> Cost estimates for the Golden Dome program range from $175 billion (White House), to $1.2 trillion (Congressional Budget Office), to $3.6 trillion (American Enterprise Institute) depending on the architectural details. The wide range largely hinges on the number of space-based missiles and the cost of replacing satellites whose low orbits decay quickly due to atmospheric drag. Some $24.4 billion in federal funding was directed to the Golden Dome in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025, with another $13 billion allocated for the fiscal year 2026, totaling 2.2% of the federal discretionary budget during that year.
It's just a ploy to transfer more public money at government contractors and friends, like Musk.
The biggest assets space weapon wise has Musk? Anything that can become a particlecloud taking out a orbit counts- so two constellation sattelites, that aim for one another should count?
It's been quietly brewing in the background for a couple years with accusations out the US about Russia and China secretly testing systems to intercept and sabotage US satellites either temporarily or destroy them permanently.
Space really should be a neutral ground like Antarctica. Especially since the consequences of space debris might trigger the Kessler effect [1], denying humanity future access to low-earth orbit for the considerable future.
Not really possible. For example, the Soviet Union had naval radar satellites (RORSAT) in space that could directly guide missiles to specific ships.
If a war would have kicked of in europe where transatlantic convoys would have been critical those satellites would have to be shot down by ASAT weapons.
This just isn’t feasible it’s like wanting the ocean to be free of weapons. Space is most of what there is, nations that want to defend themselves will have to utilize space as a war fighting domain all we can do is put that off
That would likely require basically banning GPS, imaging and communication satellites too, if we get a WW3 I would be shocked if there weren't physical attacks against those assets by anyone with the requisite launch capabilities because they're just that useful to militaries. Maybe it gets relegated mostly to jamming them instead but I'd be surprised if that level of restraint happened.
Of course. But those are also limited to the areas around the jammers too. In a broader hot conflict there'd be a good reason to disrupt the opposition's GPS capabilities across the globe not just locally. It'd be pretty bad economically for many countries to lose GPS access in their homeland but difficult to achieve without a way to disrupt the satellites directly.
They're not dumb; everyone knows this. It's like the old "mutually assured destruction" image of two people standing in a pool of gasoline, each with matches at the ready.
So one option is they're not planning kinetic weapons: directed EMP to burn out electronics, laser to burn out cameras, etc.
Another option is whoever deploys a kinetic weapon does not have investment at that rough altitude and wants to deny all players there; an outsider maybe.
Space is more like international waters legally. The outer space treaty is rooted in maritime law principles. The Chinese and Russians are in no mood to slow down relative to the US. There will likely be some escalation in debris and damage resulting from that might eventually result in some kind of action. But most of the damage here would be economical and sending more stuff up is now very cheap. Manned flight is relatively infrequent and aside from the space station and very short lived space tourism, most activity in space is unmanned.
So, if a lot of satellites get taken out that's a problem but if a few get lost, nobody will care. The space station and other important stuff can be in relatively safe orbits. There's also the notion that a lot of the debris in low earth object comes down pretty quickly. Lots of unstable orbits. LEO is where most of the activity is for things like starlink and competing constellations. Which moderates the risk a bit.
> The Chinese and Russians are in no mood to slow down relative to the US.
Typical boogeyman fearmongering to justify the existence and expansion of the US military industrial complex.
Out of all these three (US, China, Russia), a simple count of who has started more wars and conflicts is a clear indicator of who is the one initiating the vicious cycle of aggression and "defense" budgets.
I agree with the principle but Russia and China absolutely already have armed satellites in orbit, so that needs to be negotiated before unilaterally stopping.
There's not really enough stuff up there to cause the kessler syndrome yet, maybe at some specific bands you could cause some annoyances... but ~75% of satellites are operating in bands that would decay into the atmosphere
> Space really should be a neutral ground like Antarctica
"They are dismantling these systems because they do not expect they will ever have a use for these weapons. Not because chemical weapons are immoral. Because they are ineffective, whereas landmines, cluster munitions and nuclear weapons are assumed to have future uses. Morality was never at issue, effectiveness was.
That has some big consequences, most of which are actually unpleasant. It means that efforts to ban ‘immoral’ weapons that are effective will likely never succeed. The model that activists thought they were building on is a foundation of sand – the only way you ban weapons is after they are basically useless anyway (to cut that point finer: you get to ban weapons after they stop being useful to the great powers, who may then enforce the ban on smaller states). The idea that we might summon up enough moral indignation to set these weapons aside seems unfounded. We are not nearly so moral as my high school teachers imagined, nor are we so cowardly as a ‘Fremen apologist’ might think. We’ve simply made an amoral calculation about effectiveness" [1].
> the consequences of space debris might trigger the Kessler effect
Kessler is terribly understood in the public consciousness. There is no known solution for generally denying access to space using anything less than orders of magnitudes of the resources it would take to just continually shoot everything down. In high orbits, Kessler can deny specific orbits–GEO is a notable one that we could generationally fuck. But the idea that nobody will be able to go to space, much less LEO, is wrong and distracts from the real issues with space-based weapons, especially ones in LEO.
Landmines feels like an odd thing to include in the list because the Ottawa Treaty exists right? Europe as a whole has ruled out AP landmine usage.
Humanity as a whole should take any opportunity it can to establish norms to reduce things as one can. Countries will lie, and these things will still exist to some degree or another, but we can at least _try_.
And of course, the NPT is not 100% effective for obvious reasons but imagine how many countries would have nukes without it. And drawdowns like START are real!
The numbers matter, and while a world with 1,000 nuclear weapons isn't a world with zero, it's different to a world with 500k nuclear weapons, in my opinion
Isn't it easier to shoot them from the ground when they pass over? In space, the orbit must be adjusted to at least come close enough to the target, wait for the rendezvous, fire, then adjust orbit again for the next target...
Not if you want to hit your target before the other side can react and respond. Also if you expect your target to potentially shoot back, a rocket attempting to reach orbital velocity is a vulnerable target to any space based weapons or lasers because it has very limited ability to maneuver from its flight path and still reach orbital velocity.
I imagine launching anything from space to earth would be highly inefficient and inaccurate. So it must be space to space.
Space to space weapons are what? Small drones with an explosive charge? I guess that could work. These "combats" are going to be weird, because the objects are trapped in their orbits. Things are going to move very slowly with a lot of intertia.
> China responded on Tuesday by warning against an "arms race" in space.
> "We urge the US side to stop expanding its military capabilities and preparing for war in outer space," AFP quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying.
Next up; America cries rivers of victimhood when Russia and China put their far more advanced space based weapons systems into orbit and 100x as many in response because the narcissistic maniacs in the “American” educated idiot class ripped the lid off Pandora’s box because Hollywood taught them that the good guy Americans always win.
China and (maybe?) Russia are putting weapons up there no matter what.
People act like had the inventors of the powder explosive gun never used it, we would still be fighting with arrows and spears today. Completely not how it works.
So, it's a pistol on a robotic arm, or what? Kinetic weapon doesn't say much.
A pillar with a tiny engine that just incrementally increases the speed could be devastating at a distance though, I'm sure I've read this as some solution to a problem (or attempted solution to some problem) in some sci-fi book, can't remember which though.
Yeah im not sure what they are going on about, "Rods from God" and kinetic bombardment applies to things at the bottom of the gravity well getting hit from shit dropped from up above, it has nothing to do with satellite-to-satellite weapons. Like to launch up a few ton bullet of tungsten into orbit, then maneuver it in place when needed to deorbit and strike a major target, hits like a nuke but without the nuclear program.
But to me it really doesn't make more sense than using nukes though unless they are coming from another body in space, dropping shit from normal earth orbital altitudes is like throwing peanuts compared to something coming out of solar orbit, and actually hitting your target is 10,000x harder. And anyone with a space program large enough to put such weapons in place could more easily produce nukes instead.
Technically the US has had 'space weapons' for many decades, due to how an intercontinental ballistic missile works.
Incidentally, the Shuttle raised concerns in the USSR because they saw those large cargo bay doors and rocket thrusters out back, to think that this was a 'delivery system'.
In the modern battlefield, 'hypersonic' missiles are the new shiny. However, any ICBM is 'hypersonic', at least during the space phase. The new meaning of hypersonic means going at 'hypersonic' speeds through the atmosphere and in the final approach. Force equals mass times acceleration, more speed means more deceleration, which means packing a bigger kinetic punch.
Depending on how you want to define “weapon” the actual offensive capability of the shuttle may qualify. It was designed to be able to capture satellites and return them to Earth.
We have no evidence that this capability was ever used offensively though.
Sort of related: The Shuttle was designed for military use, but mainly regarding launching and capturing spy satellites. From a NASA report on the Space Shuttle's history ( https://www.nasa.gov/history/sts1/pages/scota.html ):
> One Air Force requirement that had a critical effect on the Shuttle design was cross range capability. The military wanted to be able to send a Shuttle on an orbit around the Earth's poles because a significant portion of the Soviet Union was at high latitudes near the Arctic Circle. The idea was to be able to deploy a reconnaissance satellite, retrieve an errant spacecraft, or even capture an enemy satellite, and then have the Shuttle return to its launch site after only one orbit to escape Soviet detection. Because the Earth rotates on its axis, by the time the Shuttle would return to its base, the base would have "moved" approximately 1,100 miles to the east. Thus the Shuttle needed to be able to maneuver that distance "sideways" upon reentering the atmosphere.
> In addition to the Air Force's cross range demand, the military also wanted a larger Shuttle payload bay than NASA originally advocated. NASA wanted the Shuttle payload bay to accommodate modules for a future space station, which necessitated a payload capacity of approximately 50,000 pounds. The Air Force wanted a bay 15 x 60 feet that could hold 50,000 to 65,000 pounds and that had doors that could open out into space to deploy satellites easily. This payload requirement meant that the fuselage of the Shuttle needed to be essentially a large rectangular box with rounded surfaces. In general, NASA went with the Air Force's requirements because it needed the Air Force's support to help insulate it from the political charge that the Shuttle was really just a step towards human exploration of Mars or a permanent space station, which is precisely what some people at NASA wanted it to be.
The Air Force was working on a Shuttle launch site at Vandenberg AFB in California, but after the Challenger disaster they decided that the Shuttle wasn't reliable enough and opted to instead use traditional disposable rockets to launch spy satellites.
Rather interesting timing after the US accused China of supplying Iran with high-res imagery used to support attacks on US bases, then a Chinese satellite mysteriously broke apart
As an aside - the word conspiratorial has become polluted.
If you accept the premise that governments and their military and intelligence agencies aren’t 100% transparent, which is true, then the above comment is simply speculative.
A major provocation? "Oh, you deny using your satellites to supply them with imaging? All right, then it wasn't us who blew up your spy satellite that wasn't supplying imaging."
That is, China's in a bit of an awkward position to complain very much.
So, what the solution you have in mind, if China supplies military support to an adversary? Politely ask them to stop? Let them continue? Seems not so trivial to me, especially since everyone has satellites up there for this purpose.
If they did supply images, to supporting the attacks, that resulted in the death of soldier, then they committed the first act of aggression towards a nuclear superpower. Asking politely, in that context, doesn't necessarily make sense, especially when you can just burn a few hundred million of their dollars to demonstrate why they shouldn't do that. The whole "big stick" thing isn't some past concept in the, by definition, mostly anarchy that is world politics, especially between an political party that constantly pushes, and violates, boundaries, to do the same.
Don't be naive. If a blind man is asking you where to aim his gun, are you responsible for the death or is the blind man pulling the trigger? In the context of war, BOTH of you are, and both are valid military targets, just as a spotter is, directing a sniper, on the battlefield, because the intention of both of you is to cause death.
You do realize that since the advent of image reconnaissance satellites, imagery has been used to support the wider geopolitical objectives of whoever owns the satellites doing the reconnaissance, up to and including sharing intelligence with geopolitical allies?
In other words: the point of contention here is a tale old as time, and when caught one power usually just registers diplomatic complaints against the other power. Rather than, you know, kick off WW3 by messing with space assets between two nuclear powers.
I'd also like to note that the Soviets literally provided a massive amount of support to North Vietnam, including their own pilots squaring off against Americans. The United States returned the favor when they invaded Afghanistan, our logistical and intelligence support killing scores of Soviets. At no point did either power decide to start blowing up each other's satellites.
It's 2026, Iran I'm sure has a myriad of ways of acquiring imagery via commercial satellite providers. Let alone other intel modalities.
The notion that a giant KC-135 sitting on a tarmac somewhere being otherwise safe were it not for the Chinese sharing intelligence is laughable.
Reads more like incompetent threat assessment and regional asset positioning. But hey, at least our troops are juicin' up on T.
China is not Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela or some other third world country that the US has fought in over the past few decades. You can't just destroy one of their satellites for free. And I can bet the US didn't do it, because that would be a major escalation, especially now that Xi is coming to the US and there are rumors that the US wants a deal.
"The European Space Agency estimates that there have been more than 660 explosions, collisions, or anomalous events resulting in fragmentation. As it stands, there are currently more than 1.5 million space debris objects in Earth orbit.
It’s not clear what may have caused the Yaogan-50 (02) satellite to break apart, but it may have been a propulsion or battery failure, or it may have itself collided with another object or space debris."
So China's brand new recon satellite that was placed specifically in orbit over Iran just happened to self-destruct weeks after China was accused of giving Iran high-res satellite imagery that was used to kill American soldiers?
And the US just publicly told everyone they have weapons in space?
Wouldn't it be possible to confirm who may be supplying imagery by taking some IRGC supplied imagery such as [1] and figure out which satellite(s) were overhead at the time and capable of taking the image? It may not be particularly straightforward to do so--but seems theoretically possible with:
- Consideration of time-of-day/azimuth of overhead satellite based on shadows and perspective.
- Comparison to other imagery of the same location checking for portable objects (such as vehicles) and keeping track of when they appear and disappear, and whether they're present in the imagery being analysed.
- Consideration of cloud coverage and weather conditions to rule out unwanted satellite passes.
Then write up a report and publish it, making it a believable and concrete finding instead of a finding that otherwise may just be perceived to be speculation/vibes.
the idea that the orange infant can order the use of weapons in space should be terrifying to everyone regardless of politics
no-one is stupid enough anymore to say "oh he would never"
or "only against people we don't like"
No, of course he would use it against Canada or Greenland if he woke up on the wrong side of the bed or didn't sleep at all
He clearly has rage fits which is one of the early signs of dementia
He would most definitely order the use of space weapons
I am really surprised he has not nuked some part of Iran yet, innocent civilians be damned but there are still 800 days left so here's hoping we don't wake up to that headline
How is this smart? US was already able to stringe any place on the globe, what happens if this motivates the US enemies also have weapons in space and US mainland becomes strike-able.
What was the thing that the US military previously couldn't blow up? The enemy now can have giant piece of hard metal in orbit and blow up previously %100 out of range data centers for example.
"Space weapons" here most likely means some combination of anti-satellite weapons and electronic warfare such as GPS jammers. AFAIK it's been widely believed that the USSR/Russia has had these capabilities in orbit since the 80s. I'd be willing to bet that the US has had them for decades as well, it just hasn't been publicly acknowledged.
For some reason they did not provide any details beyond that they have kinetic and non-kinetic means. Kinetik indeed can mean just ability to blow up satellites but IMHO it is good enough to trigger an arms race.
The arms race was always happening. Russia put a weapon on a space asset decades ago, basically for shits and giggles, but was recently practicing a space asset maneuvering and deploying a smaller asset, and there's very little justification for such a system other than "Attack another satellite", especially since no public cover has been offered.
Both Russia and China have demonstrated anti-satellite weapons. Ages ago.
Space being not militarized was always a fiction. Space was militarized first and foremost, and everything NASA ever did was to encourage and help that goal. This has only gotten dramatically less symbolic and more actually meaningful since recent massive advances in space sensor platforms and scale.
This is only a change in public messaging unfortunately.
This was always the inevitable outcome, because there's no "Bigger fish" to make independent nations follow any rule other than the rule of the jungle, and space is the highest ground.
The same logic that has spent decades providing us with poorly planned preemptive attacks and an ever-growing military budget. Meanwhile, the quality-of-life for the citizens who pay for it continues to decline.
Not really. Most of the cold war nuclear war scenarios only consider nuclear exchange in the northern hemisphere. Until this day there's little strategic value in south America or south Africa. Maybe Australia and new Zealand but still low compared to the north. The Argentinian Patagonia must be the safest place to be in a nuclear winter.
234 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] thread> Cost estimates for the Golden Dome program range from $175 billion (White House), to $1.2 trillion (Congressional Budget Office), to $3.6 trillion (American Enterprise Institute) depending on the architectural details. The wide range largely hinges on the number of space-based missiles and the cost of replacing satellites whose low orbits decay quickly due to atmospheric drag. Some $24.4 billion in federal funding was directed to the Golden Dome in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025, with another $13 billion allocated for the fiscal year 2026, totaling 2.2% of the federal discretionary budget during that year.
It's just a ploy to transfer more public money at government contractors and friends, like Musk.
https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs99r/readings/parnas1.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_n1FZaKzF8
Everyone is equal with - they all have nukes in space sitting over each other's countries waiting to drop.
This is fine.
The Nukes of Damocles
You filthy b..ds
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
To what end? Seriously. Maybe submarine listening devices on the seabed?
If a war would have kicked of in europe where transatlantic convoys would have been critical those satellites would have to be shot down by ASAT weapons.
Cute, Antarctica is just future beachfront...give it time.
So one option is they're not planning kinetic weapons: directed EMP to burn out electronics, laser to burn out cameras, etc.
Another option is whoever deploys a kinetic weapon does not have investment at that rough altitude and wants to deny all players there; an outsider maybe.
So, if a lot of satellites get taken out that's a problem but if a few get lost, nobody will care. The space station and other important stuff can be in relatively safe orbits. There's also the notion that a lot of the debris in low earth object comes down pretty quickly. Lots of unstable orbits. LEO is where most of the activity is for things like starlink and competing constellations. Which moderates the risk a bit.
Typical boogeyman fearmongering to justify the existence and expansion of the US military industrial complex.
Out of all these three (US, China, Russia), a simple count of who has started more wars and conflicts is a clear indicator of who is the one initiating the vicious cycle of aggression and "defense" budgets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...
That's cute that you think that. The reality is you can't do less than your adversaries may/will/are doing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Planes/comments/15fh5js/a_us_air_fo...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59299101
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...
and this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_systems_...
The outer space is already a dumpster and a disaster.
"They are dismantling these systems because they do not expect they will ever have a use for these weapons. Not because chemical weapons are immoral. Because they are ineffective, whereas landmines, cluster munitions and nuclear weapons are assumed to have future uses. Morality was never at issue, effectiveness was.
That has some big consequences, most of which are actually unpleasant. It means that efforts to ban ‘immoral’ weapons that are effective will likely never succeed. The model that activists thought they were building on is a foundation of sand – the only way you ban weapons is after they are basically useless anyway (to cut that point finer: you get to ban weapons after they stop being useful to the great powers, who may then enforce the ban on smaller states). The idea that we might summon up enough moral indignation to set these weapons aside seems unfounded. We are not nearly so moral as my high school teachers imagined, nor are we so cowardly as a ‘Fremen apologist’ might think. We’ve simply made an amoral calculation about effectiveness" [1].
> the consequences of space debris might trigger the Kessler effect
Kessler is terribly understood in the public consciousness. There is no known solution for generally denying access to space using anything less than orders of magnitudes of the resources it would take to just continually shoot everything down. In high orbits, Kessler can deny specific orbits–GEO is a notable one that we could generationally fuck. But the idea that nobody will be able to go to space, much less LEO, is wrong and distracts from the real issues with space-based weapons, especially ones in LEO.
[1] https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
Humanity as a whole should take any opportunity it can to establish norms to reduce things as one can. Countries will lie, and these things will still exist to some degree or another, but we can at least _try_.
And of course, the NPT is not 100% effective for obvious reasons but imagine how many countries would have nukes without it. And drawdowns like START are real!
The numbers matter, and while a world with 1,000 nuclear weapons isn't a world with zero, it's different to a world with 500k nuclear weapons, in my opinion
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty
Everyone would launch weapons while they deny it, because that is the rational and responsible thing to do.
Trump seemingly cannot resist the classic opportunity for a "1up", can he?
I imagine launching anything from space to earth would be highly inefficient and inaccurate. So it must be space to space.
Space to space weapons are what? Small drones with an explosive charge? I guess that could work. These "combats" are going to be weird, because the objects are trapped in their orbits. Things are going to move very slowly with a lot of intertia.
> "We urge the US side to stop expanding its military capabilities and preparing for war in outer space," AFP quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying.
Next up; America cries rivers of victimhood when Russia and China put their far more advanced space based weapons systems into orbit and 100x as many in response because the narcissistic maniacs in the “American” educated idiot class ripped the lid off Pandora’s box because Hollywood taught them that the good guy Americans always win.
People act like had the inventors of the powder explosive gun never used it, we would still be fighting with arrows and spears today. Completely not how it works.
Semi related "Rods from God": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment
A pillar with a tiny engine that just incrementally increases the speed could be devastating at a distance though, I'm sure I've read this as some solution to a problem (or attempted solution to some problem) in some sci-fi book, can't remember which though.
But to me it really doesn't make more sense than using nukes though unless they are coming from another body in space, dropping shit from normal earth orbital altitudes is like throwing peanuts compared to something coming out of solar orbit, and actually hitting your target is 10,000x harder. And anyone with a space program large enough to put such weapons in place could more easily produce nukes instead.
Incidentally, the Shuttle raised concerns in the USSR because they saw those large cargo bay doors and rocket thrusters out back, to think that this was a 'delivery system'.
In the modern battlefield, 'hypersonic' missiles are the new shiny. However, any ICBM is 'hypersonic', at least during the space phase. The new meaning of hypersonic means going at 'hypersonic' speeds through the atmosphere and in the final approach. Force equals mass times acceleration, more speed means more deceleration, which means packing a bigger kinetic punch.
We have no evidence that this capability was ever used offensively though.
> One Air Force requirement that had a critical effect on the Shuttle design was cross range capability. The military wanted to be able to send a Shuttle on an orbit around the Earth's poles because a significant portion of the Soviet Union was at high latitudes near the Arctic Circle. The idea was to be able to deploy a reconnaissance satellite, retrieve an errant spacecraft, or even capture an enemy satellite, and then have the Shuttle return to its launch site after only one orbit to escape Soviet detection. Because the Earth rotates on its axis, by the time the Shuttle would return to its base, the base would have "moved" approximately 1,100 miles to the east. Thus the Shuttle needed to be able to maneuver that distance "sideways" upon reentering the atmosphere.
> In addition to the Air Force's cross range demand, the military also wanted a larger Shuttle payload bay than NASA originally advocated. NASA wanted the Shuttle payload bay to accommodate modules for a future space station, which necessitated a payload capacity of approximately 50,000 pounds. The Air Force wanted a bay 15 x 60 feet that could hold 50,000 to 65,000 pounds and that had doors that could open out into space to deploy satellites easily. This payload requirement meant that the fuselage of the Shuttle needed to be essentially a large rectangular box with rounded surfaces. In general, NASA went with the Air Force's requirements because it needed the Air Force's support to help insulate it from the political charge that the Shuttle was really just a step towards human exploration of Mars or a permanent space station, which is precisely what some people at NASA wanted it to be.
The Air Force was working on a Shuttle launch site at Vandenberg AFB in California, but after the Challenger disaster they decided that the Shuttle wasn't reliable enough and opted to instead use traditional disposable rockets to launch spy satellites.
Interesting. A bit conspiratorial, but hey. It would be a major provocation if so
If you accept the premise that governments and their military and intelligence agencies aren’t 100% transparent, which is true, then the above comment is simply speculative.
That is, China's in a bit of an awkward position to complain very much.
I've a feeling our satellites are far more expensive and advanced than theirs. Nobody wants a space tit-for-tat that can escalate dramatically.
One is significantly more risk to the rest of the world than other.
You do realize that since the advent of image reconnaissance satellites, imagery has been used to support the wider geopolitical objectives of whoever owns the satellites doing the reconnaissance, up to and including sharing intelligence with geopolitical allies?
In other words: the point of contention here is a tale old as time, and when caught one power usually just registers diplomatic complaints against the other power. Rather than, you know, kick off WW3 by messing with space assets between two nuclear powers.
I'd also like to note that the Soviets literally provided a massive amount of support to North Vietnam, including their own pilots squaring off against Americans. The United States returned the favor when they invaded Afghanistan, our logistical and intelligence support killing scores of Soviets. At no point did either power decide to start blowing up each other's satellites.
It's 2026, Iran I'm sure has a myriad of ways of acquiring imagery via commercial satellite providers. Let alone other intel modalities.
The notion that a giant KC-135 sitting on a tarmac somewhere being otherwise safe were it not for the Chinese sharing intelligence is laughable.
Reads more like incompetent threat assessment and regional asset positioning. But hey, at least our troops are juicin' up on T.
It’s not clear what may have caused the Yaogan-50 (02) satellite to break apart, but it may have been a propulsion or battery failure, or it may have itself collided with another object or space debris."
Edit: Its a perfectly valid response to the question that was asked.
And the US just publicly told everyone they have weapons in space?
Hell of a coincidence.
- Consideration of time-of-day/azimuth of overhead satellite based on shadows and perspective.
- Comparison to other imagery of the same location checking for portable objects (such as vehicles) and keeping track of when they appear and disappear, and whether they're present in the imagery being analysed.
- Consideration of cloud coverage and weather conditions to rule out unwanted satellite passes.
Then write up a report and publish it, making it a believable and concrete finding instead of a finding that otherwise may just be perceived to be speculation/vibes.
[1] https://soaratlas.com/maps/asia-jordan-strike-at-u-s-aircraf...
Press article: https://www.livescience.com/secret-classified-satellite-trum...
Blog write up: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2019/09/image-from-trump-tw...
no-one is stupid enough anymore to say "oh he would never"
or "only against people we don't like"
No, of course he would use it against Canada or Greenland if he woke up on the wrong side of the bed or didn't sleep at all
He clearly has rage fits which is one of the early signs of dementia
He would most definitely order the use of space weapons
I am really surprised he has not nuked some part of Iran yet, innocent civilians be damned but there are still 800 days left so here's hoping we don't wake up to that headline
What was the thing that the US military previously couldn't blow up? The enemy now can have giant piece of hard metal in orbit and blow up previously %100 out of range data centers for example.
Very unwise action on US part.
You don't need space weapons to hit datacenters, you need one van full of explosives and someone willing to die to deliver it to a datacenter.
To temporarily disable them, you just need a cheap drone with some explosives.
Both Russia and China have demonstrated anti-satellite weapons. Ages ago.
Space being not militarized was always a fiction. Space was militarized first and foremost, and everything NASA ever did was to encourage and help that goal. This has only gotten dramatically less symbolic and more actually meaningful since recent massive advances in space sensor platforms and scale.
This is only a change in public messaging unfortunately.
This was always the inevitable outcome, because there's no "Bigger fish" to make independent nations follow any rule other than the rule of the jungle, and space is the highest ground.
Not really. Most of the cold war nuclear war scenarios only consider nuclear exchange in the northern hemisphere. Until this day there's little strategic value in south America or south Africa. Maybe Australia and new Zealand but still low compared to the north. The Argentinian Patagonia must be the safest place to be in a nuclear winter.