Moonbases and Exopolitics

The Canadian Deputy Minister of Defense is all a-tizzy about a possible alien threat.

I agree with him that there is a need to develop diplomatic and military contingencies in the unlikely event that ET decides to land on the Union Buildings lawn some day. (I mean aliens landing in their space-ships, not the AWB leader falling of his horse)

One point I would like to examine in his speech (an extract of which can be found here) is that of the US "forward base on the Moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide".

There are many loony points in that extract, but I want to pick on this one.

Let's think about this for a second.

The Moon is a smallish rock (compared to the Earth) which orbits the Earth at a considerable distance once every 28 days (more or less).

What in Xenu's name gives this guy the idea that it would provide us with an effective weapons platform from whence to snipe at invading armadas?

I have a visual aid:


(this diagram is not to scale)

The Earth itself puts a huge blind-spot in the Moon-base's detection grid. Any sufficiently advanced alien species would be able to easily detect the WMDs on the lunar surface and sneak in the back way. They'd be able to 'put da bag on us' with relative ease.

From a tactical point of view, the Moon is a good location to launch armed space vehicles from, since the Moon's small gravity makes it much easier for small craft to achieve escape velocity than if they were to launch from the Earth's surface. The Moon's own mineral resources could be used in the construction of these vehicles and stuff... good plan.

But as a defensive weapons platform it's no good. A much better plan would be to have an extensive network of armed, solar or nuclear powered satellites in both high and low Earth orbit. The visual arc of such a network would be a full 360x360 degrees.

This could be supported by a number of Earthbound heavy artillery launchers in varied locations.

The key to defending a planet from invasion is redundancy... have a wide variety of defensive measures in many different places using as many independent and varied power sources as possible.

Well... now that I've shown you that I can defend us from the Zentradi better than Dubya can, are you guys ready to elect me as Supreme Emperor of Earth? It'll be cool! I promise!