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Space War 2017: US v. China
A reader writes "The Air Force recently performed a war game set in the year 2017 featuring space warfare, according to this article in the Washington Post. Between hypothetical 'red' and 'blue' countries, which the article conjectures to be China and US, "...the game assumed that the heavens will be full of weapons by 2017. Both Red and Blue possessed microsatellites that can maneuver against other satellites, blocking their view, jamming their transmissions or even frying their electronics with radiation. Both also had ground-based lasers that could temporarily dazzle or permanently blind the optics of satellites.""
NO, no, no. I do not characterize other nations as "phoney baloney". If you'd seen Blazing Saddles, you'd get the reference.
My comment was to the effect that politics exists to serve the people in such a manner as to keep the regime in power, thats all. American politics, Chinese politics, Sri Lankan politics. Doesn't matter.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Well, despite over a decade of trying they have yet to come up with one that can shoot down a non-surprise attack by a single missile that doesn't use anything much in the way of decoys, countermeasures, etc. That makes me question whether or not it would really work.
Yeah, like a rogue state or terrorist would actually use a missile. They'd just smuggle the the bomb into the country and plant it near their target. It's not as though doing so would be very difficult at all, and all that trillion dollar technology will prove completely useless. It's a total boondoggle.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Okay, here's where "Peace by having no weapons" is a bad idea.
It is generally human nature to be greedy. Especially for those in power. (Why would they try to gain power if they didn't WANT power? Not many people try to gain power for the better good. Those who want power badly are usually the ones who receive it.) Once they have power, they want more. When you are in charge of a big country, the only way to gain more power is to conquer other countries so that you can control their resources.
The nice guys say "Look, we're nice, we will destroy all of our weapons, so that we can not hurt you. You do the same, and we can all live in harmony." They have the best of intentions, and really want peace. The not-so-nice guys agree at first, so that you will destroy all of your weapons. However, while the not-so-nice-guys are playing nice, they are hiding all sorts of weapons in some secret bunkers, where no sattelite could find them. Once the nice guys weapons are gone, not-so-nice guys say, "Actually, we were kidding. Now you have no weapons, but we do. So, unless you feel like dying, you will submit to us."
Just because you or your country has good intentions, that does *not* mean that other nations do! Never let your guard down when it comes to international affairs! Not unless you want the U.S. to become a socialist state.
I may not really like the system here, but it's better than standing in line for hours for a loaf of bread. A nice, happy global society sounds like a good idea, but until there are NO evil people in the world, it will not work. I'm sorry to dissapoint you.
Even without satellites intentionally blowing up, debris is already a problem. One good space battle, and the Earth will have a junk layer too thick to navigate. Then you can kiss all space travel good-bye until they figure out a way to clean it up. Maybe somebody will figure out a way to deorbit massive ammounts of junk all at once. The first idea that comes to mind is releasing enough gas in orbit to slow down the junk, but maybe that isn't practical. At any rate, if they factor debris into this I bet they will determine that it isn't worth destroying this particular battlefield.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
In the Old Testament of the Bible, there is a story about how the Israelites went into Palestine, and God commanded them to go attack a certain village, and kill every last man, take the women as slaves, etc.
This is a lesson - because it sounds just horrible, expecially when you take into account that a few years earlier, the 10 commandments (Thou shalt not kill) were given. But if you think about it, it's a lesson. Really, that's the only way to defeat an opponent. Thorough genocide. If you let ONE of them live, chances are, they'll breed, and tell their kids about what happened, and generations later, you have an enemy that really hates you - and another war. Or nowadays, even if you kill them all, chances are, there's members of that ethnic group in another country you can't get to, so in order to do a thorough job, you basically have to take over the world.
This is the lesson of WWI->WWII, which was really one extended long war, if you think about it. We (US/Allies) tried to apply that lesson to Iraq, and have met with limited success. But when it comes down to it, the only other alternative is genocide. And who wants that? Um, the bad guys? You wanna be a bad guy? Or maybe it would be best to just live in peace.
What that means for the Jews, and whether they *belong* in Palestine/Israel, I have no idea, I don't want to get into that here - but to me, when I read that Bible story, that is what I learned: Violent conflict, is ultimately futile, unless you're willing to walk down the genocide path. And the genocide path is no good either. So maybe it's best to just try to learn alternative methods of conflict resolution.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
maybe they only sell the cheap plastic garbage to us sucker Americans and keep the "good stuff" for themselves?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
naw, increased morale is cheap.
Give them shore-leave in San Francisco, and $100 of GI money. Blowjobs=morale.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Sending the inexperienced underequipped troops as a first wave is also an excellent tactic against landmines. So Iran proved in it's war vs. Iraq. It's why Iraq resorted to chemical warfare, to stop Iran from sending waves of children across the battlefield to sweep mines out for the real troops to follow.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I will tell you something: For the last 4,000 years, Chinese soldiers have never fought more than 100 miles outside of China's current borders.
In the past 200 years, however, American soldiers have fought on every continent except Australia.
Which country is the aggressive one?
Um, who exactly believes that "User #508" is a troll account?
And what made that message a troll anyway? Paragraph 1, which was mostly correct and preceded with "I'll bet"? Or paragraph 2, which was right on the money?
I honestly don't see this type of war for the future of mankind. Without trying to sound morbid, the whole point of war is _not_ to blow up your enemies' toys, but to kill the opposing legion's fighters.
The missile defense system first championed by Ronald Reagan is not a bad idea. There's just one problem: it's not possible. The arguments you hear for it or against it revolve around the question of treaties. Software, as we know it, is just not reliable enough to run this stuff. Identifying and tracking missiles in flight - hundreds or perhaps even thousands at once - is beyond what we know software can do. The treaty problem is a red herring, if you ask me.
A crash program to develop and implement a missile defense system, a Star Wars system, is destined to become a prime example of wasteful government spending and corporate welfare. Sure, the studies and research that will be done will conclude it is possible, but only because that's the conclusion that they will be mandated to achieve (see "Carnivore review team"). Huge profits will be made by firms that get the contracts. You can build all the lasers and pulse cannons and boosters and kinetic energy warheads you want. But if you don't have the software to run them all together with 100% reliability and safety then all those other things mean NOTHING. If it were practical I'd be behind the idea. It's not.
Another thing in the article I found amusing was the "information warfare" aspect. Come on, does anyone seriously think key military command and control computers are going to be vulnerable to state-sponsored script kiddies, for God's sake? What worries me more than battles in space is the absolute clulessness of our elected officials and the gullible nature of the population at large who will be hoodwinked into thinking that these things are even possible. Should we be concerned abuout protecting our assets in space? Yes, absolutely. Should we study these things? Yes, absolutely. But we shouldn't devote huge resources to a pie-in-the-sky project that will never work.
where Bart and Lisa go to military school. The commandant's closing address is:
"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you."
fnord
-Moondog
High-altitude burst is definately optimal.
but a ground burst sure does something too.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
hm - Waco?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I think Lockheed is also under investigation for fudging early test results. This was intended to be nothing more than a huge defense contractor pork barrel boondoggle. How convenient for Lockheed that the bad guys have nuclear missiles. Let's just make some campaign contributions here, have the politicians get nervous there. . . etc. repeat as necessary.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Come on, the first fucking man made object in space was a weapon. Sputik was propaganda, an international psychological weapon, boosted into orbit by an ICBM.
This is a game of survival of the fittest, on a cultural and ideological level. Perhaps it seems that the US cultural meme is paranoid, agressive, etc. But look how far Microsoft has come with that same mind-set. Peace is a nice idea - but as long as humans rely on resources for survival, we'll be playing that Darwinian game, because basically, we're all still animals, whether we accept it or not.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I think that would actually be the five people who did vote to give us Dubya as prez-duh-dent. As for the rest of us, the majority voted for the other guy.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
and Antarctica?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Except that's not really feasible except over someplace without any electrical equipment whatsoever...because even a small atom bomb will create an EM pulse capable of taking out the electronics below it.
The idea is to intercept the ICBM somewhere off the coast of North America. That way, the EM pulse won't screw us up, and any radioactive debris will fall into the ocean. Not good, but a hell of a lot better than having 30 million people get nuked.
Just as an aside, I believe there are more Native Americans alive today than there were before Columbus arrived in North America.
I'm certainly not excusing all the past crimes of the US. The US has done some pretty scary things, too, although I tend to think they're currently nowhere near as bad as China.
Of course, I don't live in the US.
A few likely scenarios are as follows:
...
1. China sends over Red Army in civvies on local boats, with hidden explosives and other weaponry. Result: Taiwan is now a Chinese province.
2. US invests in ABM - after 20 years of investment, still has only 90 percent kill ratio against a missile not using countermeasures. Against countermeasure missiles, best result is 30 percent. San Francisco glows in the dark
3. US continues to rely on Internet and GPS and satellite networks. China or Japan or Germany or France gets mad at us, uses "space junk" satellites to take out our network and cyber army to hack our networks with DOS sleeper attacks. US falls apart, whole world glows in dark.
4. Space aliens show up, turn off all networks. Bush used as chew toy by alien subcommander. Waste for military expenditures drops dramatically, economy grows at rapid pace and all world problems solved. Well, except for the AIDS virus, which kills off the space aliens, but now we have cheap colonies in the galaxy.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Do ya think we're just going to let them go?"
You're british aren't you.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
This is sometimes the case, but definitly not always the case. Look for instance at the United States versus Japan, while it could be argued (and I know it will be) that we were more suicidal than Japan was, I would have to bring up the fact of the Kamakzi fighters and the manned torpedos and then hope that would count them as a bit more suicidal than we were. We defeated them, though it took a whole lot of effort to do so.
No matter how fanatical an untrained and unarmed person is, he is not going to be able to defeat a fully armed and trained army, that's just preposterous.
Actually, isn't our official policy that the Mainland is a bunch of rogue provinces?
And if we have to go to war, I'd rather we went as a heavily armed paranoid superpower. What is the the better alternative?
Hay thar.
While an interesting read, the Washington Post journalist writing this story seemed so boondogled by the hype issued by the Air Force that he lacked almost any level of critical assessment.
The article gives the WWII war in the Pacific as a prototypical "success" of wargaming. Yet it failed to point out that the largest engagement of the US military in the Cold War era -- Vietnam -- took the US military by shock. No one would have anticipated that a dedicated group of guerilla resistance fighters in a small Southeast Asian country, facing against up the US, with its superior firepower and complete dominance of the sky, could have kicked the pants off the US military and sent them scrambling back home with their tails between their legs.
The implicit assumption of the whole 'Space Wargame' concept is that space warfare will play a critical role in the next big US conflict, necessarily against another space-faring nation (almost certainly China or Russia). Yet the history of the Cold War has taught us that the most serious threats do not come from the other superpowers, but from the small guy. It was true for the US in Vietnam, and true for Russia in Afghanastan. Each of the large projects mentioned (missile defense, space plane, earth-based satellite defenses) will cost astronomical sums of money to develop. Yet their use in a full-scale conflict against a small nation would be of limited use. As critical-minded citizens, we should question whether such large ticket items will necessarily lead to greater security for the US, and greater stability for the world.
The whole story reminds me of the downfall of Sauron in Lord of the Rings. He had surrounded himself with the deepest layers of security against the prying eyes of powerful magic.Yet only in the last few moments, as two hobbits marched up Mount Doom, did he realize the futility of his decision...
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
I don't think they're necessarily reading too much into this -- the WP has generally been one of the more reasonable newspapers when it comes to military journalism.
I'd presume that the journalists who wrote the article probably did a bit more research than just "reading into" the use of Red/Blue. Remember -- this was a military operation, so any official word (or even hint of an official word) that this involved China could provoke some seriously anti-diplomatic reaction from them (as it is, they're not terribly pleased with the US military after the Embassy carpet-combing incident)
Having been involved in the journalism field, I'd guess that the reporter probably got very good word that they were indeed referring to China (from an unnamed source) but on the condition that it remained as vague as possible.
(The reason they chose China probably has to do with the China / Taiwan interactions (i.e. tensions) -- though one could probably make a similar argument for Russia / every little guy they mess with.)
nlh
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
Also realize, often the best defense is a strong offense. (A strong defensive line won't do jack for you in a football game if your offensive line is a bunch of 90lb. wusses. That is, of course, under the assumption that those 90lb. wusses don't have tasers, but that's another story entirely.)
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Some thoughts that no one else seems to have mentioned:
.5 seconds. Even the military knows that war is a bad thing. On many of the air force hangers I've seen there are signs saying "Peace is our Profession". The military doesn't want to go to war. It wants to make sure that if YOUR ELECTED LEADERSHIP DECLARES WAR then we will win. Don't be pissed at the military about war or spending, be pissed at all the people who didn't vote in the last election and thus gave us W for a president.
No one in the game said "Red attacks Blue!" they said "Red attacks BROWN, who asks for help"
Who is brown? Taiwan? Kuwait? India? Japan? I would say any of those countries and many others would be deserving of help if they had to ask for it.
This BULLSHIT about war games being a waste of money is amazing. After humanitarian efforts, war games are the most important thing the peace-time military can do! If the military doesn't think, "what if?" how do you expect the military to plan a defense? Or are you the guys the ones who play CounterStike like it was DukeNukem, die immediately and leave me to try and get the job done while hopelessly outnumbered?
AND ANOTHER THING! The military leadership doesn't give a fuck what the slashdot community thinks of their games any more they the community cares what military leaders thing of C++ vs C. The military leadership isn't qualified to comment on that any more that most of us are qualified to comment on intelligent use of military funds. If you want to post a contrary comment, excellent, but don't just bitch "That's Stupid" when you've thought about your response for less than
ALSO, if they don't care about you knowing why did they invite the press? So any potential enemies know we're studying space based combat and (hopefully) decide not to persue the idea with as much vigor as they might have if they thought we were completely unprepared. That's why you put big naval ships by a potential target. Just to remind a potential enemy that it's a lot less painful to be friends.
Ok, that's enought venting for me. Sorry to all of you who think my comments are obvious.
When things got going (with the assasination of the German chancellor, as I remember) , everybody reacted to everybody else's reaction (technical response only, of course) and -- by the time people realized what was going on -- a huge stack of troops was suddenly committed to battle/battlefield support.
By that point, logistical pressures made war almost inevitable.
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Ah, so what happens if [enemy] develops missile systems in orbit?
Hence the need for killsats...
or establishes missile launch sites in Central or South America? Or Cuba for that matter, which (if I remember correctly) would be able to get a missile over American soil before an anti-missile nuke could intercept it?
Ever heard of the Cuban missile crisis? You guys went through a lot of crap before to avoid that scenario. I imagine you would go to great pains to prevent missile launch sites from being established there.
Cause it would involve them stopping the smoking of pot, putting the ferret back in the cage, turning off the Dave Matthews/Grateful Dead/Phish CD and learning something about science.
It would also involve these people getting out and doing something productive, rather than whining at people who do.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Its too bad that war is the extension of politics, but its the truth. If you want to see war go away, first change human nature, then you'll be able to affect the necessary changes in the political arena to make it a non-viable extension of politics.
There are no evil countries, but there are evil people. No one seriously thinks the Germans are evil, genocidal people. But face facts, the Nazi Party rose to power and killed a lot of people. The Russians weren't evil but Stalin's Purges killed a whole lot more people. Countries aren't evil but people sure are.
This isn't about "my country is on the side of God and yours is a haven of godless commie scum". This is about people that see a way to create a future for their families and more importantly, their regimes. If the fathers of the nation, its leaders and those with the power, decide that its the only way to ensure that they can keep their phoney-baloney jobs (to quote Mel Brooks) then its what they'll do, and you're kidding yourself if quoting Ginsberg will stop it.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
I am always amazed that people still believe the baloney you spout. First of all, the Soviets violated the ABM treaty before the ink was even dry. Secondly, the Soviet Union, which the treaty was signed with, no longer exists. Thirdly, the ABM treaty had a provision for unconditional withdrawal with a six-minth notice. The fact that we haven't yet withdrawn proves beyond any doubt that that we in the US are complete fools.
By the way, if you want me to read any response, please email me. I don't have time to follow this nonsense.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
I was merely trying to point out the hypocritical way most Americans go about treating China.
For your information, I'm not American, nor do I live in the US. Fuck you for making that assumption.
I normally try to be civil with people I disgree with, but you unjustly called me a racist, so you can burn in hell, asshole.
Why couldn't all of this weaponry be blasted out of commission by a radical pacifist organization heaving a hefty electromagnetic pulse?
When you got the media virtually telling China "We don't trust you. We think you are going to attack us" what do the chinese have left but to live up to this misconception and put weapons to their disposal, perhaps only as a defensive move, but knowing the US it will "clearly" be an offensive.
I am sick of word war. Sick of the idea that there are evil countries. Sick that the US itself is not truly willing to believe in peace.
It is a sad sad thing. And I am only 19 years old. Good work, America. "Go fuck yourself with the Atom bomb," as Allen Ginsberg put it.
Or American...
You do know that when Cuba 'nationalized' all industry ONLY American refused to accept the 'repayments' made by the Cuban Government to the foreign interests... America has had it 'in' for Cuba since...
Why bother with such sophisticates like missiles and navigations when you can load up a ship with a good size nuke and park it next to NY. Drop off your suitcase nuke in the middle of a big city, etc.
There is a substantial amount of data to conclude that the United States knew an attack was coming, but let it proceed in order to galvanize pro-war opinion in a country that wanted nothing to do with a conflict across an ocean.
2: The Nazis Invade Russia
The Nazis Invade France
The United States was not involved directly in combat when either of these conflicts took place. In fact, there was a substantial pro-German constituency in the United States when the invasion of France was launched.
Damn unfortunate name for a career military guy, eh?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
still
blue = US
red = China
brown = Taiwan
seems fairly plausible, doesn't it ?
-- the cake is a lie
If the USA is to have a hope, it , like the stag, must cultivate a spirit of self sacrifice among its civil service and citizens. It is the only way that America will get the resolve to win. The USA has done it before - lets see if it can do it again
No, my dick is bigger than yours. Yeah yeah America! Yeah Yeah America! Whoo-Whoo-were #1-Were #1.
Lets instead hope America dosnt go rushing off to display its supremecy and start a war with China. Lets instead hope America learns some self control and pulls back the reigns of Imperialism that the rest of the world has been trying to throw off for the last 50 years. Lets instead hope for a peacefull, sound, prosperous, healthy, vibrant, happy future - not to 'Start then Win' some fucking big-dick contest... do you think people in China dont care about the same things you do? The world is not about Nationality but about class. American Business & thier Mouthpieces spend alot of time pumping Yankees full of nationalistic propaganda so they never realize they are in the same boat as every other proletariat on the planet - 'the problems' relate to economic class, not birthplace.
Oh come on now! This has to be a pseudonym.
Not A Sig
Anybody here remember the Tiananmen Square Massacre? A government that will kill its own citizens (many of them students--like most Slashdotters) is a government to be feared. Brown is obviously Taiwan. China has rattled its sabre at Taiwan a number of times already, so this scenario is entirely realistic. In case you think it wouldn't be worth interfering, consider that the Chinese military has publically discussed plans to neutron bomb Taiwan. How's that for fucking horrific? Do you want another holocaust?
Some people here claim that a National Missile Defense (NMD) is technically infeasible. I agree that there are problems with the idea of kinetic-kill interceptors--it's very hard to hit a target moving at several times the speed of sound. What would be much more realistic is to use an interceptor with a very small, clean nuclear warhead. If you only have to get within 200 metres, things get a lot easier. I think that was the original plan back in the days of Star Wars, but it got killed (most likely for political reasons).
As for space war, that's entirely realistic. Just consider how reliant on GPS, spy satellites, and sat-communication the US is, and how much of an advantage those capabilities give the US. Throughout history, wars have often been decided by intelligence and communication. Back in the earlier half of last millenium, battles were usually decided by the vanguards of the respective army. If your vanguard lost, you wouldn't know where the enemy was, and you would have no recon screen. The same principle applies even more strongly now.
Hacker war? Definitely. The targets don't have to be military installations to cause severe damage. For instance, the US Army uses FedEx to transport spare parts a lot of the time. Messing with banks and financial institutions could also seriously affect the will and ability of the US to fight a war. Tom Clancy has already thought of a lot of this, although he usually blows the details when it comes to hi-tech.
The warriors in the "hacker war" won't be your average script kiddies, and they won't be limited to the usual attacks. Lots of software development is done in foreign countries or by foreign immigrants, and, while the vast majority of these people are honest, it only takes a few to plant backdoors in dangerous places. These "enemy hackers" also don't have to be attacking from somewhere within country X--they could be within your own borders. It's worth noting that China uses a lot of open source software--maybe they're concerned about these kinds of vulnerabilities.
Of course, even script kiddies can do serious damage, as Microsoft recently found out. Imagine what a few thousand script kiddies could do if given a year and co-ordinated planning... Biggest DDoS you've ever seen, coming from everywhere all at once... While that attack was causing general chaos, the true 1337 h4X0rs would do the real damage.
It's nice to see that the Armed Forces have started thinking about all this.
Actually, nuclear weapons is a misnomer - they're really less weapons and better called deterrents. I believe the actual use of a nuclear weapon defeats the purpose - the threat of a thermonuclear device is far, far more influencial than the use of one.
1) To explore a new paradigm of potential conflict which may or may not actually manifest itself at some point in the future. The USAF simulation of satellite warfare is an example of such a simulation. We don't really know if there will ever be satellite combat, but the technology is moving in a direction that might make such combat possible in the future.
2) To prepare for combat or other operations in a known conflict paradigm. The USMC conducting war games in San Francisco recently is a good example of this. Urban warfare happens all the time - Kuwait, Bosnia, Somalia, you name it. We know we'll at some point get involved in a fight in built up terrain somewhere, so we prepare for it.
Now let's look at the role of the military. The US military's primary role is to defend US interests (the physical safety of the citizens of the United States, its economic interests, etc, depending on your political views, one could go on in many directions). The military does not decide when and where it fights. The government does.
But when the government calls on the military to fight, it had better be ready to fight, or there will be calls of "damn, we pay them all that money, and they were caught by surprise!"
Cases where simulation of type 1 followed by type 2 might have been helpful:
1: Pearl Harbor ("nobody would ever try to attack Pearl, it's armed to the teeth!")
2: The Nazis Invade Russia ("Comrade, those Germans are preoccupied with France and England. They won't be turning east for at least another couple of years!")
3: The Nazis Invade France ("We have more heavy tanks than the Germans, and we have this fantastic Maginot Line!")
There's nothing worse than saying, "Damn, we never thought that might happen!" as you bury your dead.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
While I sometimes question the accuracy of Ananova, they are reporting that Iraq has two nuclear weapons at their disposal. The rules are changing. We can basically bomb a nation (Iraq) into the stone age, and somehow a few years later they have the bomb. Security is not what it used to be. Everything is a threat. I'm glad the military is looking at how technology can be used in the future of wargames. The more and more simulations they do the better prepared we can be for situations like this. And it seems only fair to assume that we would eventually have to have a 'space-corps', as the space installations of the future will have as much stratigic importance then our factories and military installations do here on Earth.
The Internet is generally stupid
hate all us "Anglo
Not true - they dont 'hate' us. I know plenty of Quebecois and none have said "I hate you because you speak English". There is not racist crap like that going on.
There are people in Quebec who feel that Quebec would be better off independant. That may or may not be true. But Canada is a tolerant culture that values real democracy - it is our duty to listen and discuss the concerns of the Quebecois, this 'English Backlash' you display is childish and ignorant. Would you prefer we start an armed conflict and have people start riots in the streets?
Quebec Nationalism, in some strange ways, is a testement to the strenght of Canada. Where else do you see people discussing real political ideals in a respectfull and mature manner? Where else do you see people using the strenghts of democracy to make political change?
In the end, Quebec will not seperate - and it will be a great stunning victory for all Canadians. Maybe the rest of Canada should listen to the Quebecois to understand what they desire instead of acting gruff and cynical.
If the blue team plans encompass their attacking the computers of Red, and the opposition, have the considered the possibility of non-military forces (called the Light Blue and Pink) trying to be patriotic and aiding their military by arranging their own private attacks in un-planned support?
Imagine: a Light Blue script kiddie attacks an important node in Red's system. Red take this a sign of aggression and retaliate. Blue are then forced to respond to a reponse for a trigger they did not personally pull.
Alternatively, the attack could come from Green, someone who wasn't involved in the Red/Blue conflict, who has no particular favouritism. In the initial stages of an intrusion it can be difficult to tell the source of the damage.
Plus with the US reliance on commercial carriers (in the case of space access) one wonders about their dependence on IP carriers. Can I damage the enemy by destroying or deactivating a HUB (MAE or similar spring to mind)?
... and today's pet project has
Seeing this article was just horribly depressing.
Oh goody, our space weapons will beat their space weapons. How about no damn space weapons at all? We do not need another arms race, but that is exactly where stuff like this is heading. How about we try to work for a lasting peace agreement with China et all and work for a function global society? hrmph...
It seems unrealistic to me that a microsatellite would be carrying enough fuel to be manueverable enough to actually block the view of another satellite.
Using radiation to "fry" the electronics seems much more plausible, as a burst weapon could be charged from solar collectors.
Whoa - that's stunningly appropriate considering the Star Trek (original series) that was just on SciFi - it's the one where there are two planets, Eminiar and Vendikar, who wage war through computer simulations, and the 'casualties' are cleanly disposed of in disintegration chambers...
Well, kind of. The unarmed person can be part of a wave attack, the person in the front gets a rifle, when killed the guy behind him grabs it up and continues on.
I beleve the Russians had to do that in some WW2 battles.
There were also the woefully under-armed folks who found one of the USA Libberator45 drops, a single fire 45 pistol GM made two a minute at the height of production. It came with an instruction comic book that showed how to sneek up behind a lone german and shoot him in the back, and then take their much better gun/rifle.
Fanatisam is a force multiplyer. So is training. So is equiptment. If you had a shotgun, and 1000 people who wanted to kill you had nothing but sticks, I'm pretty sure your going to die. You'll be able to kill a lot more of them then they will of you, but they can rush you in great enough numbers that you won't be able to reload fast enough.
Unfortunetely, one country cutting its military will not stop war. It will cause that country to lose them, though.
Nobody -- including every officer of the military I've met -- likes war. However, wars are at times necessary and appropriate.
Do you really think the world would be a better place right now if the Americans and British had been unarmed during that "brutal first 65 years"?
liberal news orgs == gospel truth
conservative/libertarian news orgs == lies and fabrications
Gotcha! Thanks.
almost certainly China or Russia
Dont forget those wily Peruvians. They dress funny. They dont wear any deodorant. And they only have ONE! McDonalds!!!, even that is only there for the US Military base.... lets not forget about them... next thing you know they will be Godless Commies(TM)
Words from the horse's mouth, provided by Babelfish.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Science fiction, by Poul Andersson, called "Kings for sacrifice", when nations agreed to battle in space instead of scorching Earth.
;-)))
Or "Fury" by Henry Kuttner, when battles were performed outside of the living space not to damage it.
I know, it's too early for that kind of technological advances for all warryng states, but it's nevertheless an option for the future, unless humankind will learn how to control its aggression (let only ones who never flipped off a sucker who cuts you off or blocks the left lane throw a stone at me
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
What amazes me is that in all 200 of these posts virtually no-one thinks this hole idea is bullocks.
Doesnt anyone think the better answer is peace?
Does any American really think they have to 'defend' themselves from someone else? Let me tell you if you are American: The rest of the world thinks America is the most Militarized Aggressor on the planet. Bar None. I would hope more Americans would be objective about the desire to build more weapons. Didnt anyone tell you people would prefer prosperity, happiness and peace vs war? Why would America (and Americans) so consistently decide to extend and prolong the brutal first 65 years of the 20th century... cant we fucking move on?
We are seeing the next paradigm in weaponary. States are developing high tech conventional weapons that will operate in space and be able to strike out opponents hardware in small brushfire wars. There will never be a WWIII. If the US were to take on China, they would instead test each other, like rutting stags, without going the whole hog and destroying each other.
In any war, the contestants are trying to determine who's vision of freedom will prevail. In the case of USA V China, the Stags may well clash, but it is the most determined, the most suicidal of the two that will win, just as in real life. I very much fear that America has become weakened, in terms of its resolve I must stress, whereas the automatons of China will be able to behave in the brutal fashion required to win the contest. If the USA is to have a hope, it , like the stag, must cultivate a spirit of self sacrifice among its civil service and citizens.
It is the only way that America will get the resolve to win. The USA has done it before - lets see if it can do it again.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
Yeah, and the US also 'knew' that we would have moon bases by now. They also 'knew' that computers would never get any smaller. I personally think that it's sad that in the US at least, technology is pushed by military...I know that's not entirely true, but often in history the civilians got the stuff after the military. It would be good for commercial space travel, which is sad that to get this we have to be at 'war' with another nation. We need to create peace on Earth before we can ever hope to reach the stars.
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This space reserved for valid arguements, not pointless ramblings.
"If you want to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut off its head? [...] Of course not. You'd paddle it. There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an ax. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him...but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing...but controlled and purposeful violence. But it's not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It's never a soldier's business to decide when or where or how --- or why --- he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much, the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people --- 'older and wiser heads,' as they say --- supply the control. Which is as it should be."
"We are the boys who go to a particular place, at H-hour, occupy a designated terrain, stand on it, dig the enemy out of their holes, force them then and there to surrender or die."
- Heinlein (Starship Troopers 1959).
How we know is more important than what we know.
There hasn't been a US war worth fighting in aeons now, and I can't see there being a worthwhile one in the future. My generation stormed the beaches at Normandy but decided to prop up Nazi West Germany after the war. Hmph, no one asked me, I tell you.
You know, I laughed when I saw kids burning their draft cards in the sixties. Sometimes, I did more than laugh. Sometimes I hurled insults, fists, and even other stuff at them. Damn pipsqueaks didn't know what it meant to bleed for your country. For my country. Jimmy's never coming back, but these kids got to smoke their pot and shrooms and bras and whatever else they could fit in their pipes and mouths. It made me sick.
But not every war is worth fighting like 'Nam was. I'll even admit, 'Nam had its problems, and they weren't problems you could sweep under the front-porch's rug, neither. Deep issues, but I wonder whether those kids were right, now. I'd hate to learn something from someone half my age, but I have a closed mind, sometimes. It's not just that we had it better back then. Stuff was more real. You could taste your fried eggs on toast, and you didn't have to have someone slice your meat for you. I'll even let you in on a secret: the world wasn't black and white back then, no matter what those Hollywood films try to tell you. It's all lies and serpents.
Why should we fight China? What does China have to offer in conquest that we can't already obtain by getting them to immigrate? We already build better domestic Chinese food than they've got.
Read the rest of this comment...
Sure, unless I have more cars (or repair money) then you, and am willing to spend it to keep you the hell off the street.
You can win a war of equal exchanges, or even losing more money/men/whatever then the oponent on each exchange. You "just" need to be very determined and/or well funded.
Look at the USA WW2 tanks. They couldn't even hurt the German Tiger tanks unless they got a shot to their back, but we had so many of the damm things we beat them anyway.
Look at the Vietnam war. We killed more of them then they killed of us. Buy a fairly wide margin even. But we wern't willing to keep dieing to win, and they were. We lost.
He has written a lot of good fiction, but I'm not sure how much is relivant to forming military doctrine. "A Letter Home" was really entertaining, but we wouldn't have won the Gulf War (or at least not with as little loss of our lives as there was) if we had payed any real attention to it.
Quebecers are very nice to Americans, but they hate us "Anglo" Canadians. Everybody will be better off if you invade them...
Hell, Maxim even did an article recently on how great Montreal is.
Which are conjectured to merely have separated the 2 teams so you could tell them apart. You have to do that to run a drill... Pretty common, and some pretty outlandish drills are pretty common. I wouldn't wager that we are betting that this is the martian army, china, or even a mountain militia.
Eh...
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Yeah, diversity sucks, so hard to cope with.
:-)
It's not the diversity, it's the fact that they demand special treatment, and whine when they don't get it. Then there's the fact that they hate all us "Anglo" Canadians... We've tried to accomodate them, and it just doesn't work. Your turn now
"I hate to use the word 'paradigm,' but mind-set changes are happening here," added Maj. George Vogen, who helped run the game. "This is the next step in seeing the growth of space into its own right."
So now growth in any field is measured by how much it can be militarised? *sigh*
I understand that this guy IS a Major, and this comment WAS in the context of wargames, but I still think that the mindset holds true in a much wider realm, and that's a bad think in my mind.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Moreover, they knew the threat of a monolithic Oriental Communist Empire was a boondoggle. And so, Eisenhower took steps to keep us out of the region, and just ignore the damn French whining. And then came a man called Kennedy...
Sigh. I don't know what to make of Jack Kennedy. With Cuba, his ignoring the hawks certainly saved the American fleet,(Cuba had the tactical nukes ready) and possibly prevented WW III, but with Vietnam, he pissed away probably as many lives as he directly saved... Oh well, if you look at the history of Nations, they tend to go along flexing their muscles until they run into something too big for them to handle.
Britain: The Great War.
Germany, Japan: America.
America : Vietnam.
If you look at number of casualties, our brick wall wasn't that painful. I still don't know if Russia has hit its wall,(Afghanistan? Chechnya? The next 20 years of Chechnya?), but I think China's will be Taiwan, if they aren't careful. But relations have been thawing, so maybe if the world's lucky, it'll be internal tensions, or east Turkestan or something...
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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email: proprietary becomes free, org to com
Nah, it isn't a waste when the people you give the money to give some of it back to elect your friends and pay for your next campaign. Remember that we've got a Bush in the White House again.
Nobody reads Santayana anymore.
I half-agree with you. The US is constantly getting grief for anything remotely military it does. They should go back to a bit more of an isolationist stance, and only meddle when either their own interests are directly at stake, or their allies are threatened and ask for help.
Where I disagree with you is on disarmament. I'm a firm believer in peace through strength. Consider two scenarios:
A) If you attack the US, they will retaliate by telling you you're a bad man, and asking you to stop in a real nice way.
B) If you attack the US, you will be instantly disintegrated by airborne lasers, and have your molecules turned into interstellar spam.
Under which scenario do you think people are more likely to screw with the US?
The Libertarian (as in the party) view on this matter is to build up defensive capabilities (including a National Missile Defense), and stop pissing off other countries by meddling. If they screw with the US, their leaders find a TLAM-C cruise missile flying down their chimney. Otherwise, they're free to do whatever they want.
Sometimes violence is unavoidable, and the most humane approach is to end it as swiftly as possible through overwhelming force. Other times, that large force will act as a deterrant and prevent conflict in the first place. Don't be another Neville Chamberlain...
Frankly, I can't imagine countries doing that kind of thing to each other. All's good in love and war, yes, but when both countries lose from such ridiculous tactics then their is no longer a point. If I kept intentionaly crashing my car into yours and you did the same, don't you think we'd fast realize that we're both wasting one another's money in fixing our cars and agree to stop? Politicians may be pretty numb in the head, but they do have SOME sense.
The reasoning behind this? We'd make it stop. There'd never would be a war where stuff like that happened. They spent our money on an exercise that is based on practicing for something that just won't happen. It's like schools doing drills for nuclear bombings back in WWII: ducking under your desk won't do a thing if an A-bomb lands nearby - you should be more worried about the radiation because if you're close enough to the blast that it might hurt you, the rads will definitely kill you. In other words there was no point in the duck-and-cover thing and there's none in this either...
I suggest that the higher-ups in the military that plan this read some of Isaac Asimov's work - he wrote a good one about something like this.
The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
SIG: HUP
Also, in time of war, would the commercial satellite operators really say no to "Red" using their systems, if the contract said so? I just get a feeling that the "Blue" government would provide some sort of incentive/threat to get their domestic commercial sats not to carry "Red" traffic.
And come on, we're not in the Cold War anymore. The commies arn't going to come and invade, and the Brits won't need any saving. Get some new bloody colors...
Dan.
Cue The Sun...
All those itanium satellites have found a new role as the suicide bombers of the 21st century. We'll just start changing their orbits to collide with enemy sats (or de-orbiting them into the enemey's nation...)
(that's not supposed to be serious. I'm sure the future will prove it otherwise)
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
The recon satellietes that the Air Force and CIA operate allow us to observe our friends and enemies from afar, day or night. These 'birds' are impervious to any weapon currently deployed.
Um, no.
A hobbyist's rocket with a box of nails on the top, and you can kiss any LEO satellite goodbye. The spy satellites are all in LEO - you can't get decent image resolution from any higher.
The magic here is that you don't need to achieve orbit to wreck a satellite - you just need to get something up to orbital _altitude_, and let the satellite smack into the shrapnel it spreads around before the shrapnel falls back to earth. It takes 30 MJ/kg to get into a stable orbit. It only takes about 3 to raise a rocket to orbital height. This is very, very easy.
How do you stop somebody from offering anon. email, Web space to child molesters, recipes for tacNukes, and the secrets of the intelligence community when their server is in orbit? Fry it with a laser or particle beam weapon.
The real question is, will it really take 16 years for this to happen? Why not burn Billy Gates' birds outa tha sky?.. that's what *I* say.
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
China vs. US? Actually red vs. blue has been used forever by the US military. Blue forces are always "good guys" and red forces are always "bad guys". It could be China, it could be Russia, it could be anyone.
I think the Washington Post is reading WAY too much into this (but if it gets you to view their web site, I'm sure they don't care)....
There are plenty of other "different people" throughout Canada. Try visiting Vancouver to see true multiculturalism at work. You'll notice that there are no language police and no special culture protection laws.
You're free to be different culturally, but you should get the same treatment from government as everybody else. Nobody should be "special" legally.
I'm not separatist, and I see Québec's nationalism as a way to put presure for the change.
Western Canada is pretty sick of you guys screaming about separation as a way of blackmailing us into giving you yet more stuff. If you'd actually look outside your borders, you'd see that Canada consists of every other province getting screwed over by Ontario, and that you are by no means alone in that respect. Just so you Americans know what's going on, the Liberals (our majority government) are basically Ontario's party. Strangely, Ontario seems to have this bizarre belief that what's good for them is good for the country, so they accuse other parties of regionalism...
I'm all for more power to the provinces, but it shouldn't be limited to Quebec. Also, I'm tired of my tax dollars going to subsidize your weak economy (yes, BC and Alberta pay substantial transfer payments, a good chunk of which go to Quebec).
So go ahead, vote yes in the next referendum. We won't be blackmailed, and you can find out what Canada has done for you after it's all gone.
...They got paid to play Missle Command all day?
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
Space is not peacful. It has not been for 50 years.
The Russians (FSU) have gone far beyond simple "spy satellites" - they have gone far beyond SIGINT and ELINT birds...
You have no concept of the shenanigans that they have tried.
And no - i'm not talking about that stupid movie Space Cowboys. I'm talking real world.
As for the Chinese - well, lets just say that they are not (yet) as brazen about this as the FSU has been... in fact the ROW (rest of world) is pretty tame comparitively.. however, its mostly because they have gotten into the game late, and I give the Chinese only a few years before they are right there with us.
The Air Force's mission inculdes the exploitation of air and space (not bounded) to further the interests of the United States... and to protect our interests against all enemies, foreign and domestic. No use of space would be outside the scope of the AF.
There may be one or two of you reading this like i am.. behind a couple of X-07's... And if you are, you know what I'm talking about.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Maybe instead of spending 123^12 Billion Dollars on a Star Wars program America could start spending more money on Diplomacy. Start a international effort to sign a "Global Agreement to Ban Arms from Space" Treaty with the rest of the world.
Problem Solved.
If one of these 'rogue states' happens to not sign and starts putting up arms - they would be doing so against the policies accepted by the rest of the world. Which is MUCH Less likely to happen.
The only thing Gauranteed in this: If AMERICANS rush to militarize space - 5 other countries will do the same... why not try and PREVENT war from the outset and 'Give Peace a Chance'.
If you want to see war go away, first change human nature,
You are very wrong - people want peace above all else.. you site Germany which was a result of a Cult of Personality and Charisma, where as Stalin's evils were a corruption of ideals (Communist) to mask Fascism. The world is a dynamic place - we have had alot of war and conflict in the 20th century. I think many times people had whipped up xenophobia to their advantage - be carefull or America will grow into a Jihad like the world has never seen (which is my vote btw).
As for "If the fathers of the nation, its leaders and those with the power, decide that its the only way to ensure that they can keep their phony-baloney jobs"
You do realize that allot of the rest of the world use America as an example of HOW NOT TO RUN A COUNTRY (myself included). When you characterize countries that are not "cookie cutter replica's" of America ideals you try and dismiss them as 'phony baloney' - this is nothing more than American Hubris, really one of the major problems with America. Americans are convinced they are the most powerful, prosperous and free people in the world - and they have no problems telling everyone that... none of those things is really true (outside of possibly 'powerful') but to try and discuss that with an American and you run into a wall of Jingoism and Nationalism that truly scares me. Americans should start seeing their civil lives and community as a dynamic force - to be changed, altered, and molded for the better - and STOP adhering to your 'God Justified Right of America" that is growing into a Religion.
is to assert certain political and/or economic conditions upon your enemy(s). Many times in history, so called 'peripheral battles' were decisive in affecting the overall progress of the war. An example, in ww2, Axis submarines and submarine tenders roamed freely in the southern atlantic, from where they could inflict masive losses in the south atlantic itself, or sortie up to the caribbean and have some fun there. It was not until late 1942 that the Allies placed a single squadron of long range aircraft and a few small escort vessels in Brazil. This tiny force wiped out the Axis threat in the southern atlantic, which never amounted to more then 5-8 submarines and maybe a surface raider or tender. The point of the battle in space is similiar. In and of itself, space has no value. But denying use of it to ones enemy is of paramount importance because of the nasty things that can be done from space. (Spying, communications, lobbing the odd weapon earthward). Even if the chinese only manage to get one or two 'killsats' into space, it is imperitave we dedicate superior resources to secure the use of space for the US and our allies. I dunno if we actually have any allies left though, except Great Britian ;)
So cheering a country that is not USA and its Stars and Stripes is counted as a troll. Nice.
Cheering any country in a war is trolling.
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The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
You're going to put out someone's eye with those things.
Does it mean that Native Americans must be grateful to invaders for being allowed to have children?
No, it means that a warlike, conquering race of people (the so-called "Native Americans") was in turn conquered by a different, warlike race, who happened to be quite a bit better at it, with better weapons.
Stop whining. It's not like the Native Americans were living in peace and harmony with each other and nature. They killed, raped, kept slaves, etc. The European invaders were just more organized about it.
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
10 years ago, a 1ghz computer would have been impossible..
Just because it was impossible 10 years ago or hasn't been done yet doesn't mean that it won't be done in the future.
Computer can help solve a LOT of problems.
At least as kids we had the calming placebo of a nuke shelter; now it will be worthless, since satellites can read your mailbox to verify your name and then narrowly target your house/shelter.
whoever made the implication that somehow space-war will be a "kindler, gentler" war is, pardon the expression, building castles in the air -- do you think They (whoever they may be that decade) will knock out Our satellites and then say, "okey-dokey, we won 'cause we ruined your bourgeois DSS reception and now your society will crumble! there's no need to also bomb your cities, invade your land, or anything else that might actually subdue your people" ?
Since SF literature is full of pertinent novels, let me offer what is perhaps the most likely one, given human capacity, no, tendency for setting up the very systems that will destroy it:
Fiasco, by the masterful Stanislaw Lem. the characters are so humanly infuriating, and the M.A.D.ness so inexorably self-perpetuating, it could only be true.
i can understand the reasons for wanting to militarize near-space to protect ourselves, but history shows unequivocally that armament only leads to more armament, and merely puts us one step closer to the real "War to End All Wars". i dunno. sometimes i think we deserve it.
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Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Despite the occasional whining, I think Canada generally still likes the US. Granted, it would have been nice if you could have spared us the month of crap about your election, but that's water under the bridge...
If you really want us to like you, invade Quebec. Please. And take Celine Dion. Oh, and could you bring some Cherry Coke with you? It's impossible to get up here, and that Wild Cherry Pepsi is shit. Also, would you mind getting California to pay us for all the electricity we gave them? Now that I think about it, I could use some good Mexican food... Maybe California can pay us back in tamales...