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US Military Plans Space Combat
MacDork writes "Wired news is reporting that the US Air Force has documented its plans to shoot down "commercial spacecraft, neutral countries' launching pads -- even weather satellites" should the need arise. From potential Chinese militarization of space to commercial spy satellites their reasoning seems obvious, but there are just as obvious consequences of such actions. Just glancing at the PDF, I don't see any plans for the aftermath..."
Personally if I were a leader of a country and the US air force shot down a satellite or any other sort of space launch I would declare full and all out war on the US.
The US should not be able to say what a soverign nation can and can not launch into space and if they attempt to control that I would wholelly support action (be it military or otherwise) against the US.
I agree. Isn't it true other countries cannot take pictures of other countries (like the US), according to the US, but it's fine and dandy for the US to take spy pictures of others?
Do unto others as you would others unto to you (Or something like that)
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
"The aftermath" is, rightly, not the purview of the military. The job of the military is to break shit and kill people - "the aftermath" is someone else's domain, reserved for "after" the fighting is all over. Reducing space junk and eliminating enemy satellites are mutually exclusive propositions, so you might as well choose which you want more, because you can't have both.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
With Bush giving Kerry a hard time for his "Global Test" remark, it seems clear that the US is taking a more aggressive stance militarily. The cold war is over and there really isn't anyone who can threaten us except with terrorism or nuclear missles (China, India, Pakistan, and certain EU states).
What we're seeing is an administration who's willing to do whatever it takes to advance its goals. Personally, I find that chilling. As Machiavelli said, it is better to be feared than loved, but it is worse to be hated. I worry that our current policies are moving America towards a position where it is universally hated by the rest of the world.
And if more commercial space programs go into production, it seems like the debris field will grow very rapidly.
Look, I wish you were right. But, there was the guy who said:
And another who said:
They were both assholes, but they were right in those remarks. That's what make them scary. The biggest asshole of them all, to return in-topic, is the one who (wisely?) said:
The USSR isn't there any more to deter the US, so the US can do pretty much what they want. (If English had the same distinction as German, I would say können, and not dürfen.)
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Kind of reminds me of the Starfire Optical Range. From what I've read, this was a black-ops facility built in the late 80's to (1) be able to view satelites with high precision from the ground and (2)selectively disable components on these satelites with a ground-based laser. Why shoot down a satelite and suffer the political problems when you can just make it look like it malfunctioned?
If I remember right, this is the project that is responsible for inventing/implementing adaptive optics to adjust for atmospheric distortions. After the cold war ended, they acknowledged the project up and open-sourced the technology so astronomers could benefit from it. If you look around in some signal processing journals (eg, SPIE), you'll find the papers.
``should the need arise''
You mean, if Bush accuses them of having WMD?
Sow more hatred, harvest more pain. Piss off everybody, and gee, there are terrorists attacking you. Who would have thought? Good we spent those billions building our super hyper space defense system rather than improving quality of life!
What's that you say? They're using low-tech weapons that we cannot detect? We must have stronger security checks, fuck civil rights and liberties!
And the maddening thing is, voters actually support all this...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
MAD worked just fine. Come up with a better solution, then play some game theory with it. Just for kicks, assume nuclear weapons are difficult to detect from a distance.
After doing some work, do you see why MAD makes sense?
Both Republicans and Democrats, if given the opportunity to target certain assets will do so- even if only by mistake.
What will be the long term consequences, for example if you down a weather sat? Well, for many countries that depend in large part on agriculture for both survival and balance of trade, not having a reliable weather info could be catastrophic. Besides the loss of human life, is it too outlandish to think that a bunch of people that have had their standard of living suddenly diminished could blame the US?
<background>
Clinton had a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan bombed to the ground on suspicion of producing WMDs. It was a mistake they later apologized for.
Consequences? A lot of people without access to cheap anti-malaria drugs and affordable veterinary drugs. In other words, a lot of people die, although not right away or in a "sexy" way for western media. I'm afraid people won't get the point of how dangerous it is to disable key infrastructure like weather sats or pharm plants.
</background>
An other near-term consequence of this will be to piss off some Canadian moderates that are uneasy with the idea of supporting the US on ballistic missile defense (another component of space weaponization).
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
The USSR isn't there any more to deter the US, so the US can do pretty much what they want.
That's why we need common European defense and common European foreign policy, both funded at levels comparable with the US.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
Lead by example, not hypocrisy.
"Hypocracy" means saying one thing and doing another. Using it as a label is a sign of weak thinking.
So, tell me: When did the US Military tell people that nobody should think about how to take down satellites?
If you can't answer that... and you can't... it is not hypocracy. It may be other things but that isn't it.
This is really nothing new. The USAF had an anti-satellite missile program decades ago, a two-stage rocket launched from an F-15 at high-altitude. There was one successful test, and the program was then shelved. The Soviet Union had an anti-satellite satellite, that if used would match orbits with the target, get close to it, and then detonate.
I like how this stuff only becomes Eeeeevul when the Bush administration looks into it.
The same goes for the Geneva Convention, and US strong opposition to the International Criminal Court. In Bush & Co.: War Crimes and Cover-Up we have
And you are smoking what exactly? Remove the embargo? That is EXACTLY what Saddam wanted! Of course the UN wanted the embargo lifted, they were all taking kickbacks from Saddam. If you were unaware, there are 3 seperate investigations into this right now...
You mean, stand around inside a cage called a free speech zone? Or be out in the street with cops with rifles on the building tops, military helos over head, and sonic cannons and whatnot pointed at you?
That's the state of "protest" today in the US and why most people don't engage in it. Everyone knows it's one incident away from beoming a bad news scene with a lot of people hurt, and better than even odds some undercover "officer" agent provocateurs starting it.
Everything else by the way of protest in the traditional way they can and will ignore, they could care less about letters to the editor or any emails you send them basically. Petitions, bah, ignored. Redress of grievences? Sure, you have the "right" to cough up thousands of dollars to begin talking to some lawyer, then it gets more expensive from there. He's gonna giggle all the way to his mercedes dealer while you sue the government over something. And the vote? See the so called "official national presidential debates"? An infomercial for the NWO corporate party basically, as much diversity and differences of opinion there as at any regular Klan meeting....and for backup they have new & improved voting, courtesy of blackbox diebold..
Funny, for the primaries and the debates for the two for one party they seem to have no problems finding enough podiums for half a dozen guys up on stage, but once down to the wire,for the biggee, all they can find is two podiums. Funny how that works out. Let me see, two dudes, frat bros for some elitist neo nazi satanic frat, both wearing black suits, wives wearing white suits....Yep, a true difference, there's your choice, and you can protest it all you want..but it won't change a dang thing either....
Nope, we are graciously "allowed" the illusion of protest, but americans know what's up, and what's upo is basically "shutup, sit down, do what you are told or else, here, have some trinkets and gadgets and cheap beer and nascar and football, that's it, don't rock the boat too hard..or ELSE!'".
It's not as bad yet as say north korea, but give it some time, it'll get there. That's eventually what these technofeudalists want, that's why red china is their poster boy model nation, BTW, they dig on that scene there. it's efficient. A few folks give the orders, you get to "vote", and they throw you some bones.
If folks don't agree it will get there,as bad as them other places are now, let them try an easy experiment. Next time you are stopped at a "random courtesy checkpoint" roadblock, you know, those kinds that never existed except for the last few years and are now common, where everyone gets stopped and checked for their "paperz, pleezz! and whatnot" by Darth Vader officer friendly with the glock and MP5, just..don't stop! They don't have any probable cause or even reasonable suspicion, they are just stopping you because they can, so go for it, keep driving on your merry way, see what happens, see if it isn't already a lot closer to north korea than you want to contemplate. Of course, you might not make it to even report back, either...in "free" america today.
There's no real protest anymore, people talk about protest, play-act at protest, but the authorites control protest close to 100% now, and they aren't giving up that sort of power. It'sincremental, on a thousand fronts, we read about it all the time here, but it's relentlessly forward for those globalists. That's their plan, you and me and we can "protest" all we want as long as we follow thier rules, their schedule, their methods, manner and location, and remain satisfied with the outcome of any such "protest", which is carved in stone, "they win, you lose."
Space is not demilitarized, both the Soviet Union and America have posessed weapons designed for space in addition to military satellites (including the beloved GPS), and there are no treaties concerning anti-satellite warfare.
During the Cold War, F-15 fighters recieved the capability to take out low-orbit satellites via the ASAT missile, a capability they still posess. The USSR had satellite "bombs" designed to take out low-orbit satellites via EMP (there has been speculation that they could take out medium-orbiting objects as well, but we really don't know). With the demise of the USSR and the collapse of their military, Russia has been willing to sell almost anything, and it wouldn't be a stretch to find China, North Korea, Libya, or Iran with weapons based on Soviet designs. Note that higher orbital objects were immune from these approaches.
There are no treaties concerning the destruction of satellites, although there was one for ballistic missiles; America withdrew in 2002, using a procedure outlined in the treaty which required six months of notice. Incidentally, the ABM treaty allowed the US and USSR to deploy weapons around capital cities. America chose not to, while Moscow is still protected by anti-ballistic missiles. Moscow once expressed interest in a anti-satellite weapons treaty, as did various groups of scientists in the US, but no such treaty was ever signed.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
We already have the technology to down even the highest stationary orbit satelite, and have had it since the early 80's. The USA is currently beleived to be the only country with such a device (it's a missile that's fired from a steeply climbing F-15 at about 90,000-100,000 feet). At least, we're the only country that say we have such capability
Frankly, this stuff was considered a LONG time ago; that the Air Force has plans to down the MLB's satelite if need be, is unsuprising, to say the least.
Some very public failures of the screening process (like that college kid from Louisianna(?)) show that you are correct about it being mainly for show - and for disarming those who would fight back in the event of a hijacking.
Airplanes would be less apt to be hijacked if they issued everyone on board a stun gun or a big pointy stick and locked the pilots in the cabin.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
I don't know which is funnier, the notion that Europe would ever fund defense at US levels (with the resultant sacrfices required by the welfare stare)
According to US military, some European countries spend nearly the same amount of GDP on defense as the USA. On the average, EU would have to spend additional 2.5% of GDP on defense, to match the USA. Now, according to Goethe Institut, EU spent on average in 1999 around 28% of GDP on welfare. Moving 2.5% from welfare to defense would be a noticeable, but not drastic policy shift. The reason why Europe is so drastically outperformed by the USA in terms of military capabilities is that European armies are mostly (UK is an exception --- not surprising, since it is shielded by sea) cold-war style, prepared to fight a large scale land war against the Russian invasion. Such armies are useless in today's combat fields, be it Kosovo, Afghanistan or Iraq. USA did not have to pay this 'Russian tax', being separated by an ocean. You could develop a more mobile army (leaving aside technological superiority). Given some time, Europe will remodel its armies, abolish the draft entirely and increase the spending. Creating an common foreign policy will give the incentive to do this, and creating a common army will give the economies of scale.
the notion that Europe would ever be able to do anything but what it's done since the end of WWII (namely: kow-tow to whoever has the guns, be it the US, USSR, or now, increasingly, Muslim extremists)
The USA could well afford to be more rash with the USSR, being shielded by an arsenal of nukes and an ocean. Europe has its problems with sending soldiers abroad (again: abolishing the draft will lessen them), but we were not afraid to send soldiers to Afghanistan. Some EU countries fight in Iraq (UK, Poland, Netherlands) and their experiences (if we still have the UK in the EU in the future) will add to EU military capabilities. The fact that other countries opposed war with Iraq does not mean that they do not fight terrorists. They simple were sane enough to notice that there were no terrorists in Iraq before the war.
the notion that somehow a united, militarized Europe would actually threaten the US, or be seen as threatening by the US.
The EU is not going to wage a war against the USA. It is only going to be taken more seriously by the USA, seriously enough to able to say 'we don't like your blowing up satellites in the sky' and be taken into account by the USA.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
Taking credit for inventing the internet could have cost him enough votes to lose the election.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Plenty. U.S. border security is a joke. 4 months after 9/11, I went down to the US with a friend. The border stop took 30 seconds (including a peek at the trunk - they didn't even blink at the beer in there). And the kicker is that they don't even looked at my face nor at my ID either (which is funny, because my father routinely gets questionned because he looks like Saddam Hussein).
Last time I went, the immigration officer looked at my ID, then let us through laughing because we had the same last name...USA did not have to pay this 'Russian tax', being separated by an ocean. You could develop a more mobile army (leaving aside technological superiority).
I'm not disagreeing with the overall gist of your post.
I was in the USAF for 8 years, and I would argue that our (US) military became more mobile and hi-tech precisely BECAUSE of our committment to the defense of Europe from the (potential, if not actual) Soviet threat.
1.) Despite the fact that we had a number of heavy divisions garrisoned in Europe, the bulk of our manpower was still in the Continental US and required heavy airlift capability to mobilize in a timely manner. The ability to project our combat power to anyplace in the World on short notice was driven by the need to counter the Soviets and their proxies.
2.) We developed hi-tech precision munitions to even the odds against superior numbers of Warsaw Pact forces in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. One account I have read estimated 20 Warsaw Pact divisions versus 8 NATO divisions. Even taking into account that NATO divisions tended to be larger than WP divisions, (IIRC, NATO divisions were 15K to 20K troops and WP divisions were generally about 12K troops) that's a 3:2 ratio of Warsaw Pact troops to NATO troops.
Our hi-tech weapons (M-1 tanks, Apache and Blackhawk helicopters, TOW and Hellfire missiles, MLRS artillery, Patriot SAMs, AWACS, J-Stars, Aegis guided missile cruisers, GPS, precision guided munitions) were all in response to the Soviet threat.
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
Various studies have shown that the real standard of living in many 'developed' countries has been falling since the 1970s, most of all in the USA. Such measurements take into account 'quality of life' elements like availability of health care and education (NB: this does not depend on public systems; private systems are OK as long as it is affordable and of a decent standard), real income (counting inflation and household debt), pollution, politcal/speech freedom, etc.
Yes. Even more frightening is the possibility of the USA defaulting on its borrowings. The USA has accrued massive debts, and it is questionable whether it can all be serviced. That would throw the entire global economy into chaos. Some even fear that this could be used as a tactic by the US government to get what they want. If that happens, nobody can do anything about it, and they'll be forced to acquiesce for fear of destroying their economies. No it's not true, but the parent post makes a good point. There is a massive dispaity of wealth in the US, and levels of poverty and homelessness are much higher than in other developed countries. I am not a socialist by any means, but there is something seriously wrong when you have the resources to prevent (or at leat reduce) this yet nothing is done.OLPC Australia
Unfortunatly most of your claims are simply wrong.
:D But they claim more homless and more starving and more HIV infected and more murders and so on in the US than in western europe. The question is not wether the US are 'dropping' from first world standards to third world standards, but how fast the standards do evolve furhter. E.g. countries like India and probably soon Indonesia (and China as well) are approaching first world levels. And if they start overtaking the US in terms of standard of living, IMHO US would be considered second world then.
Unfortunatly I mixed up seseccion with seperation, I ment the seseccion war.
Regarding the steel ropes on carriers, no, the united states a complete run down steel industry. They will not be able to find a process to make them in time. The amount of ropes a carrier is carrying with it is enough for 14 days operations.
The report after 9/11, that several 1000 pages thing, stated clearly that you have less then 10 wings of aircrafts operational in USA territory. All other wings are somewhere else on the planet.
While your bombers might be able to start in the united states and to fly to Afghanistan, they rely for that flight on global (NATO) infrastructure. But the point you really miss is: Afghanistan has no Air Force. Afghanistan has no Radar, Afghanistan has no weather sattelites.
Your anti missile lasers are not operational yet and they work anyway only under "perfect weather" conditions. The missiles are not aimed against your carriers in the first wave, they will hit the destroyers first of course. You forget that a carrier to attack Europe needs to be in range of about 500 miles. That is in range of the european, e.g. french and united kingdom air forces as well. The NATO defense strategies allways have been that the local defenses specialize in the local territory and local circumstances, while the US forces are formed to be a strike force to hit any point of the globe fast. For that reason, a lot of sub marines are deployed in north and east see. The US lack capabilities to detect them reliable. Because the anti sub marine forces in that area are european as well. You can extend that example to tanks etc. While the US has quite good tanks they use them only in countries whre no resistance exists.
I don't want to say that Europe would win such a war, because your answer is quite better than the original posters claims (erm, was that you as well? Can not see it while typing this.) You are right, such a war would be a total mess.
Regarding homeless people, probably the statistics are wrong
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.