U.S. Deploys Orbital Communications Jammer

kpwoodr writes "An interesting article at the Washington Times makes note of a recent satellite launch by the U.S. It seems we have put a jammer in space that will allow us to disrupt enemy communication systems at will. From the article: 'The U.S. military is bracing for future attacks in space, and the Air Force has deployed an electronic-warfare unit capable of jamming enemy satellites, the general in charge of space defenses says. "You can't go to war and win without space."'"

Comments

Re:With apologies to Sid Meier...

[Vitriol Angst]

B-17 then. Personally, I'll take a B-52 over 10 of the Billion $ Stealth Bombers any day. But it isn't the plane we are really discussing, it's about bombs and targets. We could drop a GPS bomb from a blimp and it would have the same accuracy as from a bomber.

So accurate compared to what? Even in Gulf War I we dropped a lot of ordinance. We spent Millions of $ to destroy one $100k SCUD. Any one strike can decimate a target -- but don't tell me we always know the target. If we always hit the target, and always have the right target, it would only take 10 sorties of the B52 to finish a war.

In Gulf War I we saw a lot of video from missile cameras of perfect hits. Wow. But how many mega tons of weapons did we drop. Simple math tells us that we bomb a lot more than there could possibly be targets of opportunity in all of Iraq.

The only point I'm making is that as we make our weapons smaller and more accurate, we are going to just hit MORE TARGETS. It will still be plane load after plane load pounding the "enemy" with as much as we can. I've heard rumors of a lot of new mass graves in Iraq, that more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died, but the lady who was supposed to report these statistics was "accidentally" killed by friendly fire as she was leaving Iraq. All we are accomplishing is more convenient death and destruction. In the end, is anyone better for these advances? Are we safer?

I'm just fed up with "better weapons" and "cleaner wars" right now. I want better leaders and fewer wars. There is no sacrifice and no "pain" that I feel sitting here all safe and sound in the USA. I don't really know what is being done "for" me. I think all we've accomplished is making warfare "easier" and more palatable. In Iraq, I don't think there has been a net benefit to civilians. Not bombing water supplies and electrical plants would have done a hell of a lot more than a precision bomb to ease some pain.