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China Tests Anti-Satellite Laser Weapon
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Jan 18, 2007 07:21 AM
from the the-people's-laser dept.
from the the-people's-laser dept.
schnippy writes "U.S. intelligence agencies believe that China has successfully tested an anti-satellite weapon by destroying one of their old weather satellites. The test, if confirmed, would be an order of magnitude more provocative than earlier reports of Chinese blinding lasers being tested. Arms Control Wonk has a good writeup on what this will mean for U.S. policy."
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Politics: Chinese Lasers Blind US Satelites 739 comments
SniperClops writes, "China has fired high-power lasers at U.S. spy satellites flying over its territory in what experts see as a test of Chinese ability to blind the spacecraft, according to sources." The article mentions the reluctance of the U.S. administration to talk about this "asymmetric" effort by the Chinese military.
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How is this provocative ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or is it OK for the USA to have it but no one else ? I suppose it depends on who you consider the bad guys. I note that China has invaded fewer countries in the last 50 years than the USA has ... so what is the answer to the question ?
Re:How is this provocative ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:How is this provocative ? (Score:4, Funny)
And north korea!!!
Now iraq!!! Hey they are 3 for 3!!
Parent
Re:How is this provocative ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nowadays, Tibet is used as a toxic waste dump, and the Han Chinese population outnumbers the Tibetan population. RIP Tibet, after sustaining some of the worst atrocities of
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What's not surprising, however, is the fact that almost nobody knows what Palestine really is [wikipedia.org].
Re:How is this provocative ? (Score:5, Insightful)
How dare a nation annex land belonging to foreign invaders -- who, to this day, continue to proclaim the obliteration of that nation -- as a means of protecting itself from future attacks!
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Re:How is this provocative ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I see you're from the UK. It figures. In the last 50 years, the US has invaded
Grenada - don't see anyone but Cuba and some Grenadian commies sorry about that one
Kuwait and Iraq in Gulf War I - nobody sorry about that one either except some now dead or imprisoned Iraqi government officials
Iraq in Gulf War II - well, nobody seems happy with that, so I understand complaints here.
So
Re:How is this provocative ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry.. I normally try to refrain from commenting on these kind of issues, since I'm European, and will be considered someone not knowledgable enough by a lot of people. But... I can't resist this time.
The US is actually doing *exactly* that in Iraq: Do things our "democratic" way or we'll stay here and keep killing people. You'd see this if you'd actually look at things happening from a distance. The current not-yet-civil war is a direct result of the US removing the one authority figure in charge, and trying to democratize the country. I personally believe that Iraq isn't A> ready B> helped with democracy.
You can't force two peoples (in this case mainly divided along religious borders) to work together if they don't want to, and haven't in known history. This is simply an enormous mistake in thinking.
Democracy is what works for *us* (most of the time anyway), but forcing that on other people and countries should not be the way to propagate it, I think.
Feel free to disagree, but that's my (possibly biased) point of view.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Absolutely you can. However the methods you'd have to use arent "democratic".
That's why the old Soviet system fell apart. Gorbachev questioned whether the Soviet system had to be quite so heavy handed. The answer turned out to be "yes".
Re:How is this provocative ? (Score:5, Interesting)
As an American who put in over a year overseas, I know our foreign policy reputation at this time. It's not kind. I have been recognized on the streets as an American and confronted on my political beliefs. I'd like to think I gave the "right answer", but I honestly don't know what would have happened a few times if I had expressed support for my president. Let me just let you know, there are many of us (maybe less than 50%, but more than 10%) who believe the French were right in holding off invasion plans and who believe the United Nations was founded in order to prevent another World War II. A seemingly unending bureaucracy it may be, but it's checked by the majority of countries with a last sanity check of the consensus of a diverse group with the most vested interest in a stable world.
We're fighting to change the political future of our country. It's slow, and it's built upon a mountain of vested interests in large corporations and minimization of energy insecurity.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bosnia and Herzegovina [slashdot.org] -- Bosniaks, Serbs & Croats
Croatia [slashdot.org] -- Croats & Serbs
Republic of Macedonia [slashdot.org] -- Macedonians, Albanians & Turks
Montenegro [slashdot.org] -- Montenegrins, Serbs, Bosniaks & Albanians
Serbia [slashdot.org] -- Serbs
Slovenia [slashdot.org] -- Slovenians
Plus there are a couple of territories agitating for full independence from Serbia:
Kosovo and Metohija [slashdot.org] -- Albanians & Serbs
Vojvodina [slashdot.org] -- Serbs & Hungarians
On the religion divide:
Bosniaks [wikipedia.org] -- mostly Muslim (Sunni and some Sufi) and Agnostic/Atheist
Ser [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't know about Grenada, Vietnam is free of american troops, South Korea WANTS american troops inside.
Cuba has a small US garrison inside, in what seem to be not US soil, but more US army and CIA soil.
Some people in Iraq are happ
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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LASER weapon? (Score:5, Informative)
That doesn't sound like a LASER weapon.
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My bad... (Score:3)
Of course, the reason I stopped paying attention to the headlines here is that they often have litle relation to what's discussed in the article...
not a laser (Score:5, Informative)
Lasers are not kinetic weapons. They are light-based.
The topic-writer appears to have been confused by the article mentioning that an earlier test used a laser to temporarily brighten a satellite.
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Well, technically, photons have kinetic energy too (even though they have no mass): E=hf.
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What this will mean for U.S. policy? (Score:5, Insightful)
the truth is being manipulated here (Score:5, Funny)
now the announcement that the chinese have an advanced laser weapon
there's only one obvious conclusion: the extinction news was a lie, a cover up...
it isn't sharks with frickin' laser beams they're building, it's a top secret corp of dolphins with frickin' laser beams!
that's a very clever twist, but i see through your cynical machinations beijing
China just need to put dollars in market (Score:5, Interesting)
Lasers? (Score:3, Informative)
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Secondly, it opens up an arms race in space, with money thrown into space weapons research, testing, and bigger and heavier weaponry.
I do disagree with some of the conclusions drawn in the article (the author was berating a Short sighted Chinese government for development of space weaponry). The US has quite acti
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do people keep thinking this is new? It's not. The only new thing is that it's China doing it.
The USA successfully tested an anti-satellite missile [astronautix.com] over twenty years ago. And when I mean "successfully tested," I mean we did just what the Chinese did here: destroyed an actual satellite in actual orbit around the actual earth. And it wasn't something like NMD, where we h
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Re:short term (Score:5, Insightful)
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Throwing your weight around is not always the best way to get what you want, a lessone we've had to relearn here in the US these past few years.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_an
Re:IMHO (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:IMHO (Score:4, Funny)
*push button*
His colleague from the airforce: "You yellow little man think you can disarm ICBMs better than we can? I'll prove you that we disarm our complete arsenal in half the time your tech peons will find their screwdrivers, commi!"
Parent
Re:IMHO (Score:5, Insightful)
It's as funny as nations conducting nuclear testing on their own soil!
Wait, that wasn't really funny at all. Maybe you had to be there.
Parent
Re:This is just one more piece of bad news from Ch (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:This is just one more piece of bad news from Ch (Score:3, Insightful)
Things like censorship, product safety, military issues, global warming contributions, and anything that seems enough of a problem to become a law in western countries should be forced upon the Chinese government.
Half of these things the US is guilty of:
Funny that we should view this as "provocative" (Score:5, Insightful)
I certainly won't claim that China wouldn't have pressed ahead with its anti-sattelite weapon if the US hadn't stated space hegemony as its policy objective, but in terms of being provocative it really seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The US space policy is confrontational if nothing else.
I'm fairly confident that the recently unveiled US space policy caused a massive "Oh yeah? We'll see about that!" response among China, Russia, India, and perhaps others too.
Parent
Re:Funny that we should view this as "provocative" (Score:5, Informative)
That's exactly what the policy is about. From the BBC [bbc.co.uk]:
Translation: we reserve the right to put weapons in space, and we will deny you the right to do so. Good on China for creating an intelligent solution! Hope they patented it.
Parent
+1 Traditional (Score:4, Funny)
Trim your beards and try to keep up.
Its not we pwn teh space, or we ownerz teh space.
its
ALL YOUR SPACE ARE BELONG TO US.
Know your
Parent
Re:Just what the world needs... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe this will offset all the Global Warming [slashdot.org].
Parent
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Re:Just what the world needs... (Score:4, Informative)
you can thank the USA for that.
the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a conservative think tank whose members include Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz (among other prominent republicans) places among its goals, the proposal to "control the new "international commons" of space and "cyberspace" and pave the way for the creation of a new military service -- U.S. Space Forces -- with the mission of space control." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_
Of course, we're talking about military control and that means in large part getting the upper hand in terms of information (WWII was won because of information). Hence the US fascination with spy satellites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_(satellite) [wikipedia.org]
and let's not forget the National Missile Defense program, which will cost 53b US from the years 2005 to 2009 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaponization_of_spa
Parent
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I prefer the "e" and "o" in people as they seem to be missing from your posts.
One Word; Taiwan (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just silly talk. There will be no economic embargo on China because it developed a new weapon. No one is talking about economic sanctions other then crazy Slashdot posters.
It is a provocation in the same way any new weapon is a provocation, but the response won't be military or economic. The response will be that the US starts upgrading their own anti-satellite weapon if they have not already done so and building in more stealth features to their old satellites. This starts a potential arms race, but that is it. Even then, I doubt it is going to be much of a race. The US has had known anti-satellite weapons for decades. It probably has other still classified anti-satellite weapons waiting in the wings as well.
The real 'provocation' in this is what it means for Taiwan. The US has been quietly backing away from its promise to defend the democracy of Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion. Even now, the prospect of fighting over Taiwan makes the US uneasy. The US could certainly win today, but it would be far more bloody and dramatically more costly then Iraq. Such a war would have both nations getting itchy nuclear weapon trigger fingers. Now, to top it all off, China has the capacity to knock down US satellites making the military game much more dangerous while at the same time offering up a way to put a real hurt on American economic interests.
It is a good old fashion Mexican standoff. A war between the US and China is a war that both sides could lose (read that as going nuclear). Even if both sides agreed to take nuclear weapons off the table, the economic damage done to the US would only be matched by the massive economic destruction wrought on China. The whole issue is messy and ugly, and it is coming to a head. China WILL make a move again Taiwan in the next 10 years.