U.S. Considers Anti-Satellite Laser

SpaceAdmiral writes "The U.S. government wants to develop a ground-based weapon to shoot down enemy satellites in orbit. The laser will be much more powerful and sophisticated than a similar endeavor a decade ago. From the article: '... some Congressional Democrats and other experts fault the research as potential fuel for an antisatellite arms race that could ultimately hurt this nation more than others because the United States relies so heavily on military satellites, which aid navigation, reconnaissance and attack warning.'"

Comments

Purpose for defense or offense?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

From the article

In interviews, military officials defended the laser research as prudent, given the potential need for space arms to defend American satellites against attack in the years and decades ahead. "The White House wants us to do space defense," said a senior Pentagon official who oversees many space programs, including the laser effort. "We need that ability to protect our assets" in orbit.

Just doesn't seem credible to me.

Far more likely it's to protect America's "intellectual property economy" when it's cheap enough for private individuals to launch their own satellites to disseminate information under any laws they see fit.

Oh - and registration free link courtesy of Coral Cache

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Otter Escaping North]

Far more likely it's to protect America's "intellectual property economy" when it's cheap enough for private individuals to launch their own satellites to disseminate information under any laws they see fit.

You think this is meant to prevent satellite-level file-sharing? Like the RIAA/MPAA would say the word, and the government would fire a laser to take out someone's private satellite?

Wow! That might prove more effective than suing college students.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[The Snowman]

Far more likely it's to protect America's "intellectual property economy" when it's cheap enough for private individuals to launch their own satellites to disseminate information under any laws they see fit.

Wow. There's my first good laugh of the day.

No, this is more of a paranoid-delusional fantasy of the Pentagon and some bureaucrats who don't want competition from China and maybe Russia. The key to U.S. military dominance is our excellent satellite intelligence. While HUMINT helps with the social engineering aspects of war, nothing but a satellite combined with proper munitions can blow up a tank underneath a bridge without hitting the bridge. From 40,000 feet. Our satellites give our military and NIMA a detailed view of pretty much every square meter of the planet, and we use this to blow shit up. No other nation on the globe has this capability to the extent we do. The United States government wants to keep it this way.

So, we're in a hypothetical future conflict with China. They have satellite capabilities similar to ours. Maybe not as good, but similar in ability. We use these lasers to blow up their satellites, removing their capability to deliver precision guided munitions. We retain that capability. We win the fight. Maybe not the war, as Iraq is teaching it takes more than bombs to do that, but at least the U.S. isn't the country blown to bits with an occupying force.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Shihar]

Uh, the RIAA and MPAA are both evil and all, but they are not THE source of evil in the world. I would say it is pretty safe to say that the reason why they want to shoot down satellites has far more to do with Iran, North Korea, and China then it does IP. Is this a stupid waste of money? Hell yes. Is this an evil plot having anything to do with IP. No.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Luscious868]

Wow! An intelligent post on Slashdot about the US military and what it actually intends to do instead of paranoid ranting. Thank you.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[hhlost]

Perhaps it's just one of those brilliant projects that funnels taxpayers' money into the pockets of corporate fat-cats, while nothing actually gets accomplished. Remember Star Wars? How 'bout the missile defense system?

Ground-based lasers to shoot down satellites? HA!

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[drooling-dog]

Just doesn't seem credible to me.

That's because the primary purpose of this program, like so many others, is to transfer vast amounts of money from the federal treasury to certain politically cooperative industries. Like Star Wars before it, I doubt that there is anyone in the Bush administration that cares one iota whether it has any real military value or even whether it ever "works" or not. The real (political) value is in the spending itself.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[ePhil_One]

Just doesn't seem credible to me.

They Russians were testing anti-Satellite weapons in the 80's as I recall, crude but effective in theory. All you need to do is launch a Satellites into an orbit that matches the one you are taking down, and blow yours up. Car bomb in space, in effect. I guess this is why we are suddenly afraid of this, though I suspect the White House is over-estimating the ease of putting a car bomb in space, then matching the orbit of an object flying at thousands of mph. For what? to take out one or two GPS satellites of the 26? Maybe hit a spy satellite that could be quickly replaced with a better one while unmanned drones cover the gaps and the men in black track the organization that paid millions to one of 5 or 6 launch companies capable of putting that car bomb in space?

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Fordiman]

All I have on this topic is a link.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Otter Escaping North]

A more likely scenario is to prevent the threat of Chinese distribution in the event of an Sino-US economic cold war.

I wondered if that was your meaning - as it seemed a more practical use (although I don't find either scenario very practical). Your use of the phrase "intellectual property economy" is what led me to conclude that you presupposed economic uses, rather than national security ones - hence the joke.

(The sarcasm was meant to be somewhat teasing, but not cruel. Apologies if feelings were bruised.)

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Hmmmmn,

I do agree with your post to a certain extent, but the US hasn't entered a hot war with an equivilant (or even close) power for over fifty years (and arguably never)

The hot wars of the future will be with countries like iraq, where the US can absolutely dominate in air & space.

This project seems more likely for cold/economic wars of the future. Think about the damage to the US economy if Chinese satellites rebroadcast everything that could be rebroadcast (from entertainment through economic/political/military secrets to proprietary source code/ blueprints/ etc).

The US has always used its military to protect its economy - there is no reason this project should be any different.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

(The sarcasm was meant to be somewhat teasing, but not cruel. Apologies if feelings were bruised.)

Of course no feelings were bruised!

You can't be a whiney mac fanboy without having a thick skin!

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[CastrTroy]

No, this is how you do it. You take out their satellite and replace it with one of your own. Send them what seems like real information, only make the data incorrect, or give yourself the ability to feed them incorrect data at key points. It would work kind of like in Speed, where they taped 6 minutes of them sitting still, and replayed it over and over so they could sneak off the bus.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[kaysan]

It's interesting to see how the aspect of a rat-race always prevail so many of these mutual cooperation or mutual non-cooperation problems.

on the one hand there is indeed now a threat and a weapon where there was none before, on the other hand you never know what the governments of other nations have in store for you or rather what the future will bring.

in my opinion it's one of the greatest social problems humankind will face during the process of globalization; should we all commit to the ratrace?(i.e. should we lower wages in order to prevent jobs being moved abroad?, should we build weapons in anticipation of future dilemmas?) and if i choose not to, then what will the consequences be if everyone else does?

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Total_Wimp]

"We need that ability to protect our assets" in orbit.

Ok, call me an X files conspiracy theory type, but we've already got space defense systems and this is merely meant as an upgrade or additional weapons systems.

Lets examine the facts.

-we currently have more than 20 GPS sattelites in orbit. Besides helping you find the closest Starbucks, these are also used to help our soldiers find their way throug remote mountain passes and help missiles find their targets.

-Military doctrine is to control the media as soon as you can in any conflict. A large part of the media is broadcast via sattelite

-Our military insists on protecting its assets. Quick, name any military asset of regional significance that we don't guard?

-We've already have antisattelite missles. in the mid 80s, an ASAT took out a satellite in a successful test.

-China is interested in anti-satellite technology.

-Squadrons of fully operational stealth fighters were deployed and used for more than half a decade before being made public. Our military clearly is able to keep very large opperations secret for quite some time.

When I add this all up, I come to the conclusion that we already have space-based weapons designed, at a minimum, to disrupt an incoming missile. Others may have similar, which would explain why we'd be interested in lasers. The only question I really have is why they'd bother to make it public.

TW

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[breadboy21]

"So, we're in a hypothetical future conflict with China. They have satellite capabilities similar to ours. Maybe not as good, but similar in ability."

You're vastly overstating the power of the Chinese military. Not only are they not on par with the U.S., they aren't even close to being so. Many of their soldiers just go trucks to move around in, previously they were walking. The Clinton Administration made it possible for them to launch an ICBM and actually hit something. Before that, their guidance systems had an error rate of a few hundred miles. Their navy is weak and cannot project power much further than Taiwan, their huge army is incapable of moving great distances quickly, and their Air force, well, it isn't worth much either. The Chinese are simply a regional power with few military interests outside of that area. They only have 22 ICBMs even capable of reaching the United States, a deterring force at most. We don't need to worry about them developing anti-satellite lasers because they've proven themselves less than capable in all other military matters.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Maximum Prophet]

It only takes one nuclear bomb to ruin your whole day.

I remember at the height of the cold ware, China, the worlds 3rd SuperPower, only had 11 nuclear weapons. (England and France have more) Still, 11 was enough to get them into the club, and so far, they used them wisely. (i.e. not at all)

Now, your saying that they have 22 ICBMs. Yes, they may not be at our level yet, but their climb is much easier because they can learn from us. Even non and declassified stuff gives you lots of information about what will and will not work. (Don't put audio bugs into live cats, etc)

I remember when adaptive optics were extremely classified, it wasn't until they were indepently developed that they were declassified.

Anyway, you're not wrong, but with the technological sigularity coming at warp speed, everything is accelerated these days.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[nacho_dh]

"The US has always used its military to protect its economy - there is no reason this project should be any different." I don't agree. From my point of view, the US has always used its military to CREATE its economy instead of protecting it. But I do agree that "there is no reason this project should be any different". Though I work with ppl from the US all the time, I'm really not sure about how you see the your goverment's and their non-stopin bully attitude against the rest of the world. We are not talking about just defending what "it's yours" in here, we are talking about (just to set an example) invade other countries to get it's oil (cof-cof-irak-cof) and make up some cowboy story about chemical or nuke bombs. I would really like someone to tell me what ppl in the US think about their goverment's international relations policies. I'm sorry if this first post (my first one on slashdot) offended someone around here, i did't mean to, but that's a question that has been going around my head for a while.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[ikkonoishi]

Mmm. Schlocklicious.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Malc]

Of course, if it were a desparate situation, there's nothing to stop China exploding a nuclear bomb in the upper atmosphere and blowing all those satellites away.

How much of an EM pulse can American satellites survive?

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Good first post :-)

I'm sorry if this first post (my first one on slashdot) offended someone around here,

Don't worry about offending people - it's just words (and our ancestors have died to protect our rights to free speech).

If anyone gets offended, they have the right to reply & debate. That way everyone learns something!

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Comboman]

...nothing but a satellite combined with proper munitions can blow up a tank underneath a bridge without hitting the bridge.

Since when has the US military worried about blowing up a bridge? Even when there is a train full of civilians on it? http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9904/13/nato.attac k.03/ http://indypeer.org/show_file_page.php?file_id=80

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Malc]

Sounds like welfare in disguise to me. Perhaps it makes it little hypocritical knocking other countries for being "socialist".

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[B_Realll]

Star Wars was one of the most successful projects in U.S. history. Its mere mention by Reagan broke the bank of the Soviets. They had to cry uncle because they couldn't afford to build a countermeasure to it. Whether or not it was actually built doesn't matter. It accomplished exactly what it was supposed to.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Jeffrey Baker]

The USSR also had a ground-based antisatellite near Dushanbe in what is now Kazakhstan. The installation is believed to have been a testbed for energy weapons and has a dedicated hydroelectric power plant.

Here's a pic of the installation from before 1988, courtesy of the Federation of American Scientists.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Rei]

"In Future News, China announced today a new satellite defensive measure to be employed on all future satellites. Called (insert Kanji here), or "Fist Hitting Tree", it utilizes in-space adaptive optics to bypass ground distortion. The system, as designed, automatically reflects any incoming laser weapons to slowly sweep across New York City, Washington, DC, or any other major US city chosen in advance. According to a Chinese government spokesperson, 'This is a completely passive system. If the United States chooses to attack a Chinese satellite, they simply are choosing to attack themselves.'..."

On a more serious note, this is not only going to encourage more reflective satellites, but also "black" and evasive satellites. A satellite with a low profile and properly angled mirrors can be *very* hard to see. Give it enough fuel to alter its orbit every so often, and you've at the very least given your opponent a very big headache.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[letxa2000]

We are not talking about just defending what "it's yours" in here, we are talking about (just to set an example) invade other countries to get it's oil (cof-cof-irak-cof) and make up some cowboy story about chemical or nuke bombs.

Without touching on your other points, I'd invite you to investigate just how much oil we're "getting" from Iraq. If you still think that was the motivation behind the war, you've been influenced too much by media and popular culture.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[metroplex]

Our satellites give our military and NIMA a detailed view of pretty much every square meter of the planet, and we use this to blow shit up. No other nation on the globe has this capability to the extent we do. The United States government wants to keep it this way.

They should maybe start by nuking Google Maps headquarters from orbit then!

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Rei]

It only takes one nuclear bomb to ruin your whole day.

And the US has thousands. China has 80. Of those, only a dozen are mated to missiles that can hit the US.

It's amazing how well scaremongering works, but a simple look at the figures shows that China is *not* the wannabe military superpower that many American picture it as. Their economy is over half the size of ours, but their military only gets, by the most aggressive US estimates, about $80B annually (the official figure is about $25B).

The official US military budget is almost $440B, and when you add in off-budget funding (veterans benefits, nuclear weapons, etc), you get $500-600B, depending on what you count. If you count a reasonable share of the US debt as justly belonging to the US military, debt payments push the number even higher.

By comparison to the US, China is a military dwarf.

Wikipedia has a great spending chart that puts things in perspective:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:WorldMilitarySp ending.jpg

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Luscious868]

That's because the primary purpose of this program, like so many others, is to transfer vast amounts of money from the federal treasury to certain politically cooperative industries. Like Star Wars before it, I doubt that there is anyone in the Bush administration that cares one iota whether it has any real military value or even whether it ever "works" or not. The real (political) value is in the spending itself.

Our current Secretary of Defense, who so many around here love to hate (myself included), would disagree with your assessment. He's cut programs that he deems unnecessary in the past. He didn't make a lot of friends inside or outside the Pentagon by doing it. I'm no Rumsfeld defender after the colossal fuck up that is Iraq, but I will give him some credit where credit is due.

The real culprit, IMHO, is Congress. Where the heck is the oversight? You expect the Pentagon to push forward every weapons program they can dream up. That's what we pay them to do. Congress controls the purse string and has oversight which means ultimately they've got the power to put a stop to these programs if they choose to use it.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[TummyX]

The US is concerned with civilian losses (does not look good at home) but would China care about having that kind of accuracy or would carpet bombing ww2 style work well (or better) for them?

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Hal_Porter]

        The hot wars of the future will be with countries like iraq, where the US can
        absolutely dominate in air & space

I'm sure the French thought something similar when they built the Maginot line - "Now we're safe from the Germans, all wars will be small colonial ones".

The world can change pretty quickly, as Pearl Harbour or 9/11 show. If you want to survive, you need to prepare for all possible sorts of wars, not just the ones that seem likely at the moment. And a war with China is all two possible. I'm not suggesting that either side want it, but if you look at the regular standoffs over Taiwan, it's always possible that an accident could esacalate into a very dangerous situation. To a lesser extent, it's possible that North Korea could drag the Chinese and the US into a conflict.

And a war between China and the US would be much more evenly balanced in a sortf of Zerg vs Protoss way. It would also be marked by extreme ruthlessness, and it's hard to imagine that shooting down satellites would be regarded as particularly unacceptable.

And there are other possible conflicts where the US would be evenly matched, e.g. against Russia or even Iran. Whilst it's unlikely that Iran would be able to launch satellites, they would be able to buy coverage & GPS like services from European or Russian ones.

Even if none of this happens, shooting down satellites with a ground based laser is a cool trick. AFAIK, the US does have anti satellite weapons already - there was a cold war program to fire missiles from an F15. Looking at that link, the Russians experimented with a load of anti satellite techniques from kamikaze 'figher satellites' to a ground based laser that fry satellite's image sensors.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[nacho_dh]

sure thing i will. currently i'm at the office, but i'll do that homework as soon as i get home.

in the meanwhile, i invite u to investigate the location where those fantasy bombs where found, as far as i know, none chemical or nuke bombs where found.

now, if what you'r telling me is that irak (to focus on the example i gave previously) was attaked because the threat to the world that hussein's goverment represented, that would be a different thing for me, but anyway that wouldn't mach the "freedom" flag that a world main country like the US should sustain. attack a country just because there's a possibility of being attaked by this country in the future is ridiculous.

anyway, I DO NOT sympathize with those countries' attacks to civilians (or any attack at all), I'm just saying that there are better ways to stop a world threat than a war, and I think the US goverment is not considering those options.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[The Snowman]

Try looking more than a year or two out. Where will China be in 10 years, 20 years, even 50? They have an easier time developing technology than we do because they can easily steal it, and because half of what we do comes from their factories anyway. They will rise to be a Superpower -- maybe not on par with the U.S., but definitely an economic and military power to be reckoned with. When that happens, where will we be? How will we get there? Should we sit on our asses until China is an equal, or should we stay ahead of the game?

These are the questions our government is asking themselves and acting on. Whether you agree with U.S. foreign policy or not, you must understand the way our government thinks or choose ignorance. Look back at history. We have always been in a race either militarily or economically with someone -- whether playing catch-up to the British in the 1800s, an arms race with the Soviets in the 1900s, or widening our lead against China while beating on al Qaeda's door in the 2000s, we don't stand still.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Locke Digitalus]

It's only a matter of time now. Sharks with laser beams, baby!

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[blincoln]

The current FAS page says it's a tracking facility (sounds like how Starfire is used for now), and the ASAT thing was a US theory that was inaccurate.

Do you know of any reliable information that it is an ASAT system?

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[LunaticTippy]

If they're doing this to silence a satellite (GPS or comm) it will be broadcasting it's position with EMF. A stealth satellite only makes sense if it is waiting to be used. Once it is being used it isn't stealth anymore.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[KingMotley]

That would be relevant, *IF* it was the US. It was a NATO attack, run by england's general, using english pilots. And just to top it off, it was an accident that it happened. That's hardly proof that even Europe/England don't "worry" about such things.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Edzor]

Yes because the excellent satellite intelligence helped find the WMDs in Iraq!

  heck you liberals stupid or something? Photographs don't lie!! (especially with clever annotated military-speak notes to explain that it is chemical manufacturing plant)

Found Osma Bin-Laden and his magical underground caves of wonder!

And as we speak systematically rooting out all members of Al-Qaeda from their caves!

Roll on Iran!

Yes satellite intelligence is immensely to gather a *part* of the picture, but far too much reliance soley put on it. While HUMINT or having assests on the ground has basically been ignored for 20 years.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[I Like Pudding]

How in the hell was my post a troll? Dropping bombs fixes everything! You want more fixed? Drop more bombs!

The national debt? BOMB IT!
The homeless? BOMB THEM!
Healthcare cost spiraling out of control? BOMB THE INVALIDS!
Terrorists? MOAB!
Gas prices? BOMB OIL-PRODUCING COUNTRIES! BOMB RIGHT DOWN TO THE OIL!
Complaints about Camp X-ray? BOMB CUBA!
Lasting peace in the middle east? BOMB THEM!
Air safety? BURN THE SKY! ARCLIGHT FROM HERE TO CHINA!
Chinese satellites? LASER BOMB!

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Jeffrey Baker]

No, I was just going from the bare assertions made in the print edition of Soviet Military Power (1988).

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[vtcodger]

***That's because the primary purpose of this program, like so many others, is to transfer vast amounts of money from the federal treasury to certain politically cooperative industries***

If you'll reread the article, you'll note that this weapon is ground based, not space based, and is really pretty damn cheap by DOD standards -- hardly worth bribing a congressman for. I'm serious. Allowing for overruns and all, I imagine that a decade of R&D followed by a working installation would come in around the price of a half dozen F117A Stealth Fighters (@$45 million each). At that price, any country that has two PhDs to rub together, including a bunch of countries we don't like, can probably afford to build one of these -- especially if they phase the development out over a few decades.

A whole new world. Try to invade Iraq (not that I expect we'll be doing that again any time soon) and watch the satellites blink out. Try to overthrow Ceasar Chavez (which we apparently did attempt to do) and Zhango!!! all satellite communications in and out of North America are toast -- as are all out intelligence satellites that can ever be seen from Venezuala (which is most of them) -- Oh yeah, and GPS ... history.

And the best thing ... while this entails a lot of inconvenience it doesn't entail killing and maiming tens of thousands of innocent bystanders.

I say, Go for it.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[ceoyoyo]

Um, optical spy sat? You know, the ones that take the pretty pictures? No need for them to transmit to take pictures, and they can download those pictures in lots of sneaky ways to avoid giving away their position.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[rjhubs]

A hypothetical war with China is just that... Hypothetical. We will never go to war with China as long as we are dependant on their imports. The U.S. government knows this as well. Hence why we 'ignore' their violation of human rights, nuclear development. Both things which have been more than enough reason to go to war in the past. If any country has any sense, it seems obvious that leaving space a peaceful place is more beneficial than creating another battleground.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[ceoyoyo]

Kind of, except instead of feeding poor people and taking care of them when they're sick it's given to rich people so they can... well, whatever rich people do with more money.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[saltydogdesign]

Did it never occur to you that the oil motivation may be a little more long-term? By having a massive base in the middle of an OPEC country, we get a de facto vote in what OPEC does. Moreover, the U.S. now has forces on two Iranian borders -- rather a vulnerable position for Iran, regardless of whether bullets are fired in the near term. It may well not have anything to do with oil today, but you can be damned sure that Bush and Co. are thinking about oil in forty years, when we'll be in a position to fight for that last drop. This has nothing to do with media and popular culture and everything to do with common sense. What is our interest in the Middle East? Sand?

The tragedy is, they ought to be thinking about something *besides* oil in forty years.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Comboman]

That would be relevant, *IF* it was the US. It was a NATO attack, run by england's general, using english pilots. And just to top it off, it was an accident that it happened. That's hardly proof that even Europe/England don't "worry" about such things.

1) The US is a member of NATO.

2) Although the commander of the NATO operation was British, the plane that made the attack was a US Air Force F15E manned by an American Air Force pilot and weapons officer.

3) Amnesty International's investigation determined that NATO had not taken sufficient precautionary measures to ensure there was no civilian traffic in the vicinity of the bridge before launching the attack and even worse, sped up the video of the attack released to the press to make it appear more unavoidable than it was. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/060700-02.ht m

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[operagost]

I do agree with your post to a certain extent, but the US hasn't entered a hot war with an equivilant (or even close) power for over fifty years (and arguably never)

NEVER? Were Japan and Germany pushovers? Assuming you mean a unilateral war, the furthest we need to go back is probably the Spanish-American war, and if that still doesn't satisfy you then how about the War of 1812 against a clearly SUPERIOR opponent.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[operagost]

Don't worry about offending people - it's just words (and our ancestors have died to protect our rights to free speech).

Kudos to you for actually understanding that concept.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[sgt_doom]

May, 2007, in a secret White House basement operations center:

"Mr. President, the target has been acquired! Laser destruction imminent!"

"Heh...Hehh..heh..(imagine a Bevis & Butthead-type laugh), good thing those Asian people decided to be chipped. It makes all this tracking stuff so much easier. Heh...heh...heh...."

"That's the last critic of me and mine in that country. Heh...heh....heh....."

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[operagost]

in the meanwhile, i invite u to investigate the location where those fantasy bombs where found, as far as i know, none chemical or nuke bombs where found.

Not finding significant quantities of WMDs does not support your argument that the war was for oil. It does not even prove that the war was entered under false pretenses. See the last three years' discussion regarding the questionable competence of the CIA and other intelligence agencies in interpreting the data.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[operagost]

China's ICBMs clearly do not have the capability.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[qeveren]

I always figured the oil was just a side benefit compared to the huge, huge, fat cash injection that was going to the military-industrial complex. THAT is what the 'war' in Iraq was about.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[operagost]

1) The US is a member of NATO.

And you're a member of Fools'r'Us. Are we NATO's scapegoat? If a British officer was in charge, he's at fault. End of story.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[operagost]

Don't look now, but I think your post just bombed.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

NEVER? Were Japan and Germany pushovers?

By the time the US decided to enter the war, they were greatly diminished & couldn't be considered military equals by any strech of the imagination.

Assuming you mean a unilateral war, the furthest we need to go back is probably the Spanish-American war

Bzzzt! Wrong again - the Spanish were on the verge of civil war & in no way ready to fight a power like the US.

and if that still doesn't satisfy you then how about the War of 1812 against a clearly SUPERIOR opponent.

*shrugs* I knew someone would bring that up eventually - I'd like to thank operagost for admitting that the British are (in his words) "clearly superior" to the United states.

I hereby modify my statement to "(and arguably not for the last 200 years)"

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Thank you - you also.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[saltydogdesign]

Well, that obviously can't be discounted. No pun intended.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[indytx]

I do agree with your post to a certain extent, but the US hasn't entered a hot war with an equivilant (or even close) power for over fifty years (and arguably never)

This is true, but it's arguable that the U.S. hasn't been in a major conflict for that period of time because the U.S. military is so powerful.

The world is not a nice, friendly place. It will NEVER be a nice friendly place. Strength is a deterrent, and that deterrent means my family has a reduced risk of being killed by a foreign soldier.

Don't buy it? Fine. Look at Africa. Lots of countries of comparable strength, most of which are incapable of doing much to threaten to sovereignty of their neighbors, but many of which are more than willing to engage in cross-border skirmishes that kill innocents.

Africa is a taste of the real world where you don't have a big, strong kid on the block who intimidates all the other kids to behave.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Menkhaf]

Fuck off you dumbass. Not everyone here speaks english natively, including me, and I'd guess that the poster you're talking about is from Argentina (looking at his homepage adress).
Seriously, cut that crap you fucking grammar nazi. We all know what this guy means.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[arodland]

Well sorry. With spelling and grammar that bad I figured he just had to be from the US.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[LordVader717]

Sure, a tiny nuclear bomb in the vast vacuum of the earths exosphere is going to destroy all those nasty sattellites.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Random Destruction]

rak

n : a republic in the Middle East in western Asia; the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia was in the area now known as Iraq; modern government is involved in state-sponsored terrorism [syn: Iraq, Republic of Iraq, Al-Iraq, Irak]

Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[LordPhantom]

Hey Parent!

The British would like to have a word with you about those upstart colonies and their supposed "inability to effectivly organize a cohesive millitary force"

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[kd5ujz]

Well, prewar, they were producing 2.03 million bbl/day, 2005 estimate is at 2.09 million bbl/day.

here is a breakdown of the export commodities:
crude oil (83.9%), crude materials excluding fuels (8.0%), food and live animals (5.0%)

here is a breakdown of the export partnerships between Iraq, and other countrys:
US 51.9%, Spain 7.3%, Japan 6.6%, Italy 5.7%, Canada 5.2% .

So, We consume 52% of Iraq goods, and of those export goods, oil is 83% of the total. All of this information is based on CIA estimates.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[pieinthesky]

Well MY feelings were bruised. Can I have a hug?

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Menkhaf]

Heh... At least you have a great sense of humor.
I'm sorry if I was a bit harsh, but I spend a year studying in the US a few years ago, and it really pissed me off that people made fun of my accent and mistakes, even though I don't speak it natively.. Not fun.

Have a great day!

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[nacho_dh]

oh, u r sharp. i assume u speak spanish perfectly... [ btw, yeap, i'm from argentina =) ]

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Malc]

Yes, it generates a massive EM pulse. Even with the inverse square law, it could overwhelme a large number of overhead satellites.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[TheWizardTim]

It's a good think that all this technology was paid for by loans from China, and other countries. With the debt load that we have right now, China can destroy the US without shooing one shot. No hot war needed. All they have to do is call in the loans they gave us and we will be bankrupt. Add that to Iran shooing a few of it's medium range missiles at the oil fields in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and oil will double or triple overnight. They would not even have to do much damage, it's the thought that counts. They can do this today if they want. We would SOL overnight. This is why 1, we need to get out of debt and 2, we need to be energy independent.

TheWizardTim

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[gfxguy]

Considering that representatives of the U.S. have stated (and have been told by Iraqis) that we will NOT have a permanent base in Iraq sort of blows that theory out of the water.

I do agree our economic interests have somehow turned the freedom of some people in moral obligations, while people are dying elsewhere in massive numbers; and I do agree that this was a war for oil in some respects, in that we're protecting a large supplier of oil - although that supply goes to the world market, not us. However, there were a lot of other valid reasons (IMO) for the invasion in Iraq, and I'm not dissappointed at the results so far. Anyone who thought we'd be in and out in months or one or two years has been smoking something. We were stabalizing Japan and Germany for years, why would this be any different?

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[nacho_dh]

"See the last three years' discussion regarding the questionable competence of the CIA and other intelligence agencies in interpreting the data."

i will, thx :)

actually the point of my first msg was to know if there was an unanimous acceptance of some of this goverment's behaviours, or if the ppl was not happy with the international relations policies of their goverment.

i didn't mean to start a political discussion because i don't think that is what this website is about, and because i'm not the most informed person about the subject.

anyway i really apreciate all your opinions :)

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[sgt_doom]

I'm taken aback by:

an ASAT took out a satellite in a successful test.

I guess those Wikipedia articles are still a bit lacking. There was great a media hubbub about those ASAT tests turning out to have been completely phoney!!!!

I did work on one actually honest effort of the SDI (ECM on the Sea Wolf sub series); don't know about all the other facets, but do recall the ASAT was strictly fictional.

As far as conspiracy - where's the conspiracy - all I'm aware of is the factual stuff???

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Of course!

*hugs pieinthesky*

Better?

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[vtcodger]

***-We've already have antisattelite missles. in the mid 80s, an ASAT took out a satellite in a successful test.***

Taking out a satellite looks to be pretty much trivial. Really. Their orbit is (almost) entirely predictable. Taking out a satellite is less complicated than mooring a space shuttle or Soyez capsule. In fact it is the same job with one requirement removed -- approaching the satellite at very near zero closing velocity.

I have always syspected that any of the dozen or so countries that can get a few kilograms into orbit could build a satellite capable of taking pot shots at satellites they view as unfriendly with a bunch of "dumb pebbles' (e.g shotgun pellets). Given the proper choice of orbit it's 'just' a matter of shoving the pellets out the door and letting the combined relative velocities of the two satellites do the rest of the job.

The relative ease with which satellites can be attacked (at least in principle -- I haven't tried it of course and it may be harder than it looks) has always seemed to me to be a strong argument against putting weapons into space. Standing out there with a "take your best shot, mate" pose is only a good strategy if you know you can handle your opponent's best shot. But I doubt that th US's -- or anyone else's -- hypothetical space based weapons can take anyone's best shot.

So what's the point in spending say $50 billion for a space based weapons system if your opponent can disable it with $50 million worth of simple launch vehicles and a few payloads that are barely more complex than an IED with a timer?

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[ksheff]

The US has always used its military to protect its economy

just like any other power in recorded history.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Hentai]

well, whatever rich people do with more money

Mostly, find more ways to stay rich no matter what happens.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Andrew Aguecheek]

Hey, some of our ancestors died to oppose free speach! Or rather, some of our ancestors fought in wars that were conducted by those who opposed free speach. And some of our ancestors conducted those wars.

The fact people related to us died for something does not make it good.

What matters is that speach remains free.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[sp3d2orbit]

"I'm sure the French thought something similar when they built the Maginot line..."

For those who don't know:

In 1914 the Germans invaded France by passing through Belgium. This was in the early stages of WWI. After WWI the France began building massive fortifications on their border with Germany.

In 1939 the Germans again decided to conquer France (for the 6th time in 100 years). They saw the massive defenses built along their border and decided to circumvent them by attacking, once again, through Belgium.

The French were surprised.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[AoT]

You forgot all the fun possibilities of an Indo-Sino war that we would likely be dragged into.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[vtcodger]

Make that Hugo Chavez. I shall try in the future to keep my grape picking labor activists and socialist oil state presidents straight.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[LunaticTippy]

You can buy .6m images, or use planes. I sure hope we're not considering antisat defenses to shoot down spy satellites.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[mfrank]

And the reason you think the USSR wouldn't have collapsed otherwise is, uh, what exactly?

Maybe it had to do with the fact that Gorbachev was the first Soviet Premiere that had actually drank the Kool-Aid. He believed communism could exist with freedom of speech, and without repression.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Total_Wimp]

I showed you mine (an ASAT related link) now you show me yours (hopefully an ASAT related link as well). Why do you think it was fiction, and can you provide some evidence to back it up? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'd just like to see your sources.

TW

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[sp3d2orbit]

Sorry, sorry. France successfully invaded by Germany (Prussia) 5 times in 125 years. My mistake:

Napoleanic Wars (6th coalition) 1814
Napoleanic Wars (7th coalition) 1815
Franco-Prussian War 1871
WWI 1914
WWII 1939

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[prurientknave]

Fact:The US controls all traffic around each tap point in iraq. One general referred to it as the steel ring. Unauthorized foreign access is always met with overwhelming force. At least one article mentions an iraqi vessel being sunk when it trespassed the area of control.
Fact:There are several stories about missing/unaccounted reconstruction money that the US govt sent to companies in iraq to rehabilitate the region. This sum numbers in the billions.
Fact:There are several cnn reports that state that there is a lot of oil being somehow looted and there's no way to track it because it isn't metered.
Fact:There are several stories about US contractors being caught bribing officials.

Now let's be intellectually honest. How do you know you're missing oil if it's not metered? How does one loot oil from a pipeline? These pipes are over 9ft in diameter are made of steel and are 5-6 inches thick. and are designed to move oil at a rate of 1000gals/sec. One can't just punch a little hole in it and tap out some oil. It's not a wee little coconut that you can stick a straw in and sip a little juice from.

Fact: oil companies are rolling in profits we're paying higher gas prices at our pumps but only because the oil companies have to pay higher prices to Middle East oil barons and they've had losses in refiner productivity due to katrina. That is supposedly they're only passing on an increase in costs to us the consumer.

Now either we're in some kind of crazy voodoo capitalism that allows american oil companies to increase gas prices to match costs and somehow come out with huge profits OR they're selling black market oil along with the real stuff. On paper there's no justification for prosecuting them but I doubt their accounting for gallons of oil purchased, refined and sold will tally properly.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[ceoyoyo]

You can buy several year old images. Consider if I were at war with the US and wanted to drop a nuke over one of their carrier task forces. I need to know where it is, right now.

Can I buy imaging from Google or any other commercial provider? Nope.
Can I fly a plane over? That's an excellent way to get shot down.
Can I use my own spy sat? Yup. Unless of course it's shot down.

Blinding or killing spy sats is about the only useful purpose for this thing. You could do GPS satellites too, but that only (maybe) makes your enemy's aim a little bit worse. Cruise missiles are quite experienced at hitting the right window even without GPS.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[saltydogdesign]

They can state whatever they like -- it doesn't change the fact that the U.S. is building a 104 acre embassy in Iraq. That's the size of 80 football fields. Awful lot of room for the ambassador and a few security troops. Given that the U.S. has admitted it is already running military operations out of embassies around the world, their claim of not having a permanent base sounds like malarky.

Now add in the fact that the U.S. is actually building 14 large bases at the same time they tell us they plan no permanent presence. I suppose that's technically true -- if by permanent they mean "the next 14 billion years," but really, their words may be counter to my theory, but their actions aren't.

I don't know your reasons for supporting this mess, but that right there ought to give you plenty of reason to question it. The U.S. government isn't being straight with anyone, least of all their own people. Not that that's anything new: the "stabilization" of Germany and Japan went on decades longer than necessary.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Sanchi]

[quote]By the time the US decided to enter the war, they were greatly diminished & couldn't be considered military equals by any strech of the imagination.[/quote]

You mean in 1941 when Germany was just a few km from Moscow and Japan has almost all of easturn asia under its control?

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[B_Realll]

I'm not saying it wouldn't have fallen eventually. Communism can not and will not ever work because it is based on repression. However, having two superpowers at eachother's throat was dangerous to everyone. MAD was used to bankrupt their economy, and Star Wars was the last straw. Reagan and everyone around him knew it wasn't feasible, but the Soviets didn't. They knew they could no longer keep up. It was worth it if it ended the Cold War even a year sooner than it would have ended otherwise.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[captainClassLoader]

Yes, the little-known iRak from Apple. They used them in G'itmo. Strap some suspected terrorist SOB to it, insert an iPod into the dock, and it force feeds "Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini" into the guy's eardrums on permanent repeat until he confesses stuff he doesn't even know.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Alpha_Traveller]

You're wondering where the oversight is? Welcome to Post 1980's Reagan/Bush, where oversight was a thing of the past even back then. Remember the "Star Wars" program? This same thing is back, just "on the ground" to begin with.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[badmammajamma]

Actually, it's not paranoia or delusion. Our military has become completely dependent on satellites. Not just for intel, but for placing ordinance. Almost anything part with a brain in it has some dependency on satellites. Consequently, we can't afford to lose them because we lose a huge technological edge. If the bad guys (whoever they may be) come up with a way to take out our satellites via destruction or jamming, we need a way to remove the offender. Right now, there's no way to do that if the offender is in space.

But feel free to play the paranoid military card anyway...

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[wjsteele]

the US hasn't entered a hot war with an equivilant (or even close) power for over fifty years (and arguably never)

That's the idea... who want's to enter a fair fight you can possibly loose? Why do you think the US and USSR never fought???

We were trained to never enter a fair fight... only one you are assured to win. Our strategy is to maintain a decisive technical edge over every other nation, period. That way, no matter the enemy, we'll be around to fight another day.

Bill

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[sgt_doom]

In my free time (admittedly minimal, right now) over the next several days, I shall hunt for some link to to validate what I said.

But simply finding a link is not proof positive as my memory serves me quite well. That ASAT test was admitted later by Reagan to be nothing more than a strategic disinformation ploy (while not a fan of Reagan - since the Soviet Union still existed - this was more than justified), so the fact that I recall this renders your link as nothing more than a mistake at best, fiction at worst - and now I wonder about all the remaining Wiki articles....

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[nacho_dh]

Perfect spanish. Pointless discussion.

Be happy.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[DigiShaman]

Fact-of-the-day:

It's investment in military technology that trickles down the the public sector. In fact, without US military funding, you wouldn't have the Internet access to even read this post.

A bitter pill to swallow, but suck it down. The truth shall set you free.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[quarkscat]

In a hypothetical future conflict with China, China would win. And it would be an occupying
force. All that China needs to do is load up all those cargo containers headed for USA ports
for distribution to Wal-Mart with PLA (People's Liberation Army) troops & armaments. Our
oxymoronic Dept. of Homeland Security thinks closing USA borders and examining every
cargo container prior to entry to USA ports is too expensive (manpower) and too detrimental
to the USA economy. As if a civil war, a war against an invading army (armed or not), or yet
another major domestic terrorist attack would not be detrimental.

Instead of land-based lasers pointed to Low Earth Orbit, this country really needs them along
our borders. Leave the satellite-killing to cheaper autonomous orbiting robots. And use the
money saved to build up our Coast Guard, Customs, and Border Patrol to examine all cargo
containers at holding points along the 12 mile limit offshore.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[operagost]

The fact people related to us died for something does not make it good.

I didn't say it did, did I? Don't feel too badly, you missed the point like most Slashdotters.

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[sgt_doom]

You win - sort of...I can't find a link to that. But I distinctly recall that sometime in either 1986 or 1987, there was an ASAT test from Cape Kennedy - a ground launch - that was supposed to be a successful kill of a dummy satellite.

Later, it turned out that it was a complete phoney...a strategic intel ruse - which was successful in misleading the Soviets. This later called into question that F-15 airborne launch, also....

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Total_Wimp]

I appreciate you looking. I absolutely don't take everything our government says as solid fact, and I was just wondering what the evidence was for this one.

Our government is funny. They tell us we need to trust them, but then they say they need to keep secrets and tell lies. Great. I'd rather trust independant verification, thank you.

TW

Re:Purpose for defense or offense?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Nice to see such a civilized (eventually) discussion :-)

Well done to both of you!

Sooner than we think...

[hkgroove]

It'll be ready when Kent gets back from the cleaners to finish mounting the optics.

Re:Sooner than we think...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and from now on, stop playing with yourself.

Re:Sooner than we think...

[VolciMaster]

wouldn't it be firing backwards, then? Kent's unit was supposed to hit ground targets.

Re:Sooner than we think...

[WinterSolstice]

lol - Great Real Genius ref!

Man, that movie is one of my absolute favorites :D

-WS

More likely

[jim_v2000]

Congressional Democrats and other experts fault the research as potential fuel for an antisatellite arms race that could ultimately hurt this nation

Actually, if that happened, I would imagine that there would be an "arms race" to produce stealth satellites, and weaponized satellites that can take down antisatellite weapons.

Re:More likely

[BenBenBen]

The US already has stealth satellites ; Misty is the commonly used name for the system, and it was the subject of a congressional rebuke last year over its high cost and apparently limited returns. US reliance on satellites for imagery is much less now that they have UAVs and other as-yet-secret assets, such as the SR-71 replacement or the SSTO vehicle for launching 'ad hoc' satellites.

China v the US... IN SPACE!!!

Danger is the middle name

[roman_mir]

Dr. Evil: [about his new "laser"] You see, I've turned the moon into what I like to call a "Death Star".
[Scott snickers]
Dr. Evil: What?
Scott: Oh, nothing, Darth.
Dr. Evil: What did you call me?
Scott: Nothing.
Scott: [pretends to sneeze] Ripoff.
Dr. Evil: Bless you. ...

Dr. Evil: I will hold the world ransom unless you give me... ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
[UN members all start to laugh.]
Dr. Evil: Er, that is, unless you give me... ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS!
[UN members gasp!]

Re:Danger is the middle name

[bk4u]

They intend to attatch the laser beam to the head of a frickin shark.

Re:Danger is the middle name

[canning]

Dr Evil: "Mini Me, stop humping the laser. Maybe you and the laser should go get a freakin room. "

Because we all know other nations

[Anonymous Coward]

...wouldn't bother to research such things unless the United States actually did it first. If only we had not built the first atom bomb, no other nation in the world would have tried to do so.

(Where's the sarcasm tag when I need it?)

Re:Because we all know other nations

[dunkelfalke]

soviets had anti-satellite lasers already in the seventies.

Re:Because we all know other nations

[Professr3]

No, no, you have it all wrong... Those warheads are for the Orion Drive project!

Re:Because we all know other nations

[Brian Stretch]

Umm, read some history. There's even a picture of one National Socialist German Labor Party nuke design.

Imperial Japan had nuclear bomb programs too.

Personally, I'm glad America got there first.

The Soviets took the easy route. They had some Useful Idiots steal the technology.

The Soviets had ASAT programs too. ASAT weaponry is old news, it's just that now they're using lasers rather than missiles. Heck, even that's not all that new, though making it work would be.

Don't you think the way for the US to really ensure its population's security would be to try to track down the arsenal of the former USSR?

Don't you think Putin ought to take nuclear security more seriously? The Russians built the damn things and they're not so poor that they can't deal with them if they want to, especially with high oil prices pouring hard currency into Russian state coffers.

Re:Because we all know other nations

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

of one National Socialist German Labor Party nuke design.

Interesting that you don't just say "Nazi" - just have to throw the fear word "socialist" out there as often as possible hey?

Don't you think Putin ought to take nuclear security more seriously?

Of course - that does not invalidate my point however.

Re:Because we all know other nations

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Has it really come to the stage where the word "socialist" is more of a fear word than "Nazi"?

Of course not - that's why I'm wondering why the OP used the expanded (and his version was actually incorrect) version of Nazi.

Re:Because we all know other nations

[cfx666]

Yeah, he better just had said 'fuck'n Krauts' and we all had understood. These funny long words make me feel uneasy anyway...

Cfx

Re:Because we all know other nations

[TheKidWho]

because saying nazi invokes godwin's law.

Seriously

[TheGreatHegemon]

Careful - those terrorists may fly their satellites into our satellites! Seriously? What's the point? If they wanted they could just use a shuttle to sabotage a satellite - not as if there are any people with guns on the satellites (or people at all). It'd save money.

Re:Seriously

[Andy Gardner]

What's the point? If they wanted they could just use a shuttle to sabotage a satellite - not as if there are any people with guns on the satellites (or people at all). It'd save money.

You mean that launch platform that keeps blowing up and costs about $500m per launch. As opposed to zapping them from the safety of the ground and for a pittance.

And next up...

[x2A]

Satalites that sit behind one-way glass! Haha, I bounce your weapon back upon thee!

I think...

[HoosierPeschke]

...someone pulled out their copy of Real Genius and thought, "Hey, if someone else thinks of this movie and puts a laser in a satellite to snipe us, we should pre-emptively strike with a laser that shoots their satellites!".

Re:I think...

[crawling_chaos]

We can tell if this is true if Dick Cheney starts to have an irrational fear of Jiffy-Pop.

PS: What fun would it be to get to his fillings?

Ronald Reagan - Your Laser Is Ready

[Dethboy]

WTF? What happened - the Iranians are now developing satellites? al-Qaeda? What a waste of money.

Re:Ronald Reagan - Your Laser Is Ready

[Sierpinski]

WTF? What happened - the Iranians are now developing satellites? al-Qaeda? What a waste of money.

I've never tried, but I'd assume its relatively difficult to make satellites out of sticks and dirt.

Re:Ronald Reagan - Your Laser Is Ready

[zaguar]

Unless you're McGuyver, in which case all you need is the aformentioned sticks and dirt, a coathanger, and the game guide to the 1964 Superbowl

Re:Ronald Reagan - Your Laser Is Ready

[Mr. Bad Example]

> I'd assume its relatively difficult to make satellites out of sticks and dirt.

Nah, that part's easy.

The launching, on the other hand...

Re:Ronald Reagan - Your Laser Is Ready

[ryanvm]

I once made a hat out of a stick and a lobster. It was very itchy.

Re:Ronald Reagan - Your Laser Is Ready

[iminplaya]

We build ours out of rocks. Remember the old saying: "If you put a big enough engine on it, you can fly anything." It was only a theory until 1981.

Re:Ronald Reagan - Your Laser Is Ready

[BakaHoushi]

Nah, launching can be easy, too. Just outsource your space divison to Elbonia. Just stay clear of any French embassies...

Re:Ronald Reagan - Your Laser Is Ready

[mfrank]

First Superbowl was in 1967 :)

Wow.

[Sierpinski]

Nothing says 'Peace' like the United States blasting another country's satellite out of the sky. I can't see how doing so would help prevent attacks on the U.S. Perhaps the idea is to disable communications and espionage capabilities, but there are other, more conventional means of warfare, as ineffective as they may be.

The other theory, give countries warnings about removing satellites? Countries love ultimatums too. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm against this (or for it, really) but I'm suggesting that perhaps the political and diplomatic repercussions might need to be investigated more thoroughly.

From a sci-fi point of view, its Spies Like Us all over again! Sounds interesting and technological to say the least.

Re:Wow.

[nelsonal]

An aweful lot of modern warfare depends on having accurate GPS systems (if you change your encryption and blow a few of the other guys GPS and communication systems) you've already won the battle.
As Sun Tzu puts it:
"Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."
and "Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans"
Your enemy will be broken before the fighting starts.

Re:Wow.

[mstahl]

I agree. With the whole world already hating us enough, we don't need to dump gasoline on the fire by developing a host of sci fi supervillain weapons. When the US crosses that line that divides "superpower" and "lex luthor", that's when we all need to step back and have another look at our priorities.

Re:Wow.

[Sierpinski]

You've got to read between the lines. Forget about defense, offense, peace or war for now. When confronted with a new government program, here are the first questions to ask yourself:

How much will this project cost in tax dollars? How easily can it be transformed into a permanent source of revenue? How much will government make on administration of the program? How much more power over the people will government acquire as a result? Finally, how many problems will this program spawn for the future (to be "fixed" by further expansion of government)?

When dealing with government, the reasons they give you for expansion of power are rarely truthful. If history proves anything, it's that the real objective is expansion of power itself. There is a reason why all governments expand in power over their lifetimes: because it benefits the power elite.

Government doesn't deal in profit. They deal in spending. Thats why we have a deficit of trillions of dollars (and growing) and social programs are being cut, or threatened to be cut. If the government actually had a way to make profit (income > expenses) the deficit would stop growing (as fast at least) and taxes could be lowered, etc. That won't happen, because the government is a consumer of our tax dollars, not a producer. Name one program involving military that the U.S. actually made a profit on. War? Stealth bombers? They're consuming, not producing, money.

You ask about a permanent source of revenue. How does shooting down another country's satellites even remotely have the capacity to turn a profit? Its about spending money to "promote security" or whatever. There is no ROI (return on investment) in tangible dollars. Supposedly we're buying a service (our security), and the only power the people have if they don't like the service is to elect a new president in the next election.

Re:Wow.

[WindBourne]

Yes, blasting somebodies' sat says that we are at war. But of course, that is the whole idea. If we are using it, then we are at war. One of the future problem areas will be iran. They are aquiring missles. In addition, there is no doubt that they are working on the nuke. It is just a matter of time. Once they have aquired all the compenents they will probably launch against Israel. In a war, if you can not see the other side, then you do not know what to hit. All good militaries today are mobile and designed to shift rapidly. That means that if israel (and probably american troops as well) can change locations, AND we take out irans capabilieis to see where to, then they can attack. Basically, if we are able to remove their eyes and ears and mouth, then an attack is very difficult to attempt. IOW, we stop them BEFORE it starts.

Re:Wow.

[geobeck]

I can't see how doing so would help prevent attacks on the U.S. Perhaps the idea is to disable communications and espionage capabilities...

Since most of the USA's current "enemies" (terrorists, hackers, illegal file sharers, Linux users, etc.) communicate through the Internet, perhaps these giant "LA-SERS" will spend most of their time shooting American satellites.

Re:Wow.

[WindBourne]

How does shooting down another country's satellites even remotely have the capacity to turn a profit?

NADA, none, zip, zilch. But the question is, if we do not shoot it down, when we need to, how much of our lives and man. capacity, will we lose? Possibly a lot. This is cheap insurance.

BTW, in a war, we will take out the enemies sats. The question is, do we do it by expensive, slow missles (requiring possibly thousands), or do we take them out in 1 minute with a system that costs 1/millionth / shot that a missle costs? In addition, the laser system will probably be researched further and turned into relatively inepensive weapons for us.After all cartridges and other ordinances are not cheap to produce or move around.

Re:Wow.

[ceoyoyo]

A lot of modern precision warfare requires having accurate GPS. You know, the feel-good kind where you can say you're only killing the bad guys and not hurting the civilians.

In a real war the guys with no GPS just say "darn, no GPS, I guess our nuke probably isn't going to go through the third from the right second floor window of the white house. Oh well, we'll have to settle for close enough."

Re:Wow.

[ceoyoyo]

Yup, anybody who wants to nuke Israel is going to need really good satellite reconnaissance. When you're motivated by racial hatred taking out cities just isn't in your plans. Plus Tel Aviv moves around so much.

Re:Wow.

[LunaticTippy]

The only problem with your logic is Iran's vast fleet of satellites. It'd take months to shoot them all down.

Re:Wow.

[nelsonal]

Thats not a war, we spanked their troops in a few weeks (in both Gulf Wars the first things hit were communications infastructures). We stay there because we need their oil to start flowing otherwise we could have packed up/mission accomplished in April 2004. Restarting society from scratch in an occupation has and will continue to be costly and slow. The Assyrians would forcibly resettle everyone throughout their empire and brutally eliminate all uprisings, and all the technology in the world hasn't improved that process much. Probably the pinacle of the development was rebuilding the Axis powers after world war II and those took 20 years, I am surprised anyone expects this to take less.

Re:Wow.

[zippthorne]

Two words. Japan, Germany.

It can be done. (but you're right, probably isn't easy. Who honestly thought it was going to be easy going in?)

Re:Wow.

[nelsonal]

Those were the two Axis powers I was thinking of. Just as a point of reference on the cost and length of time required, we still have troops stationed in both places.

Re:Wow.

[Chainsaw]

Now where the heck is the +1 Ironic And Dead On moderation for this?

Great...

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Now all we need is to put up a satellite with a large spinning mirror.

Re:Great...

[tsobo]

Or a disco ball! Then EVERY night can be Saturday Night Fever!

Re:Great...

[Golias]

Now all we need is to put up a satellite with a large spinning mirror.

Mmmm... popcorn!

(See? Some of us actually got your Obscure Pop Culture reference!)

Re:Great...

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Obscure? At least three other people made Real Genius jokes before I did.

Re:Great...

[Golias]

Yet oddly, you got several replies from people who clearly didn't catch it.

No matter how many geeks like a movie, anything starring Val Kilmer in the lead role that isn't called "The Doors" is an obscure film. A great film, yes, but obscure.

Re:Great...

[drinkypoo]

You forgot Batmerchandise Forever. Obviously not a true kilmer fan. No cookie for you.

Re:Great...

[Golias]

You forgot Batmerchandise Forever.

I was doing my best to. Thanks for nothing.

it's dual-use technology and an acounting shift

[DoofusOfDeath]

Check out the story "Death Ray -- or Accounting Shift?" here: http://www.defensetech.org/

Re:it's dual-use technology and an acounting shift

[Threni]

More info here:

http://cryptome.org/sor-eyeball.htm

But don't look if you're at Nasa, as it's apparantly information only suitable for terrorists:

http://cryptome.org/nasa-block.htm

Makes more sense than the opposite I guess

[CFD339]

It makes more sense to shoot down sats from the ground where you have plenty of power and guys who can fix things than trying to shoot down on the ground from space where you can only hit things if they're not covered up.

sure, what the hell. At worst it will start a high tech arms race and that's good for business.

Re:Makes more sense than the opposite I guess

[flooey]

It makes more sense to shoot down sats from the ground where you have plenty of power and guys who can fix things than trying to shoot down on the ground from space where you can only hit things if they're not covered up.

Not only that, but we have agreements in place that prevent us from weaponizing space. That's not to say that we couldn't just withdraw from those, like we have from other treaties, but doing it this way means we don't have to.

what amazes me

[x2A]

is that they don't just build a big laser, but just call it a laser, not say it's anything to do with satallites... and should the need ever arise, fire it at some bad guy satallite. Could call it a prototype for deliverying energy to those teather climbing robots maybe.

Re:what amazes me

[Enigma_Man]

Or... our 'enemies' could just start building reflective satellites, or even just carrying a big, reflective 'shield' underneath them. It could be something as simple as a big, inflatable mylar bag. I don't know how much heat a very reflective mirror would have to dissipate when being hit by a laser, but it obviously can be done, if the adaptive optics in the 'gun' don't burn out, and that's right freaking next to the output of the laser, instead of through 100+ miles of atmosphere and space. Actually, a big shield might work really well. Any sensors that need to see around the shield could retract back quickly upon detecting a really freaking bright light source.

Re:what amazes me

[x2A]

"Any sensors that need to see around the shield could retract back quickly upon detecting a really freaking bright light source"

Or as I joked in my earlier post, sit behind one-way glass... or a material that only lets light through at 90degrees (whatever it's looking at at the time), other light would be reflected. Of caues I'd feel sorry for whatever random innocent was sitting wherever the reflectected beam ends up!

You would also have to be able to compensate for the force pushing the sattalite out of orbit (yes, a powerful laser will deliver a small force, not sure how negligible tho)

Re:what amazes me

[digitaltopaz]

other nations are not interested in building weaponization technology in space right now, and therefore you make a good point that building up-to-date satellites that defend themselves--of sorts. most nations that disagree with such plans are more interested in using ground missiles. there are few nations interested in policing such technology even less of those have the economical security to establish technology that could rival the U.S.'s in the case of spatial military. if you think lasers are interesting, you should read whats already up there.

Re:what amazes me

[Lord Ender]

"Any sensors that need to see around the shield could retract back quickly upon detecting a really freaking bright light source."

Ha! Lets see... speed of light (in a vacuum) vs speed of electric motor...

Re:what amazes me

[blincoln]

Or... our 'enemies' could just start building reflective satellites, or even just carrying a big, reflective 'shield' underneath them.

Mirrors at what parts of the spectrum? All the US would have to do is build lasers at a variety of frequencies, because nothing is going to reflect them all.

Re:what amazes me

[uniqueUser]

Honestly, why a LASER? LASER's powerful enough to do this, tend to be large and very energy hungry. And as the parent post mentioned, I think building a reflective satelite might be a good defense to a LASER. Would it not be eaiser to just shoot one down? Orbits are very well known. The projectile that we send up would not have to have enough velocity to maintain orbit, just enough to reach the target and then explode.

Re:what amazes me

[Enigma_Man]

ur dumb: The laser travels at the speed of light, however things don't become instantly hot, it's not like the beams in star-wars that destruct things instantly, it's just like focusing a magnifying lens on ants, it takes a second. In that second, sensors can detect the bright light and get the hell out of dodge.

Re:what amazes me

[Enigma_Man]

Well, a laser is nearly instant, there's a satellite... bam; instead of: there's a satellite, fire the anti-satellite (hours pass) bam.

Re:what amazes me

[Enigma_Man]

Most of the frequencies they could/would use (near to visible, infrared) are easily reflectable by common things. It doesn't seem likely that they'd use a variety of frequencies though, it seems to be hard enough to focus one wavelength from one laser, let alone more than one; though the government's budget is obscene, so why not?

Re:what amazes me

[Seraphim1982]

Or... our 'enemies' could just start building reflective satellites, or even just carrying a big, reflective 'shield' underneath them. It could be something as simple as a big, inflatable mylar bag. I don't know how much heat a very reflective mirror would have to dissipate when being hit by a laser, but it obviously can be done, if the adaptive optics in the 'gun' don't burn out, and that's right freaking next to the output of the laser, instead of through 100+ miles of atmosphere and space.

I see several problems with this:

A highly reflective satalite will be easy to target.

There are lots of things that are difficult to make reflective. The two that spring to mind are sensors and solar panels.

You're going to still need to disipate a lot of heat, and I don't see why "it obviously can be done" in space, things on earth are a lot easier to cool.

Any sort of large mirror is going to add weight, even making the satalite reflective is going to add weight. Extra weight is going to make the sattalite more expensive and/or less effective.

Re:what amazes me

[Enigma_Man]

What I was thinking was like a large shield that sits inbetween the satellite and earth. You could make it out of an inflatable mylar bag (highly reflective, and extremely light). That way, the satellite has a clear 'view' of all of space, and is only blocked to earth, so solar panels are still effective. Also, my comment about having retractable parts covers the need for communicating with earth when not under attack from giant lasers. Obviously it's more expensive, but machines of war often are.

The thing I'm not sure about, I have little experience with it is how much cooling you would need on a reflective surface. If the surface is 90% reflective, it will only have to absorb 10% of the laser's energy. I believe that reflective surfaces can be way better than 90% reflective, so that makes it even better.

I was just saying that it's probably easier to defend against laser-attacks as it is to create a laser weapon. Not to say either is the easiest thing in the world, but it seems that way to me.

Good post though, I like thought-out replies.

-Jesse

Re:what amazes me

[Lord Ender]

ur ignorant: These weapons are usually designed to deliver the energy in an extremely short length of time.

Re:what amazes me

[drinkypoo]

Even in the case of shooting down aircraft, cruise missiles, or artillery shells, where the target you're shooting at is much closer to you and thus there is less power lost on the way to the target, it takes some time to disable the target. Use of ablative armor that boils off when heated (read: ice) could also be an effective means of protecting satellites from laser weapons until a mirror was moved into position.

And the ultimate defense for a satellite?

[Anonymous Coward]

A mirror.

Re:And the ultimate defense for a satellite?

[e2ka]

That probably wouldn't work. Any laser sufficiently powerful enough to destroy a satellite would destroy a mirror too. If the mirror has less than perfect reflectivity it gives the laser something to heat, damaging the mirror and eventually getting through.

Re:And the ultimate defense for a satellite?

[op12]

The could make it out of zero-relection glass.

Re:And the ultimate defense for a satellite?

[Eudial]

That probably wouldn't work. Any laser sufficiently powerful enough to destroy a satellite would destroy a mirror too. If the mirror has less than perfect reflectivity it gives the laser something to heat, damaging the mirror and eventually getting through.

Here I thought mirrors was a part of the lasers themselves. Though, that may not apply to all lasers. In any case, you could probably absorb a lot of the laser's effect by surrounding the satellite with an orb of a transparant material, filled with a high pressure gas that absorbs light matching the laser's frequency, this should scatter the beam significantly, sending a large portion out into space, and evenly distributing the rest on the satellite (completly ruining the focus of the beam).

Re:And the ultimate defense for a satellite?

[Aaron England]

Other posters are trying to come up with ways to mitigate a laser's effects but you have to know that a system like this will probably be connected directly to the national grid and so when it does fire, it won't do so timidly.

Re:And the ultimate defense for a satellite?

[robthebob]

I look forward to the rolling blackouts when it does.

Re:And the ultimate defense for a satellite?

[LunaticTippy]

The problem with any reflection/scattering/absorption defense is simple.

A military laser like this would have millions of watts of power. Just a fraction of a percent needs to get through, and there is no perfect reflector.

Re:And the ultimate defense for a satellite?

[sholden]

Yeah, that's be useful - you'd reflect none of the laser instead of the some of it you would with a dirty mirror...

Re:And the ultimate defense for a satellite?

[schlick]

Except that before it does get through the energy can be reflected back at the laser or any other target.

Re:And the ultimate defense for a satellite?

[ta ma de]

The three stooges' defense to an eye poke is defeated by using two hands for the poking.

The mirror needed to defeat a laser would have to be reflective over the entire spectrum -- an impossible feat for any material. All materials absorb at some discreet frequency. The laser frequency might not be in the visible band such that the mirror wouldn't be reflecting anything. Let us hope our enemy's sleep through quantum mechanics and make these kinds of assumptions.

Although the super lensing cloaking device might be a good counter measure -- provided that the polarity and frequency of the incoming beam can be quickly determined. It is kind of cool that weapons are going to have star trek sounding counter measures.

Re:And the ultimate defense for a satellite?

[nukeindia.com]

The could make it out of zero-relection glass.

Well, the requirement is total opposite of it. 100% reflection glass, to not over heat the mirrors.

Re:And the ultimate defense for a satellite?

[Ztream]

I was going to say an anti anti-satellite laser laser.

Re:And the ultimate defense for a satellite?

[slmdmd]

it is very simply, just launch 10 sats and break them, this will create enough junk that can wipe out any stuff oribiting. junk is already present, so it is just a matter of time before all oribiting stuff is junked.

Re:And the ultimate defense for a satellite?

[marcosdumay]

Well, since you need a mirror to create the laser, you can obviously defend from it with a mirror. The only question is how good the mirror must be.

That way thinking is the problem with the USA

[bogaboga]

"The U.S. government wants to develop a ground-based weapon to shoot down enemy satellites in orbit..."

As the USA concetrates on the development of these so called lasers, al-Qaida and its affiliates will enter the USA through the porous southern and norther borders and do greater harm.

Folks, do not be suprised to hear in future that this project has corruption and greed behind it. Remember that the USA spent US$5.99 billion on the shuttle which was never value for money!

Re:That way thinking is the problem with the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that the USA spent US$5.99 billion on the shuttle which was never value for money!

remember the USA spends $6 billion A MONTH in Iraq (a new Shuttle every 4 weeks) and so far has got 15,000 wounded troops and 2800+ dead troops for its money, now thats value for money

Re:That way thinking is the problem with the USA

[morgan_greywolf]

As the USA concetrates on the development of these so called lasers, al-Qaida and its affiliates will enter the USA through the porous southern and norther borders and do greater harm.

Al-Qaeda is already here, living among us. Haven't you been paying attention? The 9/11 hijackers were all living in the United States at the time of the attack. Some of them were here for 10 years prior to the attack. Do you think that these were the only ones? Do you think that just because the government arrested a handful of operatives that there are no more remaining? Do you think that heightened security has kept more from entering the country via airports?

Nevermind the porous northern and southern borders. Entering the United States is just plain not difficult -- no matter where you're from.

Re:That way thinking is the problem with the USA

[Jtheletter]

Remember that the USA spent US$5.99 billion on the shuttle which was never value for money!

OK, I'm about to be slighly optimistic here which is out of character for me, so don't get on my case too hard about this. Granted $6 billion-with-a-B is a helluva lot, but we did get a lot of new tech, a lot of science, and - here it comes - can you put a price tag on millions of kids around the world being inspired? [ducks] But seriosuly, the space shuttle was our generation's Apollo and it sure as hell inspired in ways that those missions didn't. Robotic arm, crew and cargo in one ship, could (but didn't) retrieve sattelites, mutliple docking capability. I dunno, it sure was pretty in my mind. It represented the next step in space exploration that a single-shot capsule program never could. The shuttle was that first step between an orbiting can and the Enterprise. Sometimes it's good to spend a bit of time/money on some dreams.

In addition to put things in perspective a bit - we have had, what, 4 emergency spending bills for the Iraq war, each of them near $100 Billion?? I'd say $6 billion, even adjusted for inflation to today's dollars, was a bargin. The government wastes so much money on bad programs and overspending that it seems a bit misguided to point to the comparably paltry costs of a program that has expanded our knowledge of the universe and technology and helped to usher in the next crop of scientists and explorers.

Re:That way thinking is the problem with the USA

[Pike]

"As the USA concetrates on the development of these so called lasers, al-Qaida and its affiliates will enter the USA through the porous southern and norther borders and do greater harm."

Right, because there is only one person working in the Pentagon and he can only concentrate on one thing at a time.

Re:That way thinking is the problem with the USA

[IthnkImParanoid]

If that....

Seems like we have more to loose

[slusich]

Devoloping this technology could ultimately come back to bite us. The US has more birds up there then anyone else does, and once we develop the technology, other countries will get it quickly after that. Sounds like it's time to start developing laser proof sats.

Re:Seems like we have more to loose

[The_Mr_Flibble]

So friendly fire could have really expensive repercusions.

The USA needs to be careful here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Militarizing the space in near-earth orbit and creating a military highly dependant on satellites is just stupid. A few missles that blast millions of ball-bearings into to orbit, and the entire planet will be locked out of space for hundreds, or even thousands of years. High-altitude, high-endurance vehicles that can hover over a single area for long periods of time leave us far less vulnerable (we just need air-superiority), and don't make near-earth orbit a target. Unfortunately the current administration is crazy-arrogant and shortsighted.

Re:The USA needs to be careful here...

[Loconut1389]

somebody read this article.

Re:The USA needs to be careful here...

[awehttam]

A few missles that blast millions of ball-bearings into to orbit, and the entire planet will be locked out of space for hundreds, or even thousands of years. Look on the bright side, the rest of the Universe will be greatful for keeping our shit to ourselves.

Re:The USA needs to be careful here...

[Phanatic1a]

Militarizing the space in near-earth orbit and creating a military highly dependant on satellites is just stupid.

Oh, wake the hell up.

News flash: Reconnaissance satellites are *weapons*. They are also *not new*. They've been around for decades, so space has already been 'militarized.' The Russians had a working anti-satellite program back in the *late 1960s*. We were succesfully killing satellites with missiles back in the mid-80s. The notion that this 'militarization of space' is anything that has its roots in the current administration bespeaks a woeful ignorance of recent history.

A few missles that blast millions of ball-bearings into to orbit, and the entire planet will be locked out of space for hundreds, or even thousands of years

No, it wouldn't. There are any number of ways to deal with that scenario, ranging from heavier armored satellites to different target orbits to cheap pop-up satellites that you can launch from submarines and don't have to survive for more than a fraction of an orbit. None of these are as good an option as what we do now, but the suggestion that all someone would have to do to prevent all access to space for millennia is set off a few rockets full of ball-bearings is absolutely ridiculous.

Re:The USA needs to be careful here...

[Phanatic1a]

You can't armour against anything travelling at those velocities except in science fiction.

Utter nonsense. LEO requires an orbital velocity of about 8km/s. So double that for your opposite-direction impact. Call density of steel about 8g/cc, call the ball bearings .6875" diameter, that's a mass of 22 grams, that's an impact energy of 2.815 megajoules.

Yes, we can in fact armor against those energies. That's about 600 grams of TNT. But not quite, because it won't penetrate anywhere near as well as 600 grams of high explosive formed into a shaped charge. Even several inches of steel plate would serve well; like I said, it's certainly not as good as not having to deal with the problem (higher costs to orbit, lower lifetime, higher chance of occasional total failure, etc), but to claim there's no solution possible is asinine.

'Cheap' satellites that survive for a fraction of a second is just a silly idea

I said fraction of an orbit, not fraction of a second. I'm pretty sure if anyone tries launching enough ball-bearings to so saturate LEO that nothing could survive for longer than a fraction of a second, we'd notice.

And once you get beyond LEO, space is big. Really, really big. Having to put satellites into higher orbits would, again, not be as desirable as not having to, but it's certainly not insurmountably difficult, either.

Re:The USA needs to be careful here...

[Phanatic1a]

You've got to get out of here. If they find out you've seen this, your life will be worth less than a truckload of dead rats in a tampon factory!

Re:The USA needs to be careful here...

[Phanatic1a]

Sorry, but all your saying is you might (if you are lucky) survive the first ball bearing.

Nope. What I am saying is that there are ways to deal with ball bearings in LEO. Your assertion that it's not possible to armor against the energy levels involved is nonsense. In fact, for the energies involved actual penetration levels are very low; the impactor vaporizes in very short order, creating a wide, shallow crater, so several inches of steel over the vulnerable bits on the frontal side of a satellite would actually serve to protect against a number of impacts. And I think you seriously underestimate how many ball bearings you'd need to put up there to reliably score repeated hits against anything in LEO.

And again, yes, I'm aware that having to launch that much additional mass would drastically increase launch costs. If we could get the same intel at a lower cost or greater reliability with things-other-than-satellites, fine, we'd do that.

They fact is they are a limited number of useful orbits for any particular target area on the earth.

"Useful" is not a binary condition. There are orbits that are more useful than others, but for a given location on the surface there are a large number of orbits that can put a satellite over the horizon above it at regular intervals.

There is a reason they want lasers to take out 'enemy' satellites ... if avoids creating debris

Um...no. That's not at all certain. Maybe you can just cook off the solar arrays or antennas, but by and large lasers damage targets via plain old delivery of mechanical force in the form of shear stress. Hit a propellant tank, and you're definitely going to create debris.

The advantage to a laser lies chiefly in the fact that if the satellite's over the horizon, you can hit it, and keep hitting it until it's destroyed.

And it'd probably be good against ball bearings, too.

I'm not defending the program, but...

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Regarding your comment...it's a bit pointless to work on a defense measure for a military threat AFTER it has been deployed or its deployment is iminent. While it sure is popular to bash the US these days, I'm sure there is all kinds of research going on around the world to counter perceived threats that might seem silly now, but may become dead serious 10 years from now.

Re:I'm not defending the program, but...

[saltydogdesign]

And what if the perceived threat is merely an imagined threat? Moreover, what if the imagined threat sucks away a lot of money that could be spent fighting an actual, looming threat?

Blissful ignorance

[amightywind]

some Congressional Democrats and other experts fault the research as potential fuel for an antisatellite arms race that could ultimately hurt this nation more than others because the United States relies so heavily on military satellites, which aid navigation, reconnaissance and attack warning

This is to say military planners should blissfully ignore enemy military surveillance and navigation satellites flying overhead while they are used to target our forces. Why? Do we want to be nice to our adversary and even the playing field? Democrat military planning at its best.

Re:Blissful ignorance

[kalidasa]

Yeah, 'cause those al-Qaida satellites are really, really sophisticated.

Re:Blissful ignorance

[Techguy666]

Think cost/benefit. Terrorists have access to Google Earth and Google Map now. Every joe shmuck can find a military base if he wants to. So, you gonna raid the marines??

You can have all the military data in the world but if all you have is a single AK-47 and a stick of dynamite, what'cha gonna do?? Unless you're the A-Team, I'm guessing not a whole lot.

Same with these anti-satellite weapons... Who is the military protecting us from? The groups with the intercontinental weapons can be rationalized with and the groups without the intercontinental weapons can't make truly effective use of satellite technology without getting squashed either before mounting an attack, during the attack, or from retaliation after the attack. (And if guaranteed squashing isn't going to deter them, not having a satellite feed won't either.)

I'd argue that the best reason for developing anti-satellite technology is to figure out what others are capable of doing - before they're capable of doing it!

Re:Blissful ignorance

[grimJester]

This is to say military planners should blissfully ignore enemy military surveillance and navigation satellites flying overhead while they are used to target our forces.

What enemies does the US have that target, or will in the near future target, US ground forces using satellites? Making hugely expensive preparations for a potential Russian invasion of mainland USA seems, uhm, less cost-effective than alternative ways of spending the same amount of cash.

Re:Blissful ignorance

[SSCGWLB]

Wow, really? So the only enemy the US has to protect itself and its people from in the foreseeable future is al-Qaida? Nobody else could possibly hurt us!!?!?! Based on the last 100 years (2 world wars, many smaller ones), maybe it would be a good idea to stay on the forefront of military technology. Nice knee jerk reaction, though.

~nate

Re:Blissful ignorance

[Golias]

What enemies does the US have that target, or will in the near future target, US ground forces using satellites?

Enemies or likely future enemies who could probably do it within the next ten years, if not right away:

China
North Korea
Russia
France

Enemies or likely future enemies who could probably do it within the next ten years, if they get help from China, North Korea, Russia or France:

All of them

Re:Blissful ignorance

[dswartz]

Space is huge! There are a large number of resident space objects in orbit right now and collisions are extremely rare. Even if a field of debris was scattered in a particular orbit, the launch would be tracked by the air force, the debris would be tracked by the air force, and stationkeeping would be performed by satellite owners to prevent damage to US military assets. The only real threat to satellites is a targeted attack.

Re:Blissful ignorance

[colinrichardday]

Space may be huge, but the portion of space suitable for geosynchronous orbits is not.

Re:Blissful ignorance

[dswartz]

But, the orbit circumference of a GSO is 164,582 miles! The surface area of the sphere available for GSO is huge. Divide that among the ~300 operating geosynchronous satellites.

Re:Blissful ignorance

[kalidasa]

He wrote "the enemy." Singular. Not "potential future enemies." And frankly, the problem with this administration is that they're too busy fighting the Cold War to fight the War Against Terrorism. Whatever makes you think that future enemies will be more like the Soviet Union and less like al-Qaida?

Re:Blissful ignorance

[dswartz]

I think a more appropriate analogy would be: "Drive 300 cars at a constant speed on the surface of a massive planet which is entirely paved. Add some more cars to the mix traveling at the exact same speed as the original 300 cars. Have someone constantly monitoring all the cars and steering the original 300 cars to avoid collisions."

Re:Blissful ignorance

[colinrichardday]

What sphere? GSOs are confined to being over the equator at a given altitude. It's more like a hula-hoop than a sphere

Re:Blissful ignorance

[dswartz]

No, that is geostationary (GEO), a special case of geosynchronous (GSO). Wikipedia has a good description of both if you are interested.

Re:Blissful ignorance

[colinrichardday]

Oops, my bad, I meant geostationary, the orbits of communication satellites.

Make no mistake this is an offensive weapon

[aepervius]

Look at who has the most satellite in orbit, and who is a rising spacial power. Add 1 plus 1 : this is clearly a veiled threat to that eastern country, and quite a bitschslap for everybody else having a satellite in orbit. Thank you US military, for finding way of making up new weapon and threat where there was none before.

if we're just hearing about this now

[JeanBaptiste]

They've been doing it for the last 10 years.

News reliable

[plankrwf]

Reading a comment some time ago here on slashdot, (sorry, no link here),
I was curious as to whether the news was reliable.
See, someone commented on that the fact that the New York Times did a story, that's no guarantee that it is accurate.
Fortunately, I was able to confirm for all /.'ers that the story is indeed true:
the government is already sued over patent infringement:

Obviously it is this one:
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bllas er.htm
For the lazy ones of us an exerpt of that webpage:
Ray Gun
A patent for the "Portable Beam Generator" also known as a hand-held laser ray gun was granted to the inventor, Frederick R. Schollhammer on July 9, 1968. It was patent #3,392,261.

--
Oh and YES, this is a joke...

The other "Star wars"

[Rob T Firefly]

Those of you who were too young or asleep during the Reagan years, read up on the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka "Star Wars.") Here we go again.

Water-Based?

[zaguar]

How about a water-based weapon with anti-human lasers? A certain Dr. Evil might be interested in that.

You can't shoot down a satellite

[Viol8]

An object in a stable orbit cannot be "shot down". Its not an aircraft.
You can destroy it but all that will happen is that the pieces will
spread out from the point of explosion/impact and eventually become
space junk that could cause problems from friendly satellites.
Hopefully the laser would only disable a satellite and not cause its
fuel tanks to detonate , since if they do then the US will simply
be causing problems for itself , its allies and all space farers in
the future.

Re:You can't shoot down a satellite

[SysKoll]

Right. An anti-satellite laser system could easily burn out the delicate optical sensors of a satellite's optical cameras. However, if you are trying to disable a radar observation sat, it's much more difficult. You cannot burn out sensors, you have to physically do harm. Which is why there have been some tests for anti-sat missiles launched from high-altitude planes.

Re:You can't shoot down a satellite

[MikeBabcock]

How about focussed microwave energy? Burn the suckers up.

Re:You can't shoot down a satellite

[markov_chain]

Actually, you could. Light exerts a very small force as it bounces (the principle proposed for light sails) so in theory given enough time and precision it could be done.

Re:You can't shoot down a satellite

[!equal]

O'neil, is that you??

Re:You can't shoot down a satellite

[SysKoll]

To focus a gigahertz-range RF beam onto a satellite with enough power to fry its radar system would require a very, very large antenna. The "focus" part is tricky, microwaves do disperse.

Re:You can't shoot down a satellite

[Viol8]

"only " knock it out of a stable orbit. Yeah ok , you go work out the physics
of that then get back to me.

Re:You can't shoot down a satellite

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Send a spacecraft up and steal the satelite? Now if they wouldn't have wasted so much time and money on the space shuttle, the US could just go up and liberate some enemy satelites, then sell them on Ebay.

Re:You can't shoot down a satellite

[SysKoll]

You're kidding, but the military are not. Low-altitude military Russian sats are rumored to have a self-destruction charge on board just to deter that kind of stunt. And after the Soviets unveiled the Buran (a copy of the shuttle), I'd not be surprised if the US sats started getting spec'ed with a kilogram of hexolite as an "unauthorized recovery deterrence module".

Re:You can't shoot down a satellite

[MikeBabcock]

I assumed the focusing would be difficult, but couldn't rapidly calculate antenna sizes in my head for such a task. It would be interesting though.

Pulse heat lasers might be more practical mind you.

Re:You can't shoot down a satellite

[SysKoll]

For a 5.67 GHz signal, a 25-meter parabolic antenna has a gain of 62 dB (see Wikipedia's article about parabolic antennas). Remember that a 3 dB loss corresponds to halving the signal's power.

Now, the handy table here tells us that a 20-mile link has an attenuation of 138 dB for such a frequency. If we want a one-kilowatt beam to rip into the satellite's antenna and have an RF source delivering 16 MW (big generator!), we can only accept an attenuation factor of 16,000, call it 2 to the 14th, or 42 db.

Now, 138 - 42 is 96, so our antenna has to supply a 96 dB gain. That's 34 dB more than our 25-m antenna, or about 2500 times more. Since gain is proportional to the square of the diameter, we need an antenna 50 times (50 = sqrt(2500)) bigger than our 25-m dish. That's a 1250-m (4100-ft) antenna!

Which is why radar satellites need good old missiles. Not that accelerating a warhead to Mach 25 is a piece of cake either, but that's another story.

More U.S. Taxpayer money down the drain

[unity100]

Hell yeah.

They are cutting down social security but they always find the money to feed the military industry complex.

From where ? From U.S. Taxpayer pockets.

Ah, in addition the same taxpayers will have to replenish the military ranks using the machines they paid to manufacture when a war starts - tanks, guns ...

In short, theyre surrounded in all sides - first pay for the machine, then pay to use the machine with your life.

OSQ

[dasviper]

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 lasers. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those lasers. Thank you.

You know, I have one simple request.

[guysmilee]

You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that cannot be done. Ah, would you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here! What do we have?

Hello?

[ichigo 2.0]

China.

Re:Hello?

[ao_coder]

China, and well- that is where things are going. Satellites are getting cheaper and more reliable, and it is only a matter of time until affordable, (very) detailed imagery from space will soon be an acheivable goal for nations even advanced than china (although, granted, the infrastructure to best use such intelligence for military purposes is considerably further out of reach). If we want to maintain the same degree of privacy and security that we have always enjoyed, then developing technologies to stop unwanted observation is neccessary. This is actually heartening to me, because I think that the terrorist threat is blown out of proportion for political expediency, whereas this kind of military spending tells me that someone still has their eye on the ball. This isn't about the world today, this is about the world 10 years from today. I'd like to live in a world where any and all military spending was unneccessary, but that isn't the one we are in. Protecting your airspace is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Doesn't make sense

[Brix Braxton]

It's kind of like in a real world fight - sure, you would love to bring a baseball bat into the fight but you don't because you don't want the other guy to bring one in either. Seems to me like it would make more sense not to have the technology at all. I have to admit though - the other day when I read that Isreal had launched a satellite - seemingly in response to the actions of Iran it all seemed too easy to do - made me wonder what regulates who gets to send one up in the first place.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[YrWrstNtmr]

Seems to me like it would make more sense not to have the technology at all

Easy! All you have to do is hope no one else makes a baseball bat. You'll be safe forever.

Warfare is not about being equal or fair. You want to win (however a 'win' is defined in any given conflict) as quickly as possible, and with as few casualties as possible. On both sides.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[soupforare]

Warfare is not about being equal or fair. You want to win (however a 'win' is defined in any given conflict) as quickly as possible, and with as few casualties as possible. On both sides.

You had me up until that last part.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[carpeweb]

Yeah, it seems to me that not everyone agrees with the last part. Ethnic cleansing seems to be a big part of the motivation for war in the past half century, and casualties seem to be the main thrust of that ...

Re:Doesn't make sense

[YrWrstNtmr]

You had me up until that last part.

Yeah...it seems a lot of countries don't agree with that part either. But consider the US in Iraq. If the US military really wanted to...no problem. Turn the entire place into rubble, and damn the civilian casualties. At least now they make an attempt to minimize those.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[soupforare]

I'd wager they do really want to, the problem is public opinion would swing amazingly quickly against the USA.
OTOH, it's working for Israel, maybe the USA just needs better marketing.

Crash Landing?

[Alicat1194]

Ok, so assuming that the US actually manages to get one of these up and running, what happens when they use it? Unless it's capable of completely obliterating the target, surely it will result in a fairly large quantity of uncontrolled space junk floating around?

Satellite-debris fireballs from the sky, anyone?

Eh, I don't get it...

[jo42]

Why do you need a multi-billion dollar Earth-based laser when a bolt thrown off of the Int'l space station in the right direction with the right velocity will accomplish the exact same results?

We still don't do radiation scans at all ports

[Reality Master 201]

We don't scan for radioactive material coming into the US at all ports.

This is a waste of money. Spend the cash you'd put into a ground based anti-satellite laser and instead do things that would measurably improve the security of the US against attack from vectors which matter in realistic terms. If we determine we really need to destroy a satellite, we already have specially designed anti-satellite missles.

Re:We still don't do radiation scans at all ports

[DerekLyons]

If we determine we really need to destroy a satellite, we already have specially designed anti-satellite missles.

No, we don't.

Re:We still don't do radiation scans at all ports

[Reality Master 201]

Yes, we do.

Since we've already paid to do the research to construct one, let's modify it if need be and use it. Far far cheaper than developing a ground based laser system. Not that we realistically need an anti-satellite capability for the likely threats the US faces in the next 20-30 years.

Re:We still don't do radiation scans at all ports

[DerekLyons]

Since we've already paid to do the research to construct one, let's modify it if need be and use it.

To modify and use it - it first has to exist. This program was cancelled decades ago - it's an ex-parrot.

Not that we realistically need an anti-satellite capability for the likely threats the US faces in the next 20-30 years.

The threat is 20-30 years off? *Good*. That makes now the perfect time to start research and development - when we have the luxury of time to do it right.

Re:We still don't do radiation scans at all ports

[drinkypoo]

That program produced a working weapon (by mid-may, h0 h0 h0 snort.) I don't think they threw away the technical documentation (although it may have been copied by china by now) :P

Re:We still don't do radiation scans at all ports

[YrWrstNtmr]

It was tested, and it worked. They killed a satellite. Then the program, for whatever reason, was dropped.

But it did work. I'd guess, given a real need, no more than 12 months to dust off the plans, upgrade, test, and have a few missiles ready to launch. The launch platform (an F-15) is basically unchanged. The targeting and missile motor worked then, no reason it couldn't work now. Just because there isn't a fleet of them hanging around doesn't mean we can't recreate it.

Re:We still don't do radiation scans at all ports

[DerekLyons]

That program produced a working weapon

No. It produced a prototype - not a fielded weapons system, and it did it twenty odd years ago.

I don't think they threw away the technical documentation

Wouldn't matter too much considering how much of the hardware would have to be redesigned - practically from scratch. I doubt any of it's electronics are manufactured now-a-days.

Re:We still don't do radiation scans at all ports

[DerekLyons]

It was tested, and it worked. They killed a satellite. Then the program, for whatever reason, was dropped.

Mostly, I think, because of anti-profliferation concerns. Reagan used this program, and others, to force the Russians to the bargaining table - starting and stopping them as it suited him.

But it did work. I'd guess, given a real need, no more than 12 months to dust off the plans, upgrade, test, and have a few missiles ready to launch.

In some fantasy world - sure. Here in reality that bird is based on technology nearly thirty years old, and not in production anymore. You can't build from old plans when you can't buy the parts.

The targeting and missile motor worked then, no reason it couldn't work now. Just because there isn't a fleet of them hanging around doesn't mean we can't recreate it.

As I said above, the problem isn't that we once had them and don't anymore - but that things like the seeker and guidance electronics are based on very old tech. Re-creating it means either re-opening ancient production lines or redesigning to the old spec but with modern components - the first is hellishly expensive and time consuming, and the second moderately expensive and time consuming.

Re:We still don't do radiation scans at all ports

[drinkypoo]

On the other hand, given advances in computing, you could probably do the same thing more cheaply, and you've already got the preliminary research (and prototyping) down. We've got the methodology, assuming it's still applicable with advances in satellite defenses, so we ought to be halfway there.

Re:We still don't do radiation scans at all ports

[DerekLyons]

On the other hand, given advances in computing, you could probably do the same thing more cheaply,

Probably not - as the computing is going to be a very small fraction of the total effort of such a system.

and you've already got the preliminary research (and prototyping) down.

So what? The expensive parts, design validation, sytems integration, and system validation have to be redone. The earlier research and prototyping is essentially meaningless, because the entire vehicle will have to redone practically from scratch. It's about the equivalent of basing a modern PC on the 'preliminary research and prototyping' for a 386. There's that much difference involved.

We've got the methodology, assuming it's still applicable with advances in satellite defenses, so we ought to be halfway there.

Much less than halfway - a tenth if we are lucky.

Military Bozos

[Khammurabi]

So, instead of thinking of a better way to defend OUR satellites, they are thinking of ways to obliterate THEIRS? WTF?! If any country stands to lose more from having their satellites blown our of orbit, it's the United States!

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they are thinking of the most likely attack that will befall satellites, but the logical step after this is to design something that can divert this type of attack. If the US were to suddenly lose all satellite communications, we'd be in some serious doo-doo. It seems, at least to me, that the prudent course of action would be to make a DARPA type of contest for this technology, or at least focus more grant money in this area. (Granted, the result would probably be to wrap more tin-foil around the things.)

Re:Military Bozos

[YrWrstNtmr]

So, instead of thinking of a better way to defend OUR satellites, they are thinking of ways to obliterate THEIRS? WTF?! If any country stands to lose more from having their satellites blown our of orbit, it's the United States!

Of COURSE! Research into development of a system like this totally precludes any other type of research. Until this laser is up and running, no one in the entire country can be thinking of ways to protect a satellite against a laser or other type of attack. Every single one of them is dedicated to getting this one particular weapon online, to the exclusion of everything else.
[/sarcasm]

Re:Military Bozos

[drinkypoo]

And, as you might have pointed out, developing a weapon typically involves developing defenses against the weapon, so that you can figure out how to make your weapon (or another weapon) defeat those defenses. Just developing this kind of weapon leads to defenses against it.

Re:Military Bozos

[YrWrstNtmr]

"...ways to protect a satellite against a laser or other type of attack..."

Starfire sound familiar?

[jmichaelg]

You may remember hearing the name Starfire in conjunction with this picture.

I'm a little surprised that people are upset about this technology now. It was developed in the late 80's. I know /. dotes on old news but isn't this over the top for old news?

Shoot down Space Junk

[canning]

"The U.S. government wants to develop a ground-based weapon to shoot down enemy satellites in orbit."

They can start their testing by shooting down the hundreds of useless satellites and debris orbiting the earth at this very moment.
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/space_junk.html Space Junk
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/space_junk_list.ht ml Space Junk: The full list
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/solarsystem/ear th/spacejunk.shtml

But the real question...

[Tuirn]

But the real question everyone wants to know is: does it come with it's own sharks?

In soviet russia... (and James Bond)

[jarg0n]

In soviet Russia Satellite Shoots You!

Haven't you seen Goldeneye!?

The race has begun

[gryf]

The anti-sat laser race began years ago. Whilst the US was cutting back defense research into all but the most pork laden projects, China was pushing a serious military space strategy. This included new ICMBs, satellite and anti-sat and guidance technology. All very dual use for their manned program, but by comparison we've been looking the other way whistling whilst a non-democratic expansionistic country that tends to threaten our major trading partners and threaten first strike nuclear assaults against the US is building weapons to cripple the US military.

My response to reading the article: duh!

Here are some recent articles on the developments in China. The US is not starting this race, but it'd be nice to keep up regardless.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2005-07 -27-china-satellites_x.htm
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HD20Ad03.html
http://www.house.gov/coxreport/chapfs/ch4.html
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/china-01c.html
http://www.taiwandc.org/twcom/84-no3.htm
http://www.afio.com/sections/wins/1998/notes48.htm l

The world is, a dangerous place. As with Sudan and Iran, the UN is no deterrent to aggression. Enlightened self-interest directs us to investigate these types of systems for the same reasons we investigate lethal pathogens. Surviving them requires understanding them even if we never intend to use them.

Re:The race has begun

[sharrestom]

Uhm, yeah, whatever. Pretty sure we spend about $750 B per year on our security which exceeds all others combined by a wide margin, so there's a good chance that there is a few $B tucked away for AntiSatellite develpment somewhere. I'm a little more concerned that China might figure out a way to mass produce satellites and launch vehicles and sell them through WalMart, killing off Dish Network with Personal Satlogging.

Re:The race has begun

[xoyoyo]

"The world is, a dangerous place. As with Sudan and Iran, the UN is no deterrent to aggression. Enlightened self-interest directs us to investigate these types of systems for the same reasons we investigate lethal pathogens. Surviving them requires understanding them even if we never intend to use them."

Sudan? It's NP-hard to threaten a state that only tenuously exists.

Iran? Have we tried yet? I was labouring under the delusion that the deadline had only just passed and the UN was considering its options. As for aggression: Iran is building a nuclear bomb. While that has the potential to make a right mess it stops short of being an actual aggressive act. Iran's behaviour is aggressive - very aggressive - but "aggressive act" would involve some violation of someone else's sovereignty. (There is of course the side case that Iran is actively meddling in Iraq, rather unsurprisingly given that they pulled off the intelligence coup of the post-Cold War period in persuading us to fight their war for them...)

And I like the "even if we never intend to use them" codacil: one can never intend to have a slice of chocolate cake, or that cigarette or slip into bed with that intern but these things...just...happen...somehow.

Re:The race has begun

[thewiz]

This included new ICMBs, satellite and anti-sat and guidance technology.

Inter-Continental Mother Boards?

Re:The race has begun

[Lord Ender]

"The world is, a dangerous place."

Is that comma meant to indicate a Shatner-esque pause?

Re:The race has begun

[Stalyn]

The wars of the future will be fought between smaller countries and the occasional conflict between a much larger power and a smaller one. China and the United States already have very close economic ties, so close that a prolonged war between us would devastate both our economies. If you want to prevent war you make your enemies your trading partners. The consolidation of economic powers as trading partners has all but eliminated large-scale land war between major powers.

No, we should be retooling our forces to fight guerilla conflicts. In Iraq we had to relearn many of the lessons from Vietnam at great economic and human cost. You cite Sudan and Iran as possible places of future conflict. Right now the US does not have the capacity or strategic acumen to fight the types of war that will arise. The US will become more of a police force, which will try to prop favorable governments and fight insurgents. An anti-satellite laser will do nothing in these conflicts.

Re:The race has begun

[Aaron England]

Inter-Continental Missile Ballistics!

Re:The race has begun

[destuxor]

Years ago NPR discussed a "killer satellite" project. NASA and the DOD had teamed up and actually built a laser capable of destroying or disabling spy satellites, but I distinctly recall the gentlemen saying that they had decided not to go through with the project. They did not want to start an expensive, pointless war in space with nations that we aren't at war with. I suppose if the USA and China or Russia really did go after each other the night sky would light up, but up to this point any intelligence gathered by other space-capable nations doesn't directly harm us.

This might be the story...I'm not sure, and I don't have time to listen to old radio broadcasts.

Sorry, I didn't RTA.

Re:The race has begun

[vtcodger]

***The anti-sat laser race began years ago. Whilst the US was cutting back defense research into all but the most pork laden projects, China was pushing a serious military space strategy. This included new ICMBs, satellite and anti-sat and guidance technology. All very dual use for their manned program, but by comparison we've been looking the other way whistling whilst a non-democratic expansionistic country that tends to threaten our major trading partners and threaten first strike nuclear assaults against the US is building weapons to cripple the US military. ***

That's a bad case of paranoia you're working on there fella. And like most paranoid delusions, it's probably misdirected. Let's straighten out a few things here. First of all China definitely is, as you say, building new ICBMs. The reason isn't hard to figure out. It's because the 1980 style Long Trail ICBMs are liquid fueled. That means a two hour fuel up before launch and excessive vulnerability to a pre-emptive strike. The US long ago switched to solid fuel ICBMs because of near instant availability and reduced likelyhood of a missile blowing up in the silo China appears to be making the same transition for the same reasons.

China is also deploying nuclear SLBM carrying submarines ("boomers" if you will). But there is no evidence that they are trying to match the US warhead for warhead. It looks more like a move to make a successful pre-emptive strike by the US impossible. Given the Bush administration's bererker approach to foreign policy, it's hard to fault the Chinese for taking a few precautions.

There's no sign that the Chinese are seeking a 'first strike' capability -- which is, so far as I can see, an utter impossiblity against a country with as many diverse nuclear delivery systems and warheads as the US has.

I don't know where you got the idea that the Chinese are expansionist. If anything, they are the most insular bunch of folks on the whole damn planet (with the possible exception of native Vermonters). I read a book a number of decades ago that projected that China's foreign goals would be restricted to taking over Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and regions of traditional Chinese/Tibetan culture that the McMahon line (which China never at any time accepted as a legitimate border) put into India. Wish I could remember the title and author. So far, it's been pretty much dead on.

At any rate, let me point out that China has refrained from expanding into Indochina, North Korea, or Burma (Myanmar) although it would have been easy enough to do so, and in the case of the latter two, I'm not sure that anyone would mind all that much.

So, China is no danger? I didn't say that, and don't think that. But I think that their plan probably is to swamp the US economically, not militarily. You don't have to be very bright (just smarter than the average garden vegetable or Neoconservative) to figure out that an all out military conflict between any two major powers will probably clear the planet of multicellular life -- which means that the victory party -- no matter who 'wins' -- is likely to brief and not very much fun.

Consider what 100,000 or so Japanese did to the US economy between 1960 and 1980 -- starting with just about destroying the vaunted US automobile industry (Those "voluntary import limits Reagan negotiated are still in effect). Now imagine what ten times that number of Chinese can do if the US continues to be led by nitwits. Now, THERE's something to get paranoid about.

Re:The race has begun

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

If you want to prevent war you make your enemies your trading partners.

Germany and England were each the others largest trading partner in 1914, or virtually right on it.

Re:The race has begun

[Anonymous Bullard]

I don't know where you got the idea that the Chinese are expansionist. If anything, they are the most insular bunch of folks on the whole damn planet (with the possible exception of native Vermonters). I read a book a number of decades ago that projected that China's foreign goals would be restricted to taking over Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and regions of traditional Chinese/Tibetan culture that the McMahon line (which China never at any time accepted as a legitimate border) put into India.

The chinese communist dictatorship has either fought wars with or outright invaded (Tibet, East Turkestan and Southern Mongolia) its every neighbour during its relatively short existance. While it didn't exactly invade its "vassal-istic" North Korean communist dictatorship, it fought alongside the communist-god Kim Il Jong against the democratic South supported by the UN. Oh, and in Cambodia the chinese regime helped the Khmer Rouge to go on a massive killing spree a la Cultural Revolution brutally wiping out some one-and-a-half-million helpless Cambodian civilians while they were at it. They're also the main, if not only, supporters of the Burmese military dictatorship. So, they either support neighbouring mad dictatorships or fight other neighbours, even if it takes invading a neighbour to move their empire's border for the next border war!

Just how aren't the chinese communist regime's invasions and annexations of their non-chinese neighbours Mongolia, East Turkestan and Tibet expansionist aggressions???

And wtf is "traditional Chinese/Tibetan culture", especially in that context when before the chinese invasion there were no chinese anywhere near the Indo-Tibetan border? What comes to the British Imperial McMahon Line, it was accepted by the Tibetans, and the Tibetans also had their own state border with China far, far away which was mutually agreed upon but which the chinese just didn't feel like respecting.

Re:The race has begun

[Stachel]

Enlightened self-interest [...]

What exactly do you mean by 'enlightened'? Isn't self-interest by definition egotistical and narrow-minded, ignoring a greater good and the interests of others?
From Wikipedia: "Enlightenment is becoming aware of the nature of the self through observation and reduction of one's ignorance. By observation of the self (our self) with detachment, we can become aware of its processes without being caught up in them. Doing such allows one to better interact with others and our environment."
I think the US [politicians & weapons manufactureres & military] will need this blinding light not to burn satellites, but to be able to observe their own ignorance, greed and anger, and create a better interactions with others and the environment not through fear and force, but through dialog and understanding.

Re:The race has begun

[gryf]

The largest wars are usually between the biggest trading partners. These are the nations with the shared but competing goals and interests. Look at Europe's long history. The same is true with Japan, with Iraq, Iran, Egypt. Interdependence does not preclude conflict, but it actually provides a useful indicator of where to look for future conflicts.

Re:The race has begun

[vtcodger]

Sigh ... where to start...

I can't find any references to a post-PRC invasion of Mongolia. In fact, the Chinese dropped all claim to (Outer) Mongolia after requesting a free and fair election there in October 1945. When it became clear that (literally) no one in Mongolia wanted to be Chinese, China recognized the Mongolian government and has -- so far as I can tell, behaved themselves in a rather exemplary fashion with regard to a region that they could surely overrun in about 72 hours I'll save you the trouble of pointing out that a Chinese takeover of Mongolia would produce a truly spectacular negative reaction from Russia. Would that the US had behaved as responsibly in Vietnam or the Indians in Kashmir.

Perhaps you are thinking of Inner Mongolia -- A chinese province with a largely Mongolian population. I don't think much of China's conduct there (or Tibet or East Turkestan come to that), but no one, not even the Mongolians, thinks that Inner Mongolia is not part of China.

East Turkestan has pretty much always been under Chinese control with occasional periods of Russian control or (very short lived) periods of independence. The Communists did not invade the place, they took it over from the nationalists. The modern Chinese conduct there has been roughly comperable to 19th century American conduct in dealing with the American Indians -- which is to say pretty despicable. But it is not expansionist.

Tibet was regarded by everyone except the Tibetans as a semi-autonomous province of China. As I said, I don't approve of the Chinese conduct there, but their invasion was probably more justified on a strictly legal basis than Lincon's sending the US Army into Virginia in 1861. My point was that the Chinese are not expansionist beyond what they regard as part of China -- which they certainly did think Tibet was and is. And, no, you are incorrect, China was a party to the McMahon line talks as well as Britain and Tibet and did not agree to the proposed line. (If Tibet was not within the Chinese sphere of influence, why was China invited to the party?) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMahon_Line

Calling South Korea a democracy at the time of the Korean War is more than a bit of a stretch. It was the domain of one Syngman Rhee whose government started off with some democratic trappings and ended up as a nasty little dictatorship which (thankfully) collapsed in 1960. While some of the military governments that followed Rhee weren't too awful, real and hopefully permanent democracy didn't arrive there until the 1992 election. I think perhaps you think terms "democratic" and "anti-communist" are synonymous. They really aren't.. Rhee was not the former. He was the latter.

In any case, the Chinese didn't enter North Korea until they were asked to by the North Koreans, and left in 1958. The other major power party to that conflict -- the US -- is still in Korea. I don't see how any reasonable person who doesn't see the US as expansionist (and I don't think many would ignoring the Iraq lunacy) can see the Chinese conduct in Korea as expansionist

(My guess is that the Bush Administration, UN, and North Korea's neighbors other than South Korea would view a takeover of North Korea by just about anyone including the Chinese as a blessing almost equivalent to having aliens snatch the population of that unhappy land and ship it off to Arcturas, but no one is going to say so, and the Chinese are surely not about to do that).

Yes the Chinese -- who did not get on well with Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Mihn -- backed the psychopathic Khymer Rouge leader Pol Pot. What you conveniently forget to mention is that Pol Pot's other major supporter was the US. Note that China's solution was not to set its army rolling toward Hanoi. It was to back governments that didn't get along with Ho Chi Mihn -- exactly what the US did. That has to do with lack of moral fibre not expansionism. Yes the Chinese

Ozone layer

[wile_e_wonka]

Maybe we can use it to slice out a hole in the ozone layer, so I can tan better.

Like, for instance...

[C10H14N2]

The threat of U.S. anti-satellite lasers, for instance...maybe taking out, say, Galileo.

Are we planning WW4 and WW5 yet?

[SlappyBastard]

Because, honestly, I think we should skip that nuclear war/lasers/satellites/nanobots/MMOG/infowar/biowea pons/petrowar step, preserve the planet, and just start fighting with rocks.

It looks so cool when the Palestinians do it!

Just imagine whole armies chucking rocks at each other!

NBC Nightly News would steal a whole demographic away from Spike TV and G4.

Response from Dr Coyote

[The_Mr_Flibble]

Our Latest satelite system employs the use of a large metalic mass that is dropped from orbit.
Project ANVIL was commissioned in response to Americas road^H^H^H^H anti satelite laser.

I love the tagging beta

[heinousjay]

I like how the 'stupid' tag gets applied to anything traditionally conservative. It's nice to see such strong bias on site where people often bitch about media bias. I guess anything is okay as long as it aligns with your opinions.

Not trying to say anti-satellite lasers are a good idea, or a bad idea. I make no judgement, because I have no military expertise.

Earth is in a war with another planet.

[KingJoshi]

This is the proof. FTA: "It is considered a baby step toward developing a laser powerful enough to cripple spacecraft."

The day the rest of the world realizes this fact is when the armada arrives.

Seriously though, this technology is bound to happen. And our weapons capabilities will continue to get stronger and we'll be able to destroy OTHER planets with one button. We can't underestimate the ingenuity of human stupidity, so one day shit will happen and we'll come close killing ourselves.

Excellent coverage...

[I Like Pudding]

...by zefrank yesterday

US Shoots down Satellites

[Goodgerster]

Next week the US shoots down Luna, Phobos, Deinos, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Charon, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan, Iapetus, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, Triton, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto; thus ridding the entire solar system of major enemy satellites.

Help Wanted

[gjcamann]

Astro-physacist wanted, Windows programming exp helpful. Preferably PhD. Need not show up to work, just collect paycheck. Experience working on large government contract that run overbudget for years and then are canceled for reasons that were obvious in the first place a plus.
Project involves:
Building a lasar to shoot down satelites with Maximum reliability of 1/99999
Pay: $5e6
Flexable benefits.

We win the fight ?

[Anonymous Coward]

removing their capability to deliver precision guided munitions.

And therein lies your problem. If your enemy can't pin-point the military target, then their next best option is to target a large city. Way to go, that was smart. Instead of losing a missile silo, you lose 250,000 citizens.

Re:We win the fight ?

[AGMW]

And therein lies your problem. If your enemy can't pin-point the military target, then their next best option is to target a large city. Way to go, that was smart. Instead of losing a missile silo, you lose 250,000 citizens.

Not sure why this is modded at zero ... I think the AC is onto something here! Take this to its logical conclusion, ie otherwise totally powerless citizens against a superpower, and you end up with terrorists, as that is the only apparent way to strike back!

Of course, the US has historically had the benefit of being physically remote from the people they wage war on - no V1 or V2 flying bombs flying over the channel in US history (discounting the Japanese balloons of WWII I guess). The threat of ICBMs brings this a little closer to home, but we know who has these, and "we" tend not to wage war on them so much! But now we have the age of the bomb in a backpack and all bets are off!

Re:We win the fight ?

[Rich0]

The only people who would use a backpack bomb in a first-nuclear-strike attack would be terrorists without state affiliation. No state would attempt this. At best they would disrupt the US and kill a few thousand people - even with a nuke in manhatten. A single man-portable bomb just doesn't do that much damage at low altitude.

On the other hand, a nuke on wall street is going to result in the nation that delivered it being turned into a hunk of glass.

The backpack nuke is better held as a deterrent - to prevent the US from launching a nuclear strike. Once you employ nukes your enemy has nothing to lose by using theirs - and their best strategy is to use as many as they can as quickly as they can. The only nation that can stand up to the US in a nuclear war is the former soviet states. But, they know better. So do most nations with nuclear arsenals.

Now, if the US does something stupid like nuking China, then all bets are off. The US would still come out ahead in an exchange - the Chinese don't have that many ICBMs - they'd blast most major bases and cities, but the US would depopulate most of the country - urban and rural. However, the US is best off sticking to conventional warfare against nuclear states.

Re:We win the fight ?

[AGMW]

I pretty much agree with you. The only problem is that terrorist groups will act on behalf of their "country" without necessarily getting the mandate to do so. Case in point - The IRA, hell Al Quieda (sp?) are acting (they claim) on behalf of "Muslims". Just because some nutjob gets it into their head to come and bomb you (nuke or not), there's no guarantee there'll be a "valid" target you can strike back at. Also, striking back at the wrong target could just escalate the conflict.

The original thread wasn't even about nukes. Surgical strikes controlled by satalites vs nutjob with a holdall. Certainly, in a one-sided conflict with a large and poor population you've got to consider the poor people as potential suicide jockeys.

If you think back to WWII there were plans in place throughout the UK to setup armed resistance cells for if the Germans got across the channel. Large arms dumps were setup and specialist personel were seeded throughout the Home Guard on the quiet. There was a chap in the village where I grew up and he reported that a local had discovered the arms cache. He was told that if the Germans got into the UK it should kill the local fellow to protect the arms dump. Obviously not suicide bombers, but pretty strong stuff none the less. Needs must when the devil drives ... or something like that!

One obvious target...

[Smurfeur]

Galileo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_positioning_s ystem

The Europeans could, potentially (I can't picture them actually doing it) provide a GPS system outside of US control, to any other nation and/or organization, and break one of the most important of the US' monopoly. If the US can destroy the Galileo satellites, they get back that control. Nice move, if the technology will actually works ;)

(yes, I'm more of a believer of the "gotta keep sending millions to the military-industrial complex", too)

Re:One obvious target...

[Kadin2048]

I think you are actually right on the money here.

The U.S. isn't really concerned about enemy spy satellites -- god knows our borders are so porous, you could just send a TV crew in and photograph almost anything you want, as long as they don't look Middle Eastern -- but navigation satellites are another matter.

The saving grace of the GPS system, from a U.S. military perspective, is that an enemy really can't depend on it; we can throw errors into it pretty much anywhere, anytime we want without having our equipment be affected (except all the guys using civilian GPS receivers because they haven't been issued real ones). I think there's a real concern that if there was a competing GPS-like system, that an enemy could use it to pilot a cruise missile at a U.S. target in such a way that we wouldn't get much warning.

Now, I think this is kind of a false threat: I think, given what I said earlier about our borders, that it's a whole lot easier to just drive a truck up to said U.S. target and blow it up than it would be to cobble together a homemade V-1 or V-2 with Galileo navigation, but apparently others disagree.

At any rate, any navigation system that provided GPS-like accuracy that wasn't within direct U.S. control would almost certainly necessitate the creation of a way to destroy it, or at least temporarily disable it in certain areas (if you de-orbited a satellite or two you might be able to make a hole in the system's coverage that would take a while for the operators to replace from spares).

Not that it would do any good against ICBMs, Chinese or otherwise, since they use astro- and inertial navigation systems anyway.

Re:One obvious target...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, cellestial satelite navigation isn't exactly the only option. When balistic missile is in the sky, constelation of navigational referent points can as well be on the Earth's surface, you just need to know their exact position and time of emmition. You can pre-scatter ground locator boxes and let them read out their position from GPS or flock of recon planes (using same or similar algorithms used for GPS). Finding locators near your targeted facilities is hard if you don't know how to ping them...

GPS is nice asset, but war was and can be fought without it. Weapon (targeting) systems does not need to know absolute positions of their targets. Hell, today you could make a parachute-equipped mortar shell that would, while in air, download its position and "approved identification" code from ground based (known position) friendly radar (or lidar, so that ARMs wouldn't shut the system down too quickly) emition and serve as temporary position referent point for short-term tactical targeting for troops. All this can be repeated as fast as needed (because this "floating point of reference" changes position generaly unpredictable), and as one of those cheap beacons gets taken down, more others can be launched... all day long. And it still won't cost as much as Global PS, so even rogue states and guerrila movements can roll their own. Given that they obviously know their own teritory, the task is even simpler, no launching needed at all, they can take and put them wherever they need to.

Re:One obvious target...

[The Snowman]

While Galileo crossed my mind when I wrote my OP, I don't think the U.S. would attack European satellites.

Re:One obvious target...

[rufty_tufty]

They would attack if they had enough to gain by the attack, as anyone would.

Given that Galileo is a joint project between all of Europe, Russia, China and Japan, the US would have to be at war with quite a bit of the world to have enough to gain from the attack, but the possibility exists.

The question is, was a missle to hit US target suspected to be guided by the galileo system, would that be the provocation/excuse the pentagon needs to prove a point and yet get away with it.
It has been said by Europe that an attack by the US on Galileo would be considered an act of war though...

Re:One obvious target...

[rufty_tufty]

"if you de-orbited a satellite or two you might be able to make a hole in the system's coverage that would take a while for the operators to replace from spares"

Not really, they're in none geo-synchronous orbit, so it's only be a matter of minutes before another comes into replace them. Very convenient if you're trying to take out the entire system (the targets come to you); but not so good i you just want a hole.

Galileo is capable of selectively producing these holes if the controllers want to. If not, then the US has 2 choices:
* put up with it
* Shoot all the galileo system down (and effectively decalre war on Europe, Russia, China and Japan in a single move)

This is a good thing to me, because perhaps like MAD it makes war much less likley, because to do any attack at all is assured destruction for yourself.

Re:One obvious target...

[Kadin2048]

Well you wouldn't be able to make a continuous hole, but you'd be able to make a hole in a particular place at a particular time, which actually might be more useful than a constant hole. (E.g.: you allow the system to remain in service so that the enemy becomes dependent on it, then take it out right before the attack/invasion/etc.) That's more what I was referring to by hole -- you're correct, you'd have to take out a big swath of satellites to interrupt coverage over any particular area constantly, since they're in LEO.

Been done.

[Kadin2048]

All you'd need is a large rotating mirror and a tracking system, and you could vaporize a human targ -- er, I mean, Intellectual Property Thief from space!

Re:Been done.

[Nef]

It's a moral imperative!

Hehe, been way too long since I saw that movie. Thanks for reminding me!

Re:Been done.

[dickeya]

All these RIAA lawsuits are funding one of these babies to be used FROM outerspace.

Steal a song..... ZAP!

Old news

[dpaton.net]

The former USSR tried something like that back in the early 80s. In my dad's copy of Flight of the Old Dog, there's a press clipping that's the only record I've ever found of it. I'll post the text later if anyone's interested. Basically, a high energy (free electron?) laser right out of Real Genius was being built.

Nothing says "ignorance"

[Shivetya]

like believe all those other countries would not consider doing it if the US hadn't done so first.

Get flipping real.

It is a race. The difference is, are we going to join in or talk ourselves into a corner. The reason people pin the blame on the US for "escalating" everything is that items like this do come up for discussion in this country instead of being suddenly announced during a "military day". Also it doesn't hurt the US can actually do some of things mentioned while other countries would be years behind. What better way to slow the US pace by getting people riled up about it?

The world sucks. When its more important to thwart one countries attempt to stop another from getting the bomb that stopping that country from getting the bomb it only shows the priorities are all wrong.

Re:Nothing says "ignorance"

[Sierpinski]

like believe all those other countries would not consider doing it if the US hadn't done so first.

Get flipping real.

I don't dispute this, but people like you are the reason why most of the rest of the world hates Americans. There's a line between security and pissing everyone in the world off. Sometimes the latter is necessary for the former, but not as often as the U.S. does it.

Call me ignorant, call me whatever you like, I don't care one bit. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.

Re:Nothing says "ignorance"

[Kombat]

"Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. ... and no one thinks their own stinks."

Why does hardly anyone ever include the other half of this quote?

Re:Nothing says "ignorance"

[ceoyoyo]

You are aware that it's not necessary to be in an arms race, right? In fact, considering military history as a whole, the idea of a technological arms race is an aberration of the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries.

The world doesn't suck unless you're a paranoid xenophobe.

Re:Nothing says "ignorance"

[StressedEd]

I want my country to have the ability to kill the enemy dead anywhere in the world at any time.

What enemy?

Re:Nothing says "ignorance"

[StressedEd]

Very good! Whoever you are. I wondered if anyone would get the link.

Blind enemies lash out

[redelm]

Is it good to blind your enemy? Yes, it makes her attacks less precise. But they become more fearful and likely to lash out. Blindly. There are times you want your enemy well informed. Why else did the USSR reveal so much at May Day parades?

This was basicly the logic behind the ABM treaty. It still holds good.

With our current terrorist enemy, I cannot see blinding any satellites would help. With potential enemies, most of them have nukers and likely would get very edgy blinded.

Full circle?

[itchy92]

I think it's kind of funny that the SDI program wanted satellite-based lasers to defend against terrestrial threats, and now they want terrestrial-based lasers to defend against satellitical (I think I just precedented a word...) threats.

So .....

[ajs318]

You're saying the US government have the money to spend on new ways of blowing things up in order to blow people up. Fantastic.

How come they can't provide universal free healthcare, and universal free veterinary care for cats and dogs? It's recognised that pet owners are generally healthier and longer lived than non-pet owners. This should be expected, since pet ownership provides physical exercise, companionship and mental stimulation. A small investment in a dog or cat pays dividends in terms of fewer visits to the doctor.

Maybe it's time for a new international treaty banning the use of any kind of space weapons altogether.

impossible to generate a powerfull enough beam

[throwaway18]

This is impossible. A laser beam is a very high frequency electromagnetic wave.
It is a electric field and a magnetic field moving together.

The breakdown voltage of air is about 2000V per millimeter.

With a powerfull laser in a lab, which is about fifty orders of magnitude too weak to do anything to a satellite, you can get sparks in mid air due to the air breaking down because of the high voltage of the electric part of the electromagnetic wave.

You cannot generate a laser beam powerfull enough to destroy a satellite from the ground. IF you tried you would just make a lot of plasma in the air above your laser. Focusing lots of little lasers on a satellite would require far more lasers than could be practically built.
I suspect these storys are planted in the media to worry unfriendly countrys, just like the star wars program that never had a chance of working or the rediculous story I saw in a newspaper a couple of years ago about missiles that can burrow into the ground and destroy a shelter 150feet down.

I also think it's a sad reflection on the state of slashdot that this story is up to 150 comments and I'm the first to point this out. I'm going to go and bash my head on a wall unitl I come to my senses and stop even reading alterslash.

Re:impossible to generate a powerfull enough beam

[throwaway18]

>From what I remember of the old SDI program, a high power laser would be used to ionize air thereby creating a path for a particle beam.

I don't think that idea was ever taken seriously by anyone who knew anything about physics.
Despite wasting tens of billions of dollars on it SDI was still tens of orders of magnitude short of
the energy need to destroy missiles with space based lasers, never mind with 30Km of air in the way.

You can't ionise the air to the edge of the atmosphere, you will just pump energy into a cloud of plasma just above the laser.

>This new program [...] may not destroy the satellite but disable it, e.g. imaging sensors can only take so much photonic energy before they are burned out.

Light is scattered by the air. Even a beam of light consisting of perfectly parallel rays digerges due to equal charges repelling.

It may be possible to temporarily blind an optical sensor if it is pointed at you which a high-res spy-in-the-sky won't be but I don't believe it's possible to permanently damage a sensor from the ground. The numbers for the path loss, the amount of energy you need to damage a sensor and the beam strengh you can generate before you ionise the air add up to it not working.

Re:impossible to generate a powerfull enough beam

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake up and visit the real world!

What was announced was not that such a laser would be made. What was announced was that money would be given to large companies to spend on the development of such a laser.

This is not a story about developing new weapons which break physical laws. This is a story about a corrupt administration playing the fear, patriotism and secrecy cards to justify the spend of more taxpayers money.

Noone ever asked what happened to the last allocation of funds to build a pretty light in the front of a big Boeing, so they are going to spend some more. If you keep asking difficult questions something unpleasant will happen to you, though you will have to try a lot harder than just comment 150 on slashdot.

Interestingly the British were hitting targets 260ft deep in WW2 with their earthquake bombs. http://www.atlantikwall.net/related_v3.htm refers. But they had Barnes Wallis to help them, and proper 1940s technology, which we probably cannot duplicate now! In any case, I don't suppose anyone will make any money by going to the RAF and asking for some of their old museum pieces!

Re:impossible to generate a powerfull enough beam

[Stranger4U]

I had a professor who worked on a similar project for a while. The point is not to physically destroy a satellite, that would be pretty much impossible. The idea is to over-load the satellite's CCD camera, thereby rendering it useless (blind). That also means that the proper filters or multiple CCDs with different operational frequency ranges could circumvent the laser...unless you had multiple lasers.

Re:impossible to generate a powerfull enough beam

[Phanatic1a]

You cannot generate a laser beam powerfull enough to destroy a satellite from the ground. IF you tried you would just make a lot of plasma in the air above your laser.

You. Are. Fucking. High. Learn2physics, kthx.

Here in the real world, the one in which people actually understand electromagnetic propagation through a medium, MIRACL, a megawatt-class deuterium-fluoride chemical laser, successfully disabled a satellite in orbit almost 10 years ago.

Re:impossible to generate a powerfull enough beam

[BagMan2]

I'm not an expert on anything even close to lasers, but I suspect the people capable of building these kind of lasers systems are well aware of the issues you bring up. You logic would imply that you can't get lasers powerful enough to do anything due to the plasma cloud problem, yet there are real laser systems out there now that are examples contrary to your assertion. Take the M-THEL system for example:

http://www.defense-update.com/directory/THEL.htm

It shoots down missiles at fairly decent distances. Now, we aren't talking in-orbit distances, but we aren't talking in a lab either. The amount of energy generated by that laser would seem to be enough to create your plasma cloud right in front of the laser, yet it seems to make some distance. It would seem to me that a beam like that reaching space would still have at least a little bit of energy...then you simply multiply that by a few hundred using an array and you have yourself a ASAT weapon. Plus I doubt that M-THEL laser is operating at the maximum energy that can be achieved without your dreaded plasma cloud.

Re:impossible to generate a powerfull enough beam

[TubeSteak]

I suspect these storys are planted in the media to worry unfriendly countrys, just like the star wars program that never had a chance of working or the rediculous story I saw in a newspaper a couple of years ago about missiles that can burrow into the ground and destroy a shelter 150feet down.

Umm... that's not so rediculous.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/bunker-buster.htm /printable
"When the bomb hits the earth, it is like a massive nail shot from a nail gun. In tests, the GBU-28 has penetrated 100 feet (30.5 meters) of earth or 20 feet (6 meters) of concrete."

100 feet... and that's a 15 year old kinetic bomb.

To make bunker busters that can go even deeper, designers have three choices:

• They can make the weapon heavier. More weight gives the bomb more kinetic energy when it hits the target.
• They can make the weapon smaller in diameter. The smaller cross-sectional area means that the bomb has to move less material (earth or concrete) "out of the way" as it penetrates.
• They can make the bomb faster to increase its kinetic energy. The only practical way to do this is to add some sort of large rocket engine that fires right before impact.

Just because you don't know about something, doesn't mean it isn't possible.

Re:impossible to generate a powerfull enough beam

[Jerf]

Even a beam of light consisting of perfectly parallel rays digerges due to equal charges repelling.

That makes no sense. One of the reasons photons are so exciting for use in computing is that they don't interact with each other in any significant way. (Technically, they interact gravitationally, but that's of little consequence.)

I was listening up to this point, but I'd want to see some support of lasers diverging due to charge repulsion. I'm prepared to believe that the effect can arise in a material medium, just not on the basis of a single Slashdot post :). I did try some likely Google searches, but I kept getting stuff about ion beams, where I wouldn't believe it if there wasn't charge repulsion spreading. (Maybe you were thinking ion beams?)

Re:impossible to generate a powerfull enough beam

[throwaway18]

Here in the real world, the one in which people actually understand electromagnetic propagation through a medium, MIRACL, a megawatt-class deuterium-fluoride chemical laser, successfully disabled a satellite in orbit almost 10 years ago.

Wrong. That test failed. It did not work.

See the wikipedia entry on SDI (assuming some stupid troll hasn't just edited it).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Ini tiative

Re:impossible to generate a powerfull enough beam

[throwaway18]

http://science.howstuffworks.com/bunker-buster.htm /printable
"When the bomb hits the earth, it is like a massive nail shot from a nail gun. In tests, the GBU-28 has penetrated 100 feet (30.5 meters) of earth or 20 feet (6 meters) of concrete."

Actually I think that is evidence in favour of my point. In most places you will have hit rock 150feet down.

Re:impossible to generate a powerfull enough beam

[Phanatic1a]

Wrong. That test failed. It did not work.

Wrong. The test "failed" in that the military didn't get all the data they were looking for. The test succeeeded in that it *actually disabled the satellite*. I mean, since you're so quick with the Wikipedia links, I'd have thought you'd have clicked through to MIRACL from the page you linked to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRACL

In 1997, amid much controversy, MIRACL was tested against a US Air Force satellite in orbit. The satellite was disabled but the Air Force did not get the data from the satellite it had hoped for.

It didn't destroy the satellite, but they also weren't firing at full-power.

Seriously, are you actually claiming that you can't propagate EM waves through a medium once the strength of the E field becomes greater than the dielectric strength of the medium? Are you *high*? Who taught you EM theory? Seawater has a dielectric strength of essentially zero, what with all those dissolved ions, and high-power lasers propagate through it just fine.

Blooming is a problem. But what causes it is *energy density*. When you get more than about a megajoule/cm2, that's when you start losing energy to blooming. But you don't have to build "lots of little lasers" to prevent that. What's far easier, and what is actually done by people who, you know, build these things, is to use shorter laser pulses or wider beams/lasing cavities/mirrors. Keep the pulse short enough, and blooming doesn't have time to start. Widen the beam enough, and you keep things below that critical density.

Saying "You can't do this because of blooming" is like saying "You can't fly faster than the speed of sound because of friction!" It's a problem, a loss of efficiency, you need to take it into account when you build. But it's not a show-stopper like you're claiming. THEL, which isn't an ASAT platform but is instead a point-defense against short-range threats, has had considerable success shooting down things like missiles and artillery shells without being stopped by blooming.

Re:impossible to generate a powerfull enough beam

[marcosdumay]

You'd better dealing with light absorbtion than with eletrical ionization. The point is that the voltage generated by the laser depends on the frequency of the light, not on the intensity. And it is normaly too low to lead to any ionization (unless you are dealing with gamma radiation or the medium is a metal).

Now, the molecules on air absorb low frequency light, changing it into heat. I don't know how well, and don't know how intense the bean must be to disable (or destroy?) the satelite. But you are dealing with the wrong problem.

And your solution of using several lasers wouldn't work because they are not coherent.

more Wikipedia...

[kwikrick]

on anti-satellite weapons. The USSR experimented with ground based lasers in the 70's and 80's. It was a huge succes: apparently several western spies were blinded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon

Can't stop junk bombs

[bussdriver]

We all know how good the chinese are at making cheap junk and that they can launch stuff into space.
A bag of marbles sent into orbit which end up hitting your stuff at 1000s of miles per hour would be a cheap way to end a space war. Space junk is already a concern today.
Intentionally designed devices could make space off limits for quite some time, and destroy or damage what is already up there.
F=ma

The real challenge is...

[metroplex]

making it small enough to be fitted in a shark's helmet.

Viewing the space shuttle

[Maximum Prophet]

So they can see a basketball at 1000 miles. The space shuttle only orbits at 100 to 500 miles so this thing could see missing tiles. Why didn't it?

Re:Viewing the space shuttle

[gatkinso]

Because they weren't looking at Columbia.

But will it have...

[DavidD_CA]

But will it have friggin' sharks?

Re:But will it have...

[suman28]

No, we couldn't get the sharks because they are now on the endangered species list

big government = conservative?

[bigtrike]

How is multi-billion dollar pork project which does absolutely nothing to prevent us from modern threats "conservative"?

Re:big government = conservative?

[carpeweb]

um, because it's based on faith and not on reason?

Re:big government = conservative?

[heinousjay]

Military spending is traditionally conservative. I imagine you were being facetious.

If you object to the 'conservative' terminology, take it up with the Republicans. They hijacked it, and now it's toasted. I used to self-identify as a conservative until I realized it just gets incorrect knee-jerk reactions from liberals who couldn't think beyond their own opinions. Now I refuse to identify at all, I simply believe what I believe.

The Crossbow Project.

[knightf0x]

There's no defense like a good offense!

China's anti-satellite weapons

[JavaLord]

China has them... so why don't democrats support us getting them?

Have they stopped calling it "STAR WARS"??

[blair1q]

Have they stopped calling it "Star Wars?"

Because, as you'll recall, Star Wars was the program that Bush revived when he took office. The one that totally supplanted any thoughts of fighting terrorism in the days between the Inauguration and 9/11/2001. After Clinton, Gore, and Sandy Berger had all told their incoming replacements that Terror was Job 1.

I guess the Cold War really is Back On.

Re:Have they stopped calling it "STAR WARS"??

[drinkypoo]

psssst Star Wars (aka SDI) was a system of satellites that would take out nuclear weapons, or a great trilogy that spawned a crap trilogy, depending on who you ask. This is an antisatellite weapon.

Re:Have they stopped calling it "STAR WARS"??

[blair1q]

Psst. Star Wars was an umbrella term that included the high-power laser program for killing missiles in flight. Doing the same to satellites would require MORE power and accuracy. Thus making the missile-killing a matter of entering a different program into the targeting computer.

Shit in garbage's clothing.

Re:Have they stopped calling it "STAR WARS"??

[drinkypoo]

You'd need more power and accuracy, but satellites don't move as fast as missiles, which run avoidance programs to make them harder to hit - which is what makes the whole thing so difficult in the first place. If they just followed a "simple" ballistic track then it wouldn't be [such] a hard job. It's still harder to hit a missile, power requirements notwithstanding. We have working anti-satellite missiles, but we're short on anti-missile missiles.

What about the mines??

[ianscot]

You neglected to mention the mine shaft gap.

The US is not starting this race, but it'd be nice to keep up regardless.

From your SpaceDaily.com link above: "China will become the third nation after U.S. and Russia to possess an ASAT system." China can make arguments identical to yours about enlightened self-interest. They could make the same argument about WMDs -- and Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, and the regime in Iran have all done just that. Deterrence, etc.

Re:What about the mines??

[Rich0]

China can make arguments identical to yours about enlightened self-interest. They could make the same argument about WMDs -- and Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, and the regime in Iran have all done just that. Deterrence, etc.

Well, sure, which is of course why the US wants to make sure they're the ones on top. I'm sure anyone in their place would take the same course of action.

Personally, I think China is far more likely to invade a secular democratic nation than the US is (how many Canadians vs Taiwanese lose sleep over the thought of missles coming across the border?).

Re:What about the mines??

[ianscot]

Personally, I think China is far more likely to invade a secular democratic nation than the US is

Iraq was secular, but not democratic, so I guess you got me there. The world is not carefully looking for both those criteria when it decides which reckless leaders it fears, however. I've traveled a little in the muslim world, and people dreaded us, even before W. Gee, I wonder why.

Re:What about the mines??

[Rich0]

Uh, that would be the propaganda designed to distract everybody from the fact that they are living in a dictatorship, perhaps?

If the US annexed Saudi Arabia about the only big changes would be the emancipation of women and the end to stoning of blasphemers. Oh, and the fact that people would suddenly have this strange thing called elections.

Sure, it isn't the US's place to go around arbitrarily setting up democracies. However, that doesn't mean that these places are paradises of human rights...

It has a really long prototype name

[saboola]

Date Exchanging Anti Terrorism Hub Simulating Threats Against Republicans

Ah yes....

[Slak]

...but when will it be shark-mountable? Now that would be truly evil!

Reminds me...

[c08ra]

All your satellite are belong to us.

Satelite defense: mirrors!

[mauddib~]

What would keep other nations to equip their satelites with mirrors, pointing down to the earth?

Movie plots

[DanTheLewis]

We're slowly moving from Goldeneye, Goldfinger, and Star Wars to The Pink Panther Strikes again.

Wake me up when we get to shark poewred lasers.

How long...

[Kankraka]

How long until someone screws up and blows away Anik F1 http://www.lyngsat.com/anik107.html and I'm without TV?

Re:How come...

[ajs318]

Well, I live in a country where healthcare is free {for people} and nobody here has a problem with that. Yes, it's all paid for out of taxes. And yes, the government sometimes spends taxpayers' money on stupid things {like illegal and unnecessary wars and ridiculous ID card schemes that will create more problems than even exist to be solved}. But if you want things like free healthcare, free education, paved roads and so forth, you have to pay taxes. For my part, though, I would like to see job advertisements show the wages after tax.

sure?

[supernova87a]

aren't we talking about a laser that will just blind the cameras on spy satellites, not blow them to bits? There's quite a big difference...

Looking forward

[Kris Magnusson]

I'm more or less a liberal, but there are a couple things I like about the current administration, and thinking strategically with an eye on advancing the state of the art of military technology is one of them.

There may come a day where we wish we had ASAT lasers. China's military leadership knows the major US advantage over every other military nation is its superiority over space, and are intent on building their own satellite infrastructure for waging war. If we find ourselves fighting them over Taiwan, scarce oil resources, or bad noodles, I'd rather us play for keeps and blow their satellites out of the sky and retain the high ground.

So I support this research. I'd rather prepare now to fight and win future wars against a technologically adept adversary than waiting until tensions heat up to perform basic research into building new weapons that would help us keep our primary asset and destroy our enemy's. If this means kicking off a new so-called arms race, so be it. Just because we choose not to pursue researching laser technology doesn't mean China or others won't. I guess our elected leaders learned nothing from the history of development of the nuclear bomb.

............. kris

This could be useful...

[bashibazouk]

To really sell this project and get some use out of it beyond being a juicy cash cow for the military industrial complex, they ought to use it to vaporize space trash. There is an amazing amount of it up there. Much of it needs to be tracked because many pieces are large enough to cause damage to anything new that goes up.

Popular Science article on laser weapons research

[UttBuggly]

Folks,

The current issue of PopSci has an article about laser weapon research and the players. Pretty interesting.

From a practical standpoint, it appears that a fairly small aircraft...an F-22 for instance....could be armed with an effective laser weapon in the near future.

FYI, the U.S. had an ASAT weapon in the form of a specially modified F-16 with a modified Phoenix radar-guided missile. The mission profile was to fly the bird as high as possible...get a lock on an enemy sat and launch the Phoenix. The Russians specifically proscribed this platform in the SALT talks in 1976.

I saw the ASAT F-16 from a distance of about 50 feet on the tarmac at Edwards AFB in '75 once. It was pretty interesting. I don't know if any photos exist.

These lasers are great...

[raehl]

But who is going to train the sharks?

When the Kzinti come

[MichaelPenne]

This will sure be great to have!

the science is wrong

[BrentRJones]

If you study the diagram that comes with the article you will see lunacy. Making the laser diffuse and "focused by the atmosphere" is nonsense.

Progression

[TheRecklessWanderer]

The natural progression from a land based satellite killer is to start arming satellites, for defence purposes naturally. It will lend itself to covert satellites (cause there aren't any now, nudge nudge) and all sorts of other technology aimed at killing machines and people. Then other satellites, guards, will be sent into orbit. They will have to be smart to be able to defend. Hey, I even have a name for it....Skynet.

Shoot down?

[Quiet_Desperation]

Wouldn't you just have to burn out the optics? Or jam the data link.

Re:Stupidest idea since Pearl Harbour

[dswartz]

After all, satellites can't bob and weave. They just follow their orbits.

Yes they can. In fact many satellites must. Google "stationkeeping".

Furthermore, the US tracks objects in space and moves satellites (civilian and military) if they are in danger of colliding with another object.

Where does it end?

[LFS.Morpheus]

I propose an anti-ground-to-air-sattelite-destroyer satellite. This satellite will be capable of detecting ground-to-air satellite destroyer attacks and destroy them before they are capable of hitting their target.

Don't have an enemy? Just prepare to fight what you just invented...

Another use: cleaning up space junk?

[FFFish]

AFAIK, space junk is a big problem up there these days. Perhaps the lasers could be used to vapourise a bunch of that crap.

My counterdefense idea: put a big-ass reflector up there, so that the laser is reflected back onto itself, destroying the laser equipment. :-)

Re:Stupidest idea since Pearl Harbour

[YrWrstNtmr]

By broadcasting the fact that satellites can be disabled

A good way to figure out how to protect an asset is figuring out all the ways you can destroy it.

satellites can be disabled cheaply and easily by ground based weapons

I think you have a different definition of 'cheaply' than most of us do.

the US is inviting potential enemies to develop those weapons

They will anyway.

Starfire

[jmagar.com]

Check out More Starfire Pics.

In what way is a laser "defense"?

[scorp1us]

In interviews, military officials defended the laser research as prudent, given the potential need for space arms to defend American satellites against attack in the years and decades ahead. "The White House wants us to do space defense," said a senior Pentagon official who oversees many space programs, including the laser effort. "We need that ability to protect our assets" in orbit.

How is a laser going to *protect* anything. Defense shields, mirrors, stealth are all defense. A laser can only be used one way - for offense. I don't forsee ground based laser light shows defense systems that continuously circle our important satellites. If someone were to attack a satellite, say through another satellite or missle system, wouldn't they do it when the US's system is not in line-of-site?

What detection systems exist to identify and monitor "encroaching" ASAT satellites?

Re:In what way is a laser "defense"?

[BagMan2]

If China were to attack the US, it is defensive for the US to shoot down all their spy satellites. This serves to defend the assets of the US.

Re:In what way is a laser "defense"?

[scorp1us]

The phrasign of the original quote makes me thign they were referrign to the defense of satellites, not of assets.

USA

[orangeacid]

The USA - commited to bringing down the axis of evil. And stuff. And not world domination! nooooo, leave that to the iraqis and north koreans iranians and other dangerous superpowers :)

Re:Check you analogy

[ksheff]

no, that's dynamite.

The truth...

[hanshotfirst]

...some Congressional Democrats and other experts fault the research...

The REAL problem the is not with another arms race, as they claim, but that someone proposed mounting these lasers on the heads of sharks!

Post Vietnam era weapons performance

[amightywind]

That's because the primary purpose of this program, like so many others, is to transfer vast amounts of money from the federal treasury to certain politically cooperative industries. Like Star Wars before it, I doubt that there is anyone in the Bush administration that cares one iota whether it has any real military value or even whether it ever "works" or not. The real (political) value is in the spending itself.

The corrupt process of patronage you describe would not have yielded the startling advances in weapons in the last 25 years. For all their faults Pentagon weapons programs performed very well in the post Vietnam era. The purpose of Star Wars spending was to pressure the Soviet Union politically and economically. It worked. The thickening hedge of ballistic missle defenses being deployed in Taiwan, Japan, Israel, Europe, and the US are also testiment to the foresight and effectiveness of Reagan era military planners.

1 Million Dollars

[Zerbs]

I think it's obvious that after they build this "laser", that they will use it to hold the Earth ransom for 1 Million Dollars!

the world did not change after 9/11

[SuperBanana]

The world can change pretty quickly, as Pearl Harbour or 9/11 show.

The world DID NOT CHANGE after 9/11 because of 9/11. It changed because of people claiming it changed, and said people "protecting" us from boogeymen. First it was communists- now it is terrorists.

3,000 people died in the WTC attacks; twice as many Americans die from heart attacks in a month, and preventing their deaths doesn't require stripping people's civil liberties.

Re:the world did not change after 9/11

[nwbvt]

"The world DID NOT CHANGE after 9/11 because of 9/11. It changed because of people claiming it changed, and said people "protecting" us from boogeymen. First it was communists- now it is terrorists. "

First of all... what do you mean by "first it was communists"? Are you trying to argue that the American people feared nothing before the USSR? The quote you were replying to mentioned Pearl Harbor, which alone seems enough to contradict that claim. Unless you were under the impression Japan was a communist nation...

Anyways, the first major successful attack on American soil by a foreign terrorist group in recent memory dramatically changes the psyche of the citizens of any country. And unless your life consists of sitting in your mama's basement isolated from people, such a change is tantamount to the world changing. Yes, there were terrorists out there on September 10th 2001, and yes they had made attacks elsewhere in the world, but seeing planes crash into building in New York and Virginia (no, not Washington DC for those of you who don't know where the Pentagon is located) is much different than hearing about a suicide bombing in Israel. Yes, both are tragic, but the former brings the whole thing home to people for whom Isreal and Palestine are nothing more than scenes in the television show we call "The News".

"3,000 people died in the WTC attacks; twice as many Americans die from heart attacks in a month, and preventing their deaths doesn't require stripping people's civil liberties."

Tell that to the assholes who sue fast food restaurants for making them fat.

Re:the world did not change after 9/11

[Hal_Porter]

I mean that you can find out about new threats quickly. E.g. before Pearl Harbour, the US presumably thought that an attack on US territory was unlikely. Before 9/11, they thought the same thing, unbelievable as that now seems. In that case it's crazy to assume that all wars in the future will be like Iraq. You need to plan for wars where the opposition will be much more organised than the Islamists.

You realise that this is not a binary situation don't you? The fact that Rumsfeld lies some of the time doesn't imply that there aren't crazy people plotting to kill unlimited numbers of Americans. And just because I accidently used a Republican catch phrase, doesn't necessarily mean that I'm wrong.

You can't just parse my post for catch phrases, decide which side US politics I'm on and respond accordingly. Actually, I'm nothing to do with US partisan politcs, since I'm not an American. There's a big world out there, and a small minority of people in it are a much bigger threat to the Americans than the current administration could ever be. They'll still be there when Hilary Clinton or whoever wins the next election too.

Star Wars is the Maginot Line

[FhnuZoag]

I'm sure the French thought something similar when they built the Maginot line - "Now we're safe from the Germans, all wars will be small colonial ones".

Except that these Star Wars projects are the equivalent of the Maginot Line. They are based on the assumption that the enemy will play exactly the strategy we happen to be thinking about at this time. Except that if we are really talking about a major war, we are talking 20 years down the line when this technology is obselete, and in the end, there are dozens of way our notional hi-tech enemy can get around such a defense. e.g.

The Chinese can neglect space war altogether. A crash program to place alot of space junk up there will negate satellites for both sides, and give a big advantage over the US who is investing deeply in that sphere.

They might neglect conventional war. How do you defend against a committed brigade of 1000 or so with backpack nukes?

They might wage economic war. Then nothing you blow up can do any good.

Using RTS metaphors, it's just dumb to be building defenses when you don't know what army your opponent is going to field, when your foe can just observe your spending and build up forces tailored against it.

(OK, if this was a RTS game, the US would be zerg-rushing China. Or maybe everyone would have lagged out already.)

Re:Star Wars is the Maginot Line

[Rich0]

Are you suggesting that the best RTS strategy is to not have an army at all? Then the enemy doesn't need to develop the perfect counter to your forces - they just need to have forces of any kind.

The US should be prepared to stop infiltrators at its borders. It should also be prepared to fight a large scale conventional war (aka NATO-Warsaw). It should be prepared to turn satellites into slag. You should have a balance of forces, so that you deter any avenue of attack.

As far as your question regarding how do you stop 1000 infiltrators with backpack nukes goes - that's easy. You announce in advance that if somebody nukes 1 of your cities, you'll nuke 5 of theirs. Agents with backpack nukes climbing tall buildings aren't going to do nearly as much damage as ICBMs set to airburst. At best china could wipe out a few cities with such a strategy - and 20 minutes later most of their population would be eradicated. Their best use of those backpack nukes is as a deterrant - once they use them, there really is no reason for anybody to hold forces in reserve. However, those backpack nukes are the reason the US would never launch a first strike on China with nuclear weapons.

If the US got into a war with China, it would be entirely conventional. China's best bet would be to attrit US forces to discourage an end to the war. If they launched attacks on US soil they would be conventional and probably not terror-based. Blowing up civilians only serves to unite the enemy - China would do better to blow up military bases. And using weapons of mass destruction on the US population would give them a very strong resolve.

Re:Star Wars is the Maginot Line

[Hal_Porter]

>Except that these Star Wars projects are the equivalent of the
>Maginot Line

I think it would work like this -

In the middle of a US/Iran war, the Iranians rely on French spy satellites. If you have a way to destroy the satellite, it's much easier to negotiate shutter control, i.e. that the French decide not to sell images of secret stuff to Iran. This is a far cry from the Maginot line. I'm not sure what the appropriate military analogy is. Maybe stealth fighters or cruise missiles.

Unlike the Maginot line, it's not the only thing you depend on. Full on Star Wars, i.e. an impenetrable shield against an unlimited number of ICBMs from a technically competent opponenet would be like the Maginot line though.

I think a more limited Star Wars against Iranian or North Korean ICBMS is useful though. At the moment, the US would presumably try to destroy the launchers pre-emptively if they thought they were going to be used. Limited Star Wars would give them one or more systems to destroy ICBMs post launch, at different phases in their flight.

For what it's worth, this is all theoretical. I'm not saying that whatever the Bush admistration is proposing for Star Wars meets these criteria, but there is a case to be made for acquiring the capability to shoot down a handful of 1960's era ICBMS fired from some rogue state. Technically, I think that is possible, and it's much easier than the Full Star Wars which would have to have shot down tens of thousands of 1980's era ICBMs with counter measures fired from all over the Soviet block as well as from submarines. And as you say, a competent opponent can always smuggle in nukes in suitcases and the like.

So long as the politicians know the limits of the system, I don't see the risk.

Pussy Reasoning

[mikapc]

From the article: '... some Congressional Democrats and other experts fault the research as potential fuel for an antisatellite arms race that could ultimately hurt this nation more than others because the United States relies so heavily on military satellites, which aid navigation, reconnaissance and attack warning.'" I'm so sick and tired of the pussy argument that because as the reasoning goes that building weapon X will cause other countries to try and build their own Weapon X and that therefore we shouldn't build weapon X. The fact of the matter is that the U.S. is the world leader in the military department and that anything we do to upgrade our military will be copied by foreign militaries. That said our current leadership in the military department can very easily be lost if we decide to not continue upgrading our military and that if we don't decide on developing some new weapon some other country will do it before us and gain an edge over our military. In any case the argument that an antisatellite arms race could hurt the U.S. the most is entirely speculative and not a good enough reason to potentially lose a military edge by not competing at all.

Depleted Uranium?

[anubi]

I wonder if they would use something like depleted uranium to make the casing of these kinetic bombs.

I am not talking the fissile U-235, rather the U-238 component which is what was NOT wanted for the fissile bomb.

From what I understand, Uranium is an extremely dense hard metal which has the properties needed for a gravitically powered inertial energy bomb ( aka "helluva big bullet") which garners its inertia by falling from orbit.

Its already used in armor piercing bullets.

Laser Blast

[4D6963]

The U.S. government wants to develop a ground-based weapon to shoot down enemy satellites in orbit

Sounds quite like a real-life clone of Laser Blast!

Pax Romana

[marcosdumay]

History can tell us how well it works. It simply doesn't, at least for long.

Secure first; complain later

[Dire Bonobo]

>>> Don't you think the way for the US to really ensure its population's security
>>> would be to try to track down the arsenal of the former USSR?
>
> Don't you think Putin ought to take nuclear security more seriously?

Yes. But it's stupid to argue whose job it is to close the barn door while the horse is walking out it.

I'd much rather have the US taxpayers (i.e., me) pay for securing ex-USSR nuclear material than not have it secured at all. We can complain that Putin should pay for it---and maybe he should---but we'd be idiots to let large amounts of nuclear material lie around unsecured because of a squabble over what is quite frankly a tiny amount of money in comparison to our other spending.

ball bearings won't work

[r00t]

Low orbits need to be maintained. Notice how the space station is sinking. It's been a while since we sent the shuttle to boost the space station. If we wait too long, it burns up.

The biggest mess you could cause would probably involve geostationary orbit. Something going the "wrong" direction might deny that very special orbit to the world.

The rest of space is huge, and anyway, there's always low orbit.

Lasers work great though. These are ground-based, so no problems with power, cooling, vibration, etc. We could put a laser in every city, then fire all of them at the same target. It wouldn't even matter if most of the beams miss.

Simplified Military

[jdbartlett]

"The fact of the matter is that the U.S. is the world leader in the military department..."

Which military department? Which branch? The Army? The Marine Corps? The Navy? The Air Force? The Coast Guard? Maybe it was decided that this system of 'branches' overcomplicates matters: all military branches are now consolidated into "The Military Department" (name soon to be officially changed to: "You Know, Those Guys Who Kill People And Stuff").

Also, are we to assume that all the world's troops are being led by US military commanders? Because that would explain a lot. Napoleon's campaign on Russia, for one thing.

Other than that, I agree, it's silly not to do something just because you could trigger another cold war. We need a government that's willing to weigh out the risks and then go and do something dangerously reckless anyway. That's leadership. No wonder The Military Department is Leading all the world's troops into battle against Terrorists (residents of Terror).

Re:Simplified Military

[mikapc]

You're missing the point and overcomplicating things; I intended the statement to merely mean that the U.S. military taken as a whole surpasses every other world military by a large margin. With clear military superiority by one power generally comes greater security and peace then if two or more nation states are of similar strength. A cold war is much better then a hot war and like it or not there will always be war. The policy of doing nothing will only result in other ambitious nations such as China growing closer or surpassing the strength of the U.S. and by doing nothing this would greatly increase the chance of conflict and a drawn out and deadly war. Civilizations that don't invest in strong militaries generally don't last very long. This is not to say civilizations with strong militaries are immune to destruction as the wrong policy decisions can still end it but generally speaking all of the most prosperous civilizations had strong militaries coupled usually with for a time at least a good government system. Rather then mental masturbate to your own pitiful attempt at sarcasm and wit why don't you actually think and say something of substance.

Substance

[jdbartlett]

Why are you assuming I've missed your point? Actually, I just don't agree with your point.

I must remind you of the subject: anti reconnaissance satellite weaponry. The US military, which uses recon and other satellites extensively, would be the power most hurt by such a weapon. I can understand your concern that Iran or some other power may start shooting down US satellites all willy-nilly, but the United States' having built that weapon could only serve to expedite such an attack. The US is not the only power with reconnaissance, after all. Or with intelligence.

This has already happened with other technologies. Among them, ironically, are recon sats. More famously, nuclear weaponry.

Contrary to your slightly rude personal attack, this isn't something I'm just pulling out my arse, Congress happens to agree with me on this one. Well, bits of it. But don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to progress in general. I'm only opposed to progressing down nasty paths, and Sneeches building a Sneech crushing machine is a nasty path indeed.

You're free to disagree, of course. But beyond that, we're at an impass.

Re:Substance

[mikapc]

"but the United States' having built that weapon could only serve to expedite such an attack. " Ok now you're finally saying something that I can respond to. It is true that at the present time that the U.S. military is much more dependant on satellites then other nation's militaries. In this present day situation anti satellite weaponry would be more of a problem for the U.S. then other countries. With that said other foreign militaries are rapidly modernizing and I wouldn't be surprised that twenty years from now the Chinese military will be just as dependant on satellites as we are. New emerging soon to be super powers like China are already developing anti-satellite weapons. If the U.S. does not develop a similar capability other countries could effectively threaten U.S. interests overseas and eventually U.S. sovereignity. Unlike nuclear weapons which really have no use beyond destruction I would think anti-satellite technology could be used for better aims such as a defense from nuclear missiles or maybe even as a defense against an asteroid if a powerful enough laser was developed. Furthermore it often seems that when a new weapon is a developed new defenses are usually developed shortly thereafter so ultimately as long as the U.S. remains strong economically, civically, and technologically we hopefully will maintain military dominance in the world. If the U.S. doesn't stay competitive something very much like what happened to the U.K. in WW II could happen to us where a lesser power technologically leap frogs over us and causes a lot of trouble.

Top secret defense

[PermanentMarker]

So somewhere in a deep underground basis allready the next step in advanced defence is under devolpment...

a mirror

(oops there goes the top secret idea).