US Exploring Potential Space Force Hotline With China (reuters.com) 43
The United States Space Force reportedly discussed setting up a hotline with China to prevent crises in space, according to Reuters, citing U.S. commander General Chance Saltzman. From the report: The chief of space operations said a direct line of communication between the Space Force and its Chinese counterpart would be valuable in de-escalating tensions but that the U.S. had not yet engaged with China to establish one. "What we have talked about on the U.S. side at least is opening up a line of communication to make sure that if there is a crisis, we know who we can contact," Saltzman said, adding that it would be up to President Joe Biden and the State Department to take the lead on such discussions. The U.S. Space Force, founded in 2019, also does not have a direct line of communication with its Russian counterpart.
No one on the other side. (Score:4, Informative)
>> direct line of communication between the Space Force and its Chinese counterpart...
They did not find the counterpart
The problem is: China does not have a nonsense agency like a "Space Force"
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"Interesting idea, but they'll never be practical on the battlefield." Tanks => Infantry support => Armored corps
"Great for recon, but they'll never sink a battleship." Aircraft => Army Air Corp => Air Force
"...a nonsense agency like a "Space Force"." AF Space Command => A military branch dedicated to the new high ground
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"Great for recon, but they'll never sink a battleship." Aircraft => Army Air Corp => Air Force"
Well to be fair, the US Army Air Force didn't sink any battleships. The battleships (eg Musashi and Yamato) were sunk by US Navy planes
Re:No one on the other side. (Score:5, Interesting)
> Well to be fair, the US Army Air Force didn't sink any battleships.
OP is probably referring to the Billy Mitchell's sinking of the USS Virginia in 1923 as a demonstration that aircraft could successfully bomb capital ships. Mitchell was in the Army Air Service, and made a lot of powerful enemies in the Navy for being right.
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> Well to be fair, the US Army Air Force didn't sink any battleships.
OP is probably referring to the Billy Mitchell's sinking of the USS Virginia in 1923 as a demonstration that aircraft could successfully bomb capital ships. Mitchell was in the Army Air Service, and made a lot of powerful enemies in the Navy for being right.
You can add the SMS Ostfriesland [wikipedia.org] to that list, although the Allies had to compel the Germans to hand it over, then anchored it dead in the water and bombed the Ostfriesland at length before the Mitchell and the USAAC to finally managed sink it to the consternation of the US military elite who had explicitly structured the rules of engagement (which Mitchell had ignored) to ensure that this would not happen.
The New Jersey and Virginia were ALSO sitting at anchor, dead in the water, with no defenses. The 1923 demo was simply a reply of the first demo against German ships. A sham.
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Sham or not, unrealistic "rules of engagement" or not: they were sunk. Something that some people said could *never* be done.
A lesson that wasn't *really* learned until ten or so years later.
FWIW, Yamamoto never did quite get that "battleship mentality" out of his head, despite utilizing the Kido Butai to good effect.
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> Well to be fair, the US Army Air Force didn't sink any battleships.
OP is probably referring to the Billy Mitchell's sinking of the USS Virginia in 1923 as a demonstration that aircraft could successfully bomb capital ships. Mitchell was in the Army Air Service, and made a lot of powerful enemies in the Navy for being right.
The RAF did, as did the RN fleet air arm. The Germans didn't have many battleships, however the US Navy did a number on various Japanese battleships. The aircraft really was the end of the battleship, Mitchell was just a little too early (or a lot ahead of his time).
Europe in WWII saw aircraft destroy a lot of big ships, mostly in port because the various navies were too scared to send them out because they might be destroyed at sea.
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OP is probably referring to the Billy Mitchell's sinking of the USS Virginia in 1923 as a demonstration that aircraft could successfully bomb capital ships. Mitchell was in the Army Air Service, and made a lot of powerful enemies in the Navy for being right.
Except Mitchell wasn't right. He cheated in his part of the joint Army-Navy exercise, knowingly violating the agreed rules of engagement. His whole demonstration was rigged. The surplus German battleship that he sank was a metaphorical sitting duck [si.edu]:
"Ostfriesland was at anchor and unable to maneuver and there was no defensive antiaircraft fire to hinder the aerial attacks."
It's easy to sink a stationary ship at anchor with no crew and no active defenses. It's incredibly hard to kill a crewed warship that's e
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I don't know enough about Mitchell to offer any defense of him, or even if it's warranted. The original post I was responding to was:
> Well to be fair, the US Army Air Force didn't sink any battleships. The battleships (eg Musashi and Yamato) were sunk by US Navy planes
I was just pointing out that reference to the Army sinking battleships was almost certainly a reference to the Mitchell debate, not a claim that the USAAF was regularly targeting capital ships during WWII.
The only other thing I would say
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"...not a claim that the USAAF was regularly targeting capital ships during WWII."
Interestingly, at first the USAAF was credited with the success at Midway, primarily due to typical aircrew over-estimations and the fact that the bombers got back to Pearl long before the carriers. When the truth came out, Nimitz did not publicize it (so as not to disrupt Army/Navy cooperation).
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Absolutely. No intention to diss our impressive Naval Aviation. I only plead the goal of brevity of reply.
They do not do anything of value (Score:2)
>> => A military branch dedicated to the new high ground
Yeah. Nope.
It's dedicated to pay rent to a few important people.
They do not do anything of value to the military, to the country, to the world.
Btw: weapons are completely banned in space.
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Well, to which few important people are you referring? Name names with cites or it hasn't happened.
BTW: Earth orbits are filled with satellites, maybe you've heard of them.
Re:They do not do anything of value (Score:4, Interesting)
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Oh, to be young and naive. Nothing is banned at the global level. There are agreements between countries to not do certain things.
Space Force may have a pretty vague mission right now, but I foresee that changing over the next few decades. Any sort of 'ban" between nations is nothing more than a gentleman's agreement. Once any hostile nation gets it in their head to ignore or cheat that ban isn't worth the paper its printed on. Just look at the Washington Navil Treaty that put a limit on the size of warships after WWI. Japan and Germany just ignored it and lied about the size of their ships.
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>> => A military branch dedicated to the new high ground Yeah. Nope. It's dedicated to pay rent to a few important people. They do not do anything of value to the military, to the country, to the world. Btw: weapons are completely banned in space.
And we all know no one would DARE do something that's banned. Hell, 99.99999% of all space craft are just ballistic missiles with a bit of extra guidance and a set of crossed fingers somewhere with hopes and prayers it doesn't blow up. It's ALL weapons.
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The key difference with space is that we haven't yet triggered the arms race to militarize it. There have been treaties agreeing not to, and most countries seem willing to hold back from sending actual weapons into orbit because they recognize that it would be a complete disaster. Vast amounts of money pumped into a new race to put bombs in space, until Kessler Syndrome kicks in and nobody can use LEO.
Instead everyone is just keeping a supply of terrestrial anti-satellite weapons on hand. We will probably s
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"Additionally, Space Force is a pretty silly name."
Meh. About as silly as "Air Force" I guess. Or having to put "Royal" in front of everything.
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Ya, because those nice Chinese will leave the U.S. alone once they achieve hegemony.
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You really think China is going to take their navy and parade their boats up and down the west and east coast like the US does to China? You really think that the Chinese are going to constantly send everyday spy p3 planes up and down China's coast? China has practically no history of doing anything of the sort and we are talking about 4000-5000 years here.
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"You really think China is going to take their navy and parade their boats up and down the west and east coast like the US does to China?"
They don't need to. They have had great success by working from the inside.
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A government could fund healthcare and education but instead, boys and their toys.
The US government could fund all of that, the military and more if they just cracked down on the super wealthy that pay less than 2% effective taxes and made them pay even a fifth of the same tax percentages that every normal US wage slave have to pay.
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Re: your taxes at work. (Score:2)
Good luck with that. Didn't work in Brazil. Perhaps you have better politicians?
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Good luck with that. Didn't work in Brazil. Perhaps you have better politicians?
In the country that elected Ronald Reagan, the younger Bush, Trump, and Biden? Come on. I know we're partial to fantasy around here, but there's limits to it.
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While we won't discuss the other three, thank god for Ronald Reagan you mean.
Re: your taxes at work. (Score:4, Interesting)
Fuck Ronald Reagan's rotting corpse. He began the systematic decimation of the middle class in the name of handing more money to the would-be oligarchs that have, since then, essentially become actual oligarchs without all the trappings. He was the dumbest possible solution to "fixing the economy" by going top-up, and we're STILL waiting for his voodoo economics / trickle-down theory to pan out for literally any other part of the economic universe other than the tippity-top.
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Actually you mean, Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the latter half of the 20th century. That if it wasn't for him and another great man, Mikhail Gorbachev, you probably wouldn't be alive today since those two men ended the greatest war in the history of the human race. Infact, you think that you should be on your knees every night praying to whatever god(s) you worship that these two men came along when they did. That is actually what you think.
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Actually you mean, Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the latter half of the 20th century. That if it wasn't for him and another great man, Mikhail Gorbachev, you probably wouldn't be alive today since those two men ended the greatest war in the history of the human race. Infact, you think that you should be on your knees every night praying to whatever god(s) you worship that these two men came along when they did. That is actually what you think.
Jesus fucked-up Christ. While I'll admit that those two get credit for ending the cold war, which can hardly be called the greatest war in the history of the human race since it wasn't actually a war, it doesn't absolve Ronnie of the absolute devastation he planted the seeds for in his own country. We're still reaping the rewards of that little slice of failure.
Gorby and Reagan both recognized that profits keep businesses happy, and businesses that are happy make government officials happy. Why we in the US
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I understand that you are confused. Many people get confused with truth pointed out to them. I'm not going to hold it against you but now you do know the truth. I expect you make some effort to correct your thinking on this subject. To spare you the shame of not having to be correct, again, I'm just going to skip this post and anything else you post on the subject. I usually do this because sometimes people say silly things before they come around are recognize the truth.
Good luck to you and your
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You'll get used to it. "Telling people what they think" is his bread and butter when he can't think of anything useful to say.
Sad how lazy the trolls are getting nowadays.
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I understand that you are confused. Many people get confused with truth pointed out to them. I'm not going to hold it against you but now you do know the truth. I expect you make some effort to correct your thinking on this subject. To spare you the shame of not having to be correct, again, I'm just going to skip this post and anything else you post on the subject. I usually do this because sometimes people say silly things before they come around are recognize the truth.
Good luck to you and your future.
Dunning Kruger called. He heard there's a new contender in town and wanted to get your contact info.
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That is right, let it all out.
Red phone? (Score:2)
It's funny, "direct line" conjures up images of a old rotary phone sitting on an important desk but what does it mean in 2023? Can't these important people just swap cell numbers or something? It's surprising these types of people wouldn't have their counterparts' contacts by default.
How many wars might have been avoided if the perpetrators regularly chatted on Telegram?
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and why does the "Space" hotline need to be different than the general hotline?
Prez: "Let's see, do I press Nuke, Space, Diet-Coke, Ice-Cream, Ketchup, Lawyer, or Doctor?"
They screen anyway (Score:2)
To my knowledge they don't answer the hotline we have. Here's one example with regard to the spy balloon of recent memory. https://apnews.com/article/politics-united-states-government-lloyd-austin-china-9d1b7c9aa40b22d0bda497ba29be8d9b [apnews.com]
This is where I get modded down as a nationalist or racist git, but I can't think of anything the China government body listens to but praise and promises of money and stuff for them. As long as the commerce flows, the rest is noise, apparently.
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Interesting.
"It’s been an experience that’s frustrated U.S. commanders for decades, when it comes to getting their Chinese counterparts on a phone or video line as some flaring crisis is sending tensions between the two nations climbing."
On the next episode of Space Farce... (Score:1)