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U.S. Air Force Plans for War In Space
arhca writes "Wired has an article about the U.S. Air Force's plans to put military weapons in outer space. Plans include firing hypervelocity rods from space to targets on the ground, space-based lasers and large mirrors to reflect the beams at targets on the ground, and a space-based radio frequency energy weapon to destroy or disable foreign satellites. The Air Force's PDF can be found here."
Well, yes and no.
The stated goal of the Reagan SDI was along those lines, but the real plan of the SDI was to create a technological race that the USSR had no chance of matching, which launched the US into prominence and bankrupted the USSR.
It worked well, apparently.
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The United States withdrew from the ABM treaty, as permitted in the provisions of the treaty. The treaty was not "broken". Get your facts straight before you start jerking your knees.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Didn't you RTFA or were you too interested in getting a +5 FP and scoring a political shot against the Bush administration? Let me quote:
Mind you that doesn't mean I think it's a good idea or that I'm endorsing it. But it's certainly not illegal or in violation of any treaty.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Starting in the late 1950s the Soviets began working on an nuclear orbital bombardment system that would bypass US early warning systems. There was also Salyut 3 in 1975 which carried a 23mm cannon that was used to fire at a target satellite
Interestingly the Gatling Gun was first made to be a weapon so terrible that people would see the futility of war and not fight any more.. (credits to the History Channel) The opposite happened. Increasing destructive power has always only served throughout history to up the ante when it comes to the price of fighting a war...and ultimately has made the world a more dangerous place to live.
Put aside the arms race issue, and the financial issues, ability to develop the technology, etc.
The big problem is what happens once we start blowing up satellites in orbit. The debris will all enter new orbits, and there's a good chance that some of this debris will strike other satellites, which will strike others, which will destroy low-earth orbit for 50 years. That's probably why the US would not focus on kinetic weapons, which could hve chaotic consequences. OTOH, other countries with less dependence on space (and fearful of having their satellites blown up while the US satellites continue to function), would be more apt to use kinetic weapons and risk destroying loads of stuff in low-earth orbit. Don't worry, this won't affect GPS or DirecTV.
Sigh, slashdot physics... :)
.01, but the acceleration of the projectile will be 1/1 = 1.
Actually, the force on both objects is necessarily equal and opposite in direction. You are correct that F=ma plays a role though.
If m(cannon) = 100 and m(projectile) = 1, and the forces are equal, let's say F=1, then the acceleration a(cannon) will be 1/100 =
I say we transfer the program to the deparement of education on the grounds that it'll make for some good physics textbook examples.
If you think the US has never missed a target with guided-missiles, you are mistaken.
And whether or not it was human error, the end result is still the same. See: here and here among others.
I think you're confusing the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and maybe what exactly they ban.
The ABM treaty restricts anti-ballistic missile systems to limited areas that can't protect the entire country. At the moment nobody has a functional anti-ballistic missile system, and only the US has so much as a plain old anti-missile system. None of these are availible on the black market. The US withdrew from this, which the treaty allowed. Whether that was a good idea is another story.
The NPT bans nuclear powers giving non-nuclear powers weapons, and non-nuclear powers from trying to find or build their own. It does allow helping developing nations with nuclear power. You could make the argument that this is meaningless, since somebody probably gave Israel nukes, and maybe North Korea has a model from somewhere to work from, but the State Department still prefers to respect it.
The Outer Space Treaty bans putting nuclear weapons platfroms in space, and using celestial bodies for any military use at all. This doesn't violate that treaty, since the moon and nukes aren't involved.
Maybe you could rephrase, specifying what treaties you're actually talking about.
You sir, are extremely misinformed. The fact that you pushed some of the buttons means nothing to me.
What about:
The restaruant and the three houses that were destroyed because we thought Saddam "might" have been there. He wasn't, we killed dozens of civilians. The stories about "smart" bombs missing their target are plentiful, but the targets themselves being wrong are even more worrisome.
Check out this link. So, I assume you had nothing to do with cluster bombing? Well, that's good. You at least left that to other US servicemen... Iraqi children are still picking up the bomblets (5-20% do not go off, leaving little toy like objects around to make kids armless. Nice.)
And as far as FoxNews, don't get me started...
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Don't like it? Go get your own military for once.
Well, that's the problem - everyone will. China can do it, India can do it, Russia can do it, Europe can do it. Maybe others will in the future too. Consider that if the USA puts weapons up there then all these other powers will feel compelled to develop their own. And even those countries that don't have the launch capability might find a friend in the above groups who'll launch / sell the tech for or to them.
Now if the USA had honoured previous commitments to keep space non-militarised, then perhaps these other space-capable powers would decide not to put weapons up there for fear of provoking the USA into competition (which they would have trouble competing with). A wonderful opportunity is being missed here.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Rates of crimes other than murder are significantly higher in much of Europe than in the US. In addition, crime rates in the US have been dropping dramatically while those in Europe have been increasing.
Prepared to refute you with data from the United Nations Crime and Justice Information Network's statistics page, I found that a lot of what you said to be true -- except maybe the "significantly much higher" bit. The USA has hovered at about 5-6K crimes per 100K people with a slight decreasing trend, while all EU member nations have seen between 10%-50% increase in crime from 1980 to 1997.
However, in terms of violent crime, the USA is still king. Our murder, rape, and robbery rates are from 4-10 times larger than in EU states, and our incarceration rates are 7 times that of European nations outside of the former Warsaw Pact states. Apparently, while crime is more prolific in Europe (in spite of our much harsher drug laws), they are overwhelmingly not serious crimes.
Now, Japan is another story entirely. Crime rates in Japan went from about 11 in 1000 to 15 in 1000 over the same period of time. Violent crimes are nearly nonexistant (though on the rise). Having been to Japan, I can say that you really could leave a wallet on the bar without much worry in most places in Tokyo (and Sendai too). This is becoming less and less true now as a younger, less traditional generation is supplanting the values of the old, but Japan is much, much safer than America.
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