1. The Chinese foreign ministry says that the test came as a surprise to them. A Chinese official even told a German press agency "We don't know what's going on." A remarkable admission!
2. The test appears to be in response to the Bush administration's own forays into space-based weaponry.
In late August, President Bush authorized a new national space policy that ignored calls for a global prohibition on such tests. The policy said the United States would “preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space” and “dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so.”(Emphasis added.) The Chinese conducted their own test in order to force Bush back into treaty mode. Clearly they acted in haste, because the foreign ministry was caught unawares. And this unseemly haste would indicate that we have done something recently to make the Chinese military nervous.
All of which leads me to ask...
Could space-based weaponry be responsible for the strange flaming objects seen in the sky over the past few years? We've talked about that mystery. New examples keep coming to our attention.
Seems to me that a sufficiently-advanced anti-satellite weapons system might also be able to take out more than satellites.
3 comments:
I think your question is pertinent and on the money. I don't expect an answer to it, however.
Wait a minute, I thought we (the USA) were the only ones in the world allowed to do stuff like this??!! I thought space belonged to us?
www.minor-ripper.blogspot.com
Twenty-five years ago I worked for a DOD contractor that operated the US spy satellite network. Twenty years ago I worked for a university that conducted experiments for Regan’s Star Wars projects. I have to be careful about what I say about these projects even though it’s been over 18 years since I worked on them. Having said that, in 1986 the US was working on space-based anti-satellite and anti-ICBM missile systems similar to the device used by China recently to destroy a medium altitude weather satellite. Contrary to media reports that the Chinese satellite was in low-earth orbit, 500 mile high orbits are not “low orbit”. Low orbit spy satellites are down below 150 miles and will be harder to hit with the brute force collision type weapon the Chinese just tested.
In the last 18 years since I worked on the project you can be sure that the US has greatly improved the accuracy of its satellite killers. No doubt the Chinese will, within a few years, come close to catching up with us. In case of a war between the US and China both sides would try to take out all enemy satellites as quickly as possible and should one side lose most of its satellites to these weapons they would be forced to resort to the “nuclear option”. The nuclear option is to launch an ICBM into low earth orbit and explode a fairly low yield nuke which would blind all satellites within line of sight including their own. The EMP (Electro-magnetic-pulse) generated from the nuclear explosion would fry the electronics onboard all the satellites as well as most of the electronic devices on the ground within sight of the explosion as well.
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