well, the Chinese didn't have an economy dependent on slavery about 100-200 years ago, but I know one country that did...
The tactic was discussed by US and other countries years ago. Nowadays, everything in US military is directed by GPS system, so obviously, to mitigate such threat if conlict should arise (God forbid), instead of rolling over and waiting for "smart" bombs, you probably want something in hand, or at least the capability do something against the root of that powerful GPS system. Russian military relies on GLONASS - the counterpart of GPS, which I believe covers Europe better than GPS, although not as heavily as US does on GPS. I am pretty sure US has the means and plans to take that system out if direct military conflict shall arise between them (again, God forbid). Before such direct "killing satellite" technology, there was long discussion about detonate a nuclear warhead in outter space during war time, so that the electroic-magnate wave will take care of those satellites. It's nothing new or to be surprise about. From US POV, it's certainly not desirable to see anything could prevent its offensive move towards others. I am sure US will come up with counter tactic/technology, and very likely they already exist. That's nothing moral or immoral about it and no need to cry for foul. Those diplomatic objection, is just, diplomatic pose, after all. But I am quite surprised to see the outrage or surprise showed here. Was anyone surprised that someone would actually working on something to counter the huge GPS advantage? Was anyone surprised that countries like Russia, Isreal, or even France never had any plan or technology to do something about it? Are we all that naive?
A minor correction. You don't get an EMP effect in outer space. The effect is a result of gamma rays transferring their energy to the molecules in the atmosphere. Also the nuclear device has to be detonated relatively high in the atmosphere for it to work or the air density will damp the effect, so there is a relatively narrow altitude range for the bomb to be detonated at to create the EMP effect.
As a Muslim, you should be careful when discussing anything related to misiles or nuclear technology. You're gonna bring the heat down on all of us D&Ders who like talking outta our behinds.
Thanks for correcting me. Does that mean shooting down satellites is the only available tactic now to effectively disturb the GPS system?
I would think China was negligent if they didn't develop this technology. US should probably find a way to be less reliant on satellites and otherwise don't sweat it. China's no more inclined to fight than we are.
I don't want to pretend to be an expert. I only discovered the EMP thing a couple of weeks ago when I was looking around at something else. I enjoy reading about all of the space/technology stuff but I would not be honest if I claimed to have the kind of knowledge or experience to say with finality what is and is not possible. I do know that there are ways to damage satellites with off the shelf electronic equipment from the ground. The US military has a 'threat' team that spends all their time trying to come up with ways to do it, but beyond the fact that it is possible I know nothing else. The one other thing I would point out is that while GPS is the most important use of satellites for the USA, almost everything the US military does is through satellite connections. All of the UAV's are flown by satellite, all of the networking equipment that tanks use to locate targets uses satellites, all Navy surface ship information comes via satellite, etc. The submarines and I'm sure some other backup functions use ultra low frequency radio transmissions which will transmit through the earth, but those don't hold much information. In the 1950's the US used to bounce signals off the moon to communicate over the horizon. With all the satellites that we are used to, people forget how difficult it is to communicate around the earth's curvature. Removing the satellites would be worse than never having had them at all, in the same way that taking a calculator away from an engineer will cause him to function worse than an engineer who never had one; the US military is so used to using the satellites that I don’t think they have all of the ‘old skills’ to function without them. By the same logic the United States would be negligent if they ‘didn’t sweat it’. China probably doesn’t intend to fight a war with the US any more than the US with China, but to not be concerned about what the ‘other big dogs’ can do (as opposed to what they want to do) would be dangerous.
I am also no expert, but love to read about technologies. From what I've read about, there are three ways to irreversibly disable a satellite. The most messy method is explode a small nuclear warhead near the target. This has been researched in the 60s by both Soviet and US but deemed too messy both physically and politically Soviet later turned to lunch a space vehicle carrying a conventional warhead, maneuver the weapon within kilometer or closer of the target, and denote the bomb. They concluded that this is operational and has been their method of anti-satellite strategy. The US viewed the Soviet method too "slow" and eventually decided to use F15 to lunch a racket directly at the satellite. They successfully destroyed a old satellite with this method. But due to a treaty with Soviet and the fear of the resulting debris, which may interfere or destroy US satellites, this strategy was disproved by some politicians and generals. Soviet also experimented with a similar program with Mig-31. But there was no evidence of any success. In response to rumors of a Soviet laser-based anti-satellite program, US decided to develop its own. The rumor was eventually disproved and the congress ban further test of the US system. Later on, the program was reactivated and had many ups and downs. The system was finally tested in 1997 against a satellite. Despite some technical difficulties, the satellite was not destroyed, but was blinded temporally by a low-energy laser that could be obtained commercially at that time. This alarmed and brought complains from Russia. The program was cut. Currently, US prefers existing local electrical interfering technology that temporally disable enemy satellites. It is also believed that the missile intercepting technology developed by us can be easily used to shoot down a satellite.
Strategy Ostruznica highway bridge hit during Operation Allied Force. Operation Allied Force relied almost exclusively on the use of a large-scale air campaign to destroy Yugoslav targets from high altitudes. Ground units were not used, although their use was threatened near the end of the conflict. This approach was adopted to minimize the risk to the NATO forces and attracted considerable public criticism due to its relative ineffectiveness against mobile ground targets such as tanks and troop formations. Strategic targets such as bridges and factories were also bombed, particularly in the later stages of the conflict. Long-range cruise missiles were used to hit a number of heavily defended targets such as strategic installations in Belgrade and Pristina. Civilian installations such as power plants, embassies, even water processing plants and the state-owned broadcaster were also intentionally targeted. Post-strike bomb damage assessment photo of Zastava plant Post-strike bomb damage assessment photo of Zastava plant At the start of May, a NATO aircraft attacked an Albanian refugee convoy, believing it was a Serbian military convoy, killing more than 50 people. NATO admitted its mistake 5 days later, but the Serbs accused NATO of deliberately attacking the refugees. On May 7, NATO bombs hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and outraging Chinese public opinion. NATO claimed they were firing at Yugoslav positions. The United States and NATO later apologized for the bombing, saying that it occurred because of an outdated map provided by the CIA. This was challenged by a joint report from The Observer (UK) and Politiken (Denmark) newspapers which claimed that NATO intentionally bombed the embassy because it was being used as a relay station for Yugoslav army radio signals. The bombing strained relations between China and NATO countries and provoked angry demonstrations outside Western embassies in Beijing. According to one news source, unnamed high ranking NATO sources confirmed in 2005 that the attack was in fact deliberate: "The NATO sources told Defense & Foreign Affairs that the attack was based on intelligence that then Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was to have been in the Embassy at the time of the attack. The attack, then, was deliberately planned as a "decapitation" attack, intended to kill Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic." Conspiracy theories abound over whether this may have been intentional too. There are indications that the Chinese Embassy housed a radar which was used to spot American planes and so subsequently became a military target. --------------------------------------------- There were two strikes, the --------------------------------------------- Nato deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war in Kosovo after discovering it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications. According to senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US the Chinese embassy was removed from a prohibited targets list after Nato electronic intelligence (Elint) detected it sending army signals to Milosevic's forces. The story is confirmed in detail by three other Nato officers - a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels. They all confirm that they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a 'rebro' [rebroadcast] station for the Yugoslav army (VJ) after alliance jets had successfully silenced Milosevic's own transmitters. Nato bombed Chinese deliberately Nato hit embassy on purpose Kosovo: special report John Sweeney and Jens Holsoe in Copenhagen and Ed Vulliamy in Washington Sunday October 17, 1999 The Observer Nato deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war in Kosovo after discovering it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications. According to senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US the Chinese embassy was removed from a prohibited targets list after Nato electronic intelligence (Elint) detected it sending army signals to Milosevic's forces. The story is confirmed in detail by three other Nato officers - a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels. They all confirm that they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a 'rebro' [rebroadcast] station for the Yugoslav army (VJ) after alliance jets had successfully silenced Milosevic's own transmitters. Article continues The Chinese were also suspected of monitoring the cruise missile attacks on Belgrade, with a view to developing effective counter-measures against US missiles. The intelligence officer, who was based in Macedonia during the bombing, said: 'Nato had been hunting the radio transmitters in Belgrade. When the President's [Milosevic's] residence was bombed on 23 April, the signals disappeared for 24 hours. When they came on the air again, we discovered they came from the embassy compound.' The success of previous strikes had forced the VJ to use Milosevic's residence as a rebroadcast station. After that was knocked out, it was moved to the Chinese embassy. The air controller said: 'The Chinese embassy had an electronic profile, which Nato located and pinpointed.' The Observer investigation, carried out jointly with Politiken newspaper in Denmark, will cause embarrassment for Nato and for the British government. On Tuesday, the Queen and the Prime Minister will host a state visit by the President of China, Jiang Zemin. He is to stay at Buckingham Palace. Jiang Zemin is still said to be outraged at the 7 May attack, which came close to splitting the alliance.The official Nato line, as expressed by President Bill Clinton and CIA director George Tenet, was that the attack on the Chinese Embassy was a mistake. Defence Secretary William Cohen said: 'One of our planes attacked the wrong target because the bombing instructions were based on an outdated map.' ----------------------------------------------------------- US Air Strike on China's Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 was Deliberate The attack planned as a "decapitation" attack, intended to kill Milosevic Global Research, December 29, 2005 Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy November-December 2005 Email this article to a friend Print this article Highly-placed NATO sources have confirmed the reason behind the US air strike - with three Tomahawk cruise missiles - against the Embassy of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Belgrade, (then) Yugoslavia, on May 7, 1999. The then-Clinton Government of the United States said at the time that the strike was accidental, due to faulty maps and intelligence, but this has been disproven by the NATO sources. The NATO sources told Defense & Foreign Affairs that the attack was based on intelligence that then Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was to have been in the Embassy at the time of the attack. The attack, then, was deliberately planned as a "decapitation" attack, intended to kill Milosevic. The London Observer, on October 19, 1999, had said that the attack had been deliberate, noting: "... Politiken newspaper in Denmark and Ed Vulliamy cites senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US stating that the embassy was bombed after its NATO electronic intelligence (ELINT) discovered it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications. "Supportive evidence is provided by three other NATO officers - a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels. "All three say they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a "rebro" (rebroadcast) station for the Yugoslav army. The embassy was also suspected of monitoring NATO's cruise missile attacks on Belgrade, with a view to developing effective countermeasures." The Clinton Administration blamed the attack on inaccurate intelligence information provided by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), alleging that the three missiles, which landed in one corner of the PRC embassy block, had been meant to target the Yugoslav Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement (FDSP). US Defence secretary William Cohen said at the time: "One of our planes attacked the wrong target because the bombing instructions were based on an outdated map." Sources within the US National Imagery and Mapping Agency reacted with anger at the allegation that their mapping had been at fault. Moreover, it was clear that Clinton appointee George Tenet, the CIA Director at the time, was involved in the deception operation built around the failed assassination attack. There was widespread disbelief of the US Clinton Administration claim that the attack was "accidental", but no accurate background information as to why the attack against the Embassy was scheduled. The rationale cited by The Observer was not the true cause of the targeting. In July 1999, then-CIA Director Tenet testified in Congress that out of the 900 targets struck by NATO during the three-month bombing campaign, only one was developed by the CIA: the PRC Embassy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can find out what bomber plane, what route and what missile was used
This will only speed up our efforts to send up smaller and cheaper satellites. U.S. Military Sees Promise in Faster, Cheaper TacSats If the size is right, they can be launched from fighter planes. The Russians claim to have such capabilities. Arming space is a matter of when.
Ottomaton, You are completely wrong in no EM radiation effect in outer space. As a matter of fact, ALL (except exceptional circumstances) satellite electronics would have to be "hardened" against EM radiation. There is a reason your CPU in you $1000 home PC is many times faster than the microprocessors used in the billions dollars Space Station. Not just the parts have to be hardened, the enclosure have to be specially designed to shield EM radiation. In addition, the software have to be written so it is "self-healing" or at least be able to "self-diagnose". All systems are double or triple redudant with cross-straping. Even with all that, there is absolutely no way to eliminate the EM radiation's harmful effects. Many spacecrafts were lost because of it, an example: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/nozomi_done_031209.html
What were the Chinese doing 100-200 years ago? Oh that's right, being exploited and having their country ripped apart by the Westerners who are so very good at preaching from their soapbox. You mean to tell me that developing countries that have to rebuild from years of cultural rape from the West might have some issues with making sure everyone gets a fair shake? I'm shocked.
By the way, this is a bad thing! Not saying China doesn't have the right or violating at treaty or such, but weapon doesn't belong in outer space. The effect of this "test" will be felt for years to come. It will just adds to the debris field that is already out there. Those debris will probably hit some commercial satellites in years to come. We, as human being, shall really keep our weapon out of space.
Actually, star war or star trek weapons are ok. Their weapon such as photon torpedo or phaser tends to disintegrate their target rather than break up their target. Thus, there will be minimum amount of debris as a result. Therefore, it is ok to have those x-wings, y-wings, a-wings, tie-fighter, or Enterprise starship flying around.
