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Chinese Lasers Blind US Satelites
SniperClops writes, "China has fired high-power lasers at U.S. spy satellites flying over its territory in what experts see as a test of Chinese ability to blind the spacecraft, according to sources." The article mentions the reluctance of the U.S. administration to talk about this "asymmetric" effort by the Chinese military.
I got "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
I bet the lasers are red in colour ;)
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As does alot of the world not in the united states but still grounded under it's definition of right and wrong is why can't a foreign self governing nation control its own airspace and space space. If I built a spy satellite and orbitted it over the united states I would be a terrorist and bombed in seconds. Why the difference for china?
From TFA:
So its a bit like saturating a camera with light so it can't take good pictures, but once it moves on it should be OK.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
For it's national defense program? The whole "do everything with lasers" mindset seems to fit.
Where's Austin Powers when you need him?
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Well, good for them....I guess. I would imagine that the US would do the same to Chinese spy satellites (if they had any - which I don't know and don't feel like googling), so why be surprised when the Chinese do it? It seems to me that this is just a case of the Chinese government acting in the interests of it's own national security. This may be news, but it should not be surprising.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
Read the rest of it. It's an interesting article, but some of these statements come off as revenue generating news (and considering this is Defense News, it's no surprise).
They forget to mention that we would probably do the same (if not worse) to deter spy satellites over our own country. They also don't address the concept of whether or not a country has a righ to its own privacy here. I think we would want privacy for our country and should not be surprised or angered to find our attempts thwarted when spying on other countries. Well, that jamming station must not have worked well and I highly doubt it was put there by the Russians. I cannot think of a clear motive for it. Probably sold as surplus or exchanged for payment by a disgruntled soldier and found its way to Iraq.
So we'll either change our standards or give the military a special encrypted standard. The cat and mouse game will begin between the US wanting to see what China's doing and China not wanting the US to see what they're doing. Frankly, I don't really give a damn. China has some bad leaders and some severe problems but they're more internal than anything.
You'll find at the bottom of the article: That's right, they do. So this isn't really news so much as "Country X Defends Itself Against Country Y" except that Country Y is the only country that thinks it's hot shit and that the world must reveal all and revolve around Country Y. Also, our leader has stated that non-compliance means you are with the terrorists and you're against us.
My work here is dung.
TFA: "If you keep looking over the fence at you neighbor's back yard, you're going to get poked in the eye"
:-)
I like this
Also Chinese defence program is called "Assassin's Mace".. it's straight out of a badly dubbed movie!
It is obvious to any red-blooded, patriotic, Jesus-loving American that we are the only source of righteousness on earth and it is our God-given duty to use His power to advance our cause of spreading His holiness throughout the world and trample over the devil-worshipping heathens. Therefore, what we do is good and what all the godless nations of the world that are not America do is wrong. Thank you, and God bless.
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Did you ever see a friggin' shark in a Google Earth picture? No?
Now you know why.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I bet that laser was mounted on the top of a sharks head...
Meta will eat itself
The big deal here is that this is yet another message to the folks who want to spend hundreds of billions on satellite weapons. Put 'em up there, and someone will spend a lot less money to disable them when the need arrises.
Space based weapons systems are not "siezing the high ground". They are more like climbing a tree with a sack full of rocks. They have some advantages, but overall against a serious opponent, they are a poor and expensive strategy.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
...which are likely left as decoys for the other dozen or so invisible ones...the reconnaissance version of a honeypot. The US has had stealth technology for a long time...aerodynamics is what took so long to build the F117. Since aerodynamics doesn't matter in space, I think it is likely that the satellites put up in the 70s where probably stealthy. Highly directional, bursty, spread spectrum downlinks would make it very difficult to detect. Again, that's 70s-era technology.
The $500 billion dollar annual defense budget is being spent somewhere. I would hope some of it was put into spy satellites that are awful easy to overlook.
According to the UN Treaty on Outer Space (also here at wikipedia), of which both China and the US are signatories, "outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means". So it is not "chinese space or airspace". Attacking a satellite (or blinding it) is akin to doing the same to a ship on the open seas. It is a violation on the freedom of other nations and a violation of the neutrality of space. It's just one step short of piracy or an act or war.
And BTW, other nations including China and the Soviet Union (now Russia) have been sending spy sattelites over the US for decades without the US attacking them (although we have plans to do so in time of war).
The Chinese can launch satelites, put men into orbit, have nuclear weapons, are financing most of our balance or payments thanks to Bush
Honestly, did the world just begin for many of you people in 2000? Look I'm no fan of Bush, but it is not like prior to 2000 the Chinese held none of our assets, the Islamic extremists loved us, and the federal government held civil liberties in high regard. You know, EVERYTHING is not Bush's fault.
Finkployd
I know this will turn into an anti-American thread, but what is the big deal? This was a dance the US and USSR carried on for decades. If anything, it will now force the US scientists back to the drawn table to come up with a different solution to accomplish the same thing.
If anything, your reaction to this story should tell you where you stand with respect to the US.
More power to China, I know this will force the US to improve/upgrade it's space efforts. And that, to me, is a good thing.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Of course, reading my own definition, this would justify Afghans and Iraqis seeking to expel the Americans and the British, just as it justified the French Resistance in WW2, and the American Colonists in the 1770s.
At what point is the present US administration going to face up the fact that it is the self-appointed global hegemon and that five and a half billion people disagree with that?
Pining for the fjords
If the lasers aren't "breaking" the satellites, than I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with what China is doing. While its certainly in our best interests to see what China is up to, its in theirs to stop us. Regardless of whether or not we are "legally" in their airspace or not, if they point a laser in space and it happens to blind our satellite, than I can't see that they've done anything wrong.
If they blew it up, that would be something else.
If I was in the US spying game and I know that someone was trying to blind my satellites, I'd say "Oh no, you've stopped me photographing your secret installations" even if the attempts were unsuccessful. That way the target thinks they've stopped the spy satellites, whereas in practice, the lasers may be completely ineffectual.
Until the Chinese spies can get hold of genuine, spoiled, satellite photos (that weren't staged/planted) they cannot be sure they have suceeded.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Welcome to the whacko world of international sovereignty!
So, without calling me an American hater, please; what would be so wrong with the chinese launching satelites, putting men into orbit and having nuclear weapons? Oh, and by the way, whos' fault is that chinese are financing USAs balances?
As someone said it before, this is no news at all. The novelity here is that China used laser to disable satelites, but i bet a lot of countries have done similar (if not worst) in the past.
ex-boeing tech who had worked on one of their stealth efforts...he really wasn't the sort of person to invent stuff
Is that why he was "ex"?
I know, that is nothing like what you menat, but it made me giggle.
I am not a fan of nuclear weapons anywhere, but this is a dangerous world with people who *literally* want to send us to hell or to see our redeemer. They will buy and use nukes -- and Iran and Korea are all too willing to give or sell them away. In the business where others are willing to kill us, I want to be working to disarm them, period. The United States has few options -- and both the Europeans and Asian nations that are not China have largely stayed out of fray hoping once again to let teh US carry the burden of disarming. A united front would really sincerely help the world. It would even help the Iranians and Koreans who as a people would rather plan crops than seed nuclear bombs.
Mike www.sharecube.com
...is that no one is saying "The Chinese are wrong". Not one person quoted in the article has said that. The article never suggests that. Being in the remote sensing industry, I find this article interesting, but beyond the technical interest of the subject it's no more exciting, important inflamatory, or pompous than a sports report. It's no different than a "Saints defense finds a way to shut down Vick" headline. No one is wrong and no one is claiming anyone is wrong. Someone has just added a new play to the playbook. So, stop with all the "The US thinks it's the shit and the Chinese are victims of spying" crap.
Well, by that logic, sovereignty extends in an ever expanding projection to the end of the universe, sweeping various astronomical objects into and out of the soveriegn control of nations. Sometimes our national boundaries cross the face of Neptune at greater than the speed of light, since at a bit more than 4 billion km, that's the speed those boundaries are "moving".
Setting aside absurd fantasies, lets ask this: how far should national bounaries extend into space, or into the core of the Earth? After all, sovereignty doesn't even extend to the middle of the ocean. Strictly speaking, it only goes out 12 nautical miles. There's an exclusive economic zone that extends out 200 nm, but it's not sovereign territory. You can't declare part of the EEZ off limits to navigation and sink ships travelling through it.
Space, by convention, starts at 100km above sea level, or 53 nautical miles -- four times more distant than the territorial claims over navigable waters. The 100km mark is somewhat imprecise, but roughly it can be used to divide modes of travel between aeronautical and actual space travel. Does this distincction bear on claims on national sovereignty?
I think it does, and I think I can justify this.
The standards of national sovereignty over territorial waters are set on pragmatic grounds. Clearly, a sovereign nation needs to exercise some control over its adjacent seas. On the other hand, allowing it to own out to the middle of the ocean presents such problems for both air and sea navigation that normal commerce between nations becomes impractical.
In a way, we can see a form of what Robert Nozick calls the "Lockean Proviso" at work here. John Locke was interested in this question: if there is private property, where does it come from? He thought that this came from mixing your labor with a resource which is shared by everybody. This was a necessary condition, but is it sufficient? The answre is yes, but with a proviso: you must leave "as much or better" for everyone else. Imaging a village with a common. On the common is a well. Anybody is free to pick up rocks from the common and take them home to build walls; the rocks become their property because they mix their labor with it, and there are still plenty of rocks left. Now suppose somebody takes those rocks, and builds a nice wall and roof over the common well. He has mixed his labor with the well, so can he claim it as his property? The answer is no, because there aren't any other wells in the village.
In other words, you can claim jurisdiction over a thing so long as it does not place an undue burden on the community. While the proviso does not fit the territoriality issue exactly, I believe this underlying principle applies. A nation can claim jurisdiction over territrial waters because it does not hinder the rest of humanity unduly.
The division of the area over nations into aeronautical and astronautical space is highly relevant. In aeronautical navigation, friction and the physics of fluid flow are the dominant factors. In order to fly, you must continually expend energy; your movement is governed by the interaction with the fluid over your control surfaces. In other words it takes effort to fly into somebody's air space. Incursion into air space is not something another nation has to make an effort to avoid while using the air space over their own territories, on the contrary. It's hard to do and easy to avoid in aeronautical navigation. So no other nations are hindered in the use of their own air space by your claiming your air space, satisfying the Lockean proviso.
In astronautical navigation, inertia is the dominant factor. It is possible to make slight adjustments to your flight path, but large ones take impractical amounts of energy and reaction mass. Unless you are stationing a satellite in geosynchronous orbit (which may be an exception under this reasoning), you pretty much have to fly over the entire Earth's surface. To claim terri
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The problem isn't coming up with a new solution to cope... that will be fairly easy. The real question is if you can find a software hotfix to cope. Something we can do to keep them from blinding us until we get a new spacecraft up. You have to remember that each new spacecraft takes years to develop/test and costs millions to put into space.
So, I am suggesting that our next spy sat to go over China be nothing but a mirror. See what they think of that laser then.
The blurb says that they did blind the US satellite, whereas the article says they merely attempted to and that "It remains unclear how many times the ground-based laser was tested against U.S. spacecraft or whether it was successful." Good old hype.
...that you'll just be hungry again in an hour.
Thank you, I'll be here all night.
If I swing at your face, and hit you hard enough to swell your eye shut, is that an attack?
After all, I'm just disabling your eye -- temporarily at that.
I'm pretty sure the authorities would disagree with me when they hauled me off to the pokey as I screamed, "It wasn't an attack! I was just disabling him, or perhaps blinding would be more fitting!"
To be fair though, I'm guessing there are SR-71 replacements (Aurora?) busy doing a similar job but we just don't know about it yet.
The US launches 5-10 spy satellites a year, and they publically announce when they go up (though not what they do). Just look at something like this launch schedule and look for launches with "classified spacecraft payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office".
No a better analogy would be if you shined a laser in my eye. You don't ever physically touch me. Punching me is attacking. Shining a light in my isn't.
What if I was looking through your bedroom window from a public sidewalk as you and your boyfriend made sweet love. Then to prevent me from seeing this lovefest you shined a laser in my eye.
Now if China shot a rocket into space and blew up the satilite or damaged it, then that's an attack. Otherwise you could call what the US is doing to China an attack.
Can I bum a sig?
Software solution? Pffft. The solution is obviously Sharks with Frickin' Lasers on Their Heads.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It's sad, really... their people are full of potential, but their gov't is pretty scary.
:P
Doesn't that apply to the US as well?
We have been hitting mirrors left on the moon by apollo astronauts since 1969.1 3-9999-lz1c13laser.html
l oLaser.html
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/200607
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEhelp/Apol
Thats 239,000 miles hitting an 18 inch square target.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Contrary to your DIALOGUE and ARGUEMENT (though you may CRITICISE), the only HONOURABLE thing to do is admit that the U.S.A. is not the CENTRE of the world. ;)
If the lens is not open then they cannot hit the camera. Only open the lense to take a picture. The shutter need not even be mechanical it can be electrical. Not even the Chinese can muster enough power to keep a laser active and on a target for as long as the target is in their 'air space'. "Nothing to see here".
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Hey dufus, 67.2% of English speakers worldwide say that you're wrong.
t s1997.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:English_dialec
Percentage of native English speakers worldwide by country:
U.S. - 67.2%
U.K. - 16.9%
CAN - 5.8%
AUS - 4.5%
Other - 5.5%
(Ironically, the source of the data is from a British Council report.)
So even if the U.S. is the only country that uses "color," it's still by far the most common spelling. More generally, American English is, by any realistic measure, the principle dialect of the English language in use today; bitching and moaning about it won't make it any less true.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The blurb says that they did blind the US satellite, whereas the article says they merely attempted to and that "It remains unclear how many times the ground-based laser was tested against U.S. spacecraft or whether it was successful." Good old hype.
A lot of modern western military tactical thinking revolves around spy satellites, communication satellites, navigation satellites, UAVs (most of them remote controlled or semi autonomous at best) as well as battlefield information exchange and coordination networks (basically tanks, planes and ships connected by a kind of WIFI-on-steroids). Since the Americans gutted their network of human intelligence assets in favor of satellites and ELINT in general over the last few decades they must be pretty worried by this even if this Chinese effort only targets one segment of their information gathering and command apparatus. Keep in mind that US satellites have previously been more or less unassailable to anything except perhaps hacker attacks on their command and control links. People keep citing conflicts like the Iraq war as an example of how a modern war is fought but in reality the US forces (and NATO forces in general for that matter) have never gone up against an equally strong, technologically advanced, worthy enemy. The most resourceful and tech savvy enemy they have come across so far in a real honest to goodness shooting war were the Serbs who performed an improvised re-organization of their mostly obsolescent air defenses and communications system thus creating a a new distributed system. The various system elements were highly mobile, often interconnected over the telephone infrastructure which precluded jamming and also made locating the system elements by their radio traffic harder and the Serbs also used a massive amount of decoys. All of this combined to cause US and Nato forces major problems when it came to locating and taking out military assets or suppressing the Serb air defenses. One is tempted to theorize that if western forces ever come up against an enemy that fields top of the line air, naval and ground assets and into the bargain engages in electronic warfare in a big way i.e. jams battlefield networks, UAV remote control links, GPS, Communications, Radar etc in a big way in addition to blinding their spy satellites and even shooting them down the US/NATO military will be in trouble.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
We blew up a derelict russian satellite with a F15 firing a special missle in the '80s
No we didn't. We blew up an American scientific satellite that was past its end of mission.
and it caused all sorts of issues,
That's because although the satellite was passed end of mission, it was still returning data. The scientists were pissed.
-- Alastair
'colonial times' being pronounced "when North America was Britain's bitch" if you like
And how do we define our times, where Britain is America's Bitch? The post-colonial times?
China has the FSW-1 spy satellite. Pacifist Japan launched their third "intelligence gathering" satellite a few weeks ago.
The old Soviet Union maintained heavy orbital surveillance of the US.
This was and is a Good Thing. US scaremongers shouting "missile gap!" were overruled by satellite intelligence. Soviet paranoia was limited to what was actually going on. Arms control treaties specifically and explicitly required both sides to submit to "national technical means" of verification.
>someone else has the right to disable it with proportionate force
As close as the Cold War came to ultimate horror, and as much as spy satellites stabilized it, that's an idea you do not want people to adopt.
>self-appointed global hegemon
Spy satellites are not a reason to believe that, unless the US starts shooting down other nations's satellites while maintaining their own.
Ummm. Israel is not a theocracy. Israel has parliamentary democracy, a free press, an independent judicial system, freedom of religion, equal rights for women, etc.
Iran is a mullahcracy, has a supreme leader for life, political canadates must be "selected", state controlled press, Iran does not have religious freedom, etc. Iran even has a bloody moral police with incredible powers to arrest and detain.
The lack of knowledge being displayed here is remarkable.
You are all informed by Fox News of how dangerous the "regime" in Iran is. What do you think that they see on their news programs? The same sorts of human rights violations and dictatorial acts by the 'religious zealot' leaders of the US. They have signed the non-proliferation treaty - the world should back off.
Their government is stable and they have as much right to run their country as the US does. If the people rise up and topple their government - fine - but that could just as easily have happened in the US after the 2000 elections. Stop judging Iran based on the news you see and think about that for a while. Oh - one other note - the Iranians are 'aryans' or 'persians', not arabs.
As for NK - they are an unstable regime who'd let huge amounts of their people starve to build weapons and maintain the army....when little dear leader dies, it's coming apart there for sure.
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
So if China had a satilite fly over the US and we pointed a laser at it are we attacking them?
Can I bum a sig?
I'm sure the Chinese government realizes that spy satellites that you know about are a stablizing influence. Things, like nukes, are destablizing. Bring on the satellites. (as per Arthur C. Clarke)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Wouldn't you see a lazer beam being shot into space at asatelite. Especially one stron enough to blind or damage one in space? i would think that other U.S. satelites would see it wouldnt they ?
Currently being played at the NRO's offices: "She blinded me with science!"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The Glorious Church of the United States doesn't officially believe in asking for Armageddon to occur in our lifetimes. There are many people in the U.S. who want that, possibly including the President from the look of things, but popularity of a religious belief in a country doesn't make it a state religion.
The United States is, despite what people say about it being a Jewish nation or a Christian nation or a Judeo-Christian nation, governed by a secular government. As a group of people with similar values living in a shared space, you might be able to say it's a religious "nation", but that religion is not endorsed officially by the government.