Posted on 09/28/2006 7:07:14 PM PDT by driftdiver
China has secretly fired powerful laser weapons designed to disable American spy satellites by "blinding" their sensitive surveillance devices, it was reported yesterday.
How it works
The hitherto unreported attacks have been kept secret by the Bush administration for fear that it would damage attempts to co-opt China in diplomatic offensives against North Korea and Iran.
Sources told the military affairs publication Defense News that there had been a fierce internal battle within Washington over whether to make the attacks public. In the end, the Pentagon's annual assessment of the growing Chinese military build-up barely mentioned the threat.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Or invest in some decent sun glasses for our satellites.
And then they hide the remote control.
The Telegraph is the equivalent of a combo of the Wall Street Journal and the long dead Herald Tribune, of Great Britain, the conservative newspaper of the UK upper middle class, and not a reckless rag. Just some background.
Good Point! You are right, of course. I stand corrected.
(Don't know why I didn't think of that)
Sorry, but they are NOT friends of ours. They're competitors. They want to be number one and they'll destroy us in order to get there. Don't trust them OR the Ruskies.
I've had enough of bush's fault and clinton's fault.
The us is testing its own lasers to see if this will work. ERGO, it is not US tech or else we would have already known if it would work.
Sweat trickled down the back of his neck as he sat at the desk, a Lucky burning in the ashtray, and the sounds of the darkened city filtering in through the open window. He leaned back, loosening his tie, and thought. "So, the Chicoms are using technology we knew about twenty years ago to try and disable our satellites? How should we play this? We've had our systems capable of withstanding this attack since '95, but the Commies don't know that. Overt act of aggression? Sure. If we blow the whistle on them, though, the State Department will run over to give them Lewinskys, the NY Times will reveal it wasn't doing dick, anyway, and they might start working on something that works. On the other hand, if we play stupid, they'll keep putting quarters in the slot machine, convinced they've got us on the run. Hell, let them blink their pop guns at the sky for a few more years, then find out the whole time they were pounding sand."Sorry, I was always more of a Mike Hammer fan. Clancy's a little too clinical.He stubbed the cigarette out, and Barb came in. Pearl necklace, low cut blouse, tight skirt and dark stockings. She gave him a half smile and said, "Coming to bed, George?" He knew what that meant.
The same way I can track the ISS with my amateur telescope. These satellites have well defined orbits. You just enter the orbital parameters and let it go. Inbound ballistic Missiles do not have predefined orbital parameters. It is a different problem altogether.
My thoughts exactly. I am sure the Clinton's are secretly smiling at this as they are comrades with Communist China.
The very sad part of this story is the Bush administrtation decision to keep this quiet, in the belief China will help us on N Korea and Iran. That is so wrong headed it is scary.
more please, I've always admired people whow could write like that.
Wow. I'm flattered. I can fake Spillane for a paragraph or two, but after that it gets pretty thin. Thanks for the compliment, though.
"Sorry, but they are NOT friends of ours. "
Excuse me, but did I say they were? I said we were there best customers, which is true.
What you say only makes sense in a society where economics trumps ideology. Capitalist countries work in this fashion, but communist countries do not.
It would seem that free traders have forgotten the recent lessons of the cold war.
How is shooting down a satellite spying on your country an act of war? If they caught some spies in-country, they could excute them and that wouldn't be an act of war.
Well if it is in FR it obviously isn't a secret.
You mean their transfer of missile guidance technology would have been what targeted this if the story was true?
I would imagine that US sats have backup optical front-ends that can be rotated into the focal point for surveilling different wavelengths and as insurance against laser blinding.
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