the reduction of cruise missiles. However, he also frequently criticized “US government investments in ineffective weapons systems that only waste taxpayers’ money”. By amplifying threats, Postol said the intelligence agencies want to scare people into sanctioning huge military budgets and large defense projects that often contribute little to national security. In his view, the US services have some good people working for them. “But they have nonetheless evolved into rigid, dysfunctional bureaucracies with weak leaders who are often politicized. Those who are promoted have their own motivations and don’t always provide the best information. They provide a ‘storyline’ to higher-ups that is useful to the larger agenda – which is to get more money from Congress.”
