Posted on 02/25/2008 3:00:28 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Capt. R. M. Hendrickson stepped across the deck of the guided missile cruiser USS Lake Erie last Saturday afternoon to a bank of ballistic missile launch tubes, motioning to the particular 2-by-2-foot location from which a missile flew from the ship positioned at the time some 420 miles northwest of Hawaii.
The missile hit its target, destroying a defective intelligence satellite that was falling toward Earth at 17,000 miles per hour. It was unclear where the satellite would have hit had it crashed, most likely into the ocean. But the Pentagon had expressed particular concern about the school bus-size satellite's fuel tank filled with 1,000 pounds of hydrazine—which defense officials soberly described in a news release as "a hazardous fuel which could pose a danger to people on earth."
The USS Lake Erie is a warship equipped with the Navy's sophisticated Aegis weaponry, an advanced radar-based defensive system that is normally used against antiship missiles and other threats. This technology was adapted for the satellite shootdown.
In his stateroom, Hendrickson pops in a video of the missile's launch and of the ship's combat information center at the moment of impact.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
Hydrazine might be toxic, but it sure gave us a good excuse to test out some anti-satellite and anti-missile technology.
We might need to to get rid of some Iranian hydrazine or a North Korean missile some time soon so we should know what military options might be available.
The “deadly” hydrazine gave our guys the excuse for the shot. The shot was to one-up the Chinese in a big way.They knocked down a satellite by bring another satellite to it and making a convergence collision of two satellites in nearby orbits going the same direction at slow relative speed. We just showed China, and anyone else who might be interested that we can hit a very fast bullet with a bullet. That is different by a whole order of magnitude. Not only that, we publicized the shot before we made it. That showed that we were extremely confident that it would be a success i.e. we have a functioning, consistent, and effective ABM. China crawled to a position of being able to take out a satellite by careful maneuvering. We leaped way out in front of China with this. Hey you guys, don’t embarrass yourselves by tying to knock out Taiwan with a blizzard of missiles. And Iran, you pay attention here, too.
The money will be better spent on a reformation of crack hos
Very cool summary. Never heard this put so well.
Good points Art. No doubt it was an order of mag ^ demo shot over China’s capability.
But to play devil’s advocate: we had days to weeks to set up this shot on a bus-sized sat with a known orbit etc.
That is a far cry from a “functioning, consistent, and effective ABM”. It’s a big step toward it, but htting a bus-sized sat in a known orbit, with weeks to prepare, is not the same as shooting down a meter-long warhead with bare minutes of warning time.
This this will be a bullet point on Hendrickson’s next fitrep?
I think it might be considered slightly career-enhancing.
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