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In a large, tin-roofed warehouse near Colorado's Rocky Mountains, members of a team of modern space warriors spend their days hatching plots to defeat the US military in extraterrestrial combat.
They're called Space Aggressors.
Their job is to act like the enemy during mock space battles to help US units prepare for a conflict that may one day extend into the cosmos.
[...] While attacks by the Space Aggressors are simulated, senior US military and intelligence officials warn the threat in space is very real.
[...] Some worry that disrupting America's vast network of satellites and ground-based systems could send US forces back to an antiquated era of targeting, communications, and navigation systems — deeply undercutting battlefield superiority.
This spring, rhetoric from US military officials about the need to bolster American defensive position, and even offensive capabilities, in space has ratcheted up amid concern that Russia and China are rapidly developing anti-satellite weapons.
"While we're not at war in space, I don't think we could say we're exactly at peace, either," Vice Admiral Charles Richard, Deputy Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, known as Stratcom, told a conference in Washington DC in March. "We must prepare for a conflict that extends into space."
In his remarks, Vice Admiral Richard pointed to press reports that "China is developing an arsenal of lasers, electro-magnetic rail guns, and high-powered microwave weapons to neutralize America's intelligence, communications, and navigations satellites."
Source: 'Space Aggressors' Train US Forces for Extraterrestrial Conflict
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:12AM (1 child)
I believe this all started when the Sovets manuevered a satellite to take out a White one. A few years ago. WHy spend all those dollars when you can fire the thrusters on junk?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:01PM
What?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:14AM (4 children)
A phased array of masers taking out spy satellites. One would only need to get them hot enough to melt some of the solder joints.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:18AM (1 child)
Even a mile wide asteroid would not end all current life on Earth (much less all life forever), but deorbited spy sats would?
Or do you suggest the lack of sat capability would cause a nuclear war?
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(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 25 2017, @05:02AM
I'm not sure what he's getting at with the spy sat thing, but it is interesting to contemplate what'd happen if someone destroyed all our satellites like that: GPS, communications, etc. It'd be a little chaotic I think, and I'm not really sure just how dependent our society is on them now, so it could be even worse than I imagine.
There was a movie years ago called "The Trigger Effect" which explored what'd happen if the power went out for too long, and it wasn't pretty (and I do think it wasn't too inaccurate with its predictions). Now taking out satellites might not mean the power grid fails, but it could have other really bad effects on society, beyond just making us have to re-learn how to use paper maps.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday May 25 2017, @07:12AM
How about a couple of tons of pea-gravel in an elliptical polar orbit?
This is the brute-force way, but I believe it would wipe out everything up there.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 25 2017, @02:58PM
How would that "end all life on earth forever"? It just makes space travel a real bitch. I doubt we have enough satellites up there that blowing them all up would put enough ash in the atmosphere to cause any appreciable nuclear winter.
Or do you mean starting to laser satellites would result in nuclear war?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:16AM (1 child)
-e.
Not long after china's first test of their own missile, a US-owned satellite failed to achieve its correct orbit. Under the pretense that we were protecting the public from the satellite's deadly hydrazine station-keeping fuel, we blew it to bits with a missile launched from a Navy ship.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by aim on Friday May 26 2017, @12:43PM
You may want to look up the Wikipedia article on the ASM-135 ASAT here [wikipedia.org]. The USA have a history of ASAT missiles, starting with nuclear-tipped ones. IIRC the ASM-135, test-fired from an F-15, also featured in some Tom Clancy novel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:18AM (7 children)
I miss voting for Ronald Reagan. Let's have another Cold War, with China this time.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:12AM (6 children)
Yes, you do! You may be a Zombie Republican! Remember when Democrats controlled everything? When we had positive economic growth and lessening economic disparity? Of course you do! This is why you pine for the Reagan. But Reaganism did not provide the promised goods. Trump is still selling the exact same snake oil: cut taxes, and the increased economic activity will pay for the tax cut! Except, it doesn't. It never has. It has always been an economic scam theory designed to redistribute wealth to the upper classes. So do not pine for Reagan, pine for leftists! Like Che! Proudoun! Marx! Gramsci! You know, real organic intellectuals, not stupid actors form the midwest, or from reality shows where they fire people. Reagan! Ha! Could not even hang on to his first wife. Wait, first divorced president? and now Trump is the second? I see a pattern here, and it does not have Monica written all over it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:51AM (5 children)
Oh boy, Trump induced insanity!
Ahem, I mean do go on, very fascinating. How would you describe your relationship with your parents?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @07:04AM (2 children)
My parents were Union Members, Ticket Democratic voters, why do you ask? Only in the beginning stages of dementia did Dad start complaining about the "at risk urban youth" (though he did not use such an euphemism), and much later that Mom called herself a Republican, mostly under the influence of an Opus Dei priest that somehow found himself exiled to the backwaters of, oh, pedofile!
So now I hope you are happy to know about my family. I sense that yours is probably much the same, and that you as well can blame right-wing talk radio and Faux News for the gradual degradation of the reasoning ability of your family members. If you cannot, you have my sympathies, and maybe you should look into gene therapy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @08:50AM (1 child)
Nope, I'm not American, but Americans such as yourselves are fascinating. The conservatives, I can understand, "My country right or wrong" or so they say; but the "liberals"? They're hell bent on being anti-conservative, opposing conservative view points for opposing sake, whether it makes sense or not. Latent daddy issues?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:04PM
I'm not the AC poster above but I am American... I laugh at the limpwristed conservatives and SJW'ers all the time. No one has any balls anymore and it's turning them into *ussies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:41PM (1 child)
Forget my parents, let's talk about my relationship with your mother!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:36PM
What do you think about let's talk about my relationship with your mother?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:50AM (7 children)
So is this the same place where the US trained Tibetans to infiltrate and overthrow the ChiCom menace back in the fifties? With the same chances of success? How interesting! Marx said that Hegel said, that everything in history happens twice: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. So where are we on this one?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:54AM (6 children)
So that means there won't be a World War 3, 2nd time was the last, peace on Earth.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday May 25 2017, @07:20AM (5 children)
The third one will knock us back to the stone age.
And we will stay there for quite some time, as all the "easy" natural energy resources of this planet ( which fueled our industrial revolution ) have already been consumed.
This is one of my greatest fears for humanity as we seem so hell-bent on restricting widespread knowledge of technology in the name of "Copyright" and "Intellectual Property" protection.
In my day, it was common knowledge among many of us how to build radio amateur transmitters. We could have even built the vacuum tubes if we had to. How many of us can build an IC? Solar Panel? LCD Display?
If we ever lose our technology, its gonna be a really long row to hoe to get back to where we are now.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday May 25 2017, @09:12AM (1 child)
Building vacuum tubes requires a fair amount of infrastructure to refine the raw materials - even getting the glass and the seals to the right tolerances is not easy. If you needed to bootstrap civilisation again, you wouldn't start with LCD panels or even with vacuum tubes. You'd first need to get steel production and copper refining working. You'd have a head start over the first time, because there's a load of refined metal lying around on the surface. You need a lot of wire for the coils in a radio and for the inverter to attach to your wind turbine for power. Relays are a lot easier to build than thermionic valves, so that's where you'd start for switching, but this kind of automation would be a lot less important than things like getting water purification on a large scale working, getting enough irrigation flowing that you could farm, and so on.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday May 25 2017, @10:34AM
I was thinking more like the edison valve as far as actually making one. Filament, grid, and plate. Assuming I could get old-school flashlight bulbs.
I could not come even close to making an operable 6L6.
You are so right, there are many things, like just pumping water, that will take a big hit.
Look at the story that just hit the top of SN just now... all these big corporations lobbying to overturn the "right to repair" law.
Once our populace no longer can repair their stuff, a lot of kids won't have even the foggiest idea of how stuff works. If one thought business was having trouble getting young blood into the organization who knows how the stuff works... they sure won't be easy to find!
I would say a good 95% of what I know about how stuff works, it was directly from taking stuff apart. I was raised in a time where every town had radio/TV repair shops. I worked at one during High School. As one of the technicians. Fixing old vacuum tube radios and TV's. All black-and-white TV at the time. Color was just coming out as I left the shop for College. Never had the joy of fixing a Color TV, ( nor would I look forward to fixing the vacuum tube version of one either. Too many analog things to drift. ).
If Congress falls for this one, its almost sure the USA is all about raising a bunch of obedient ignorant sheep for the shepherd to feed, as they won't have the sense to feed themselves. I don't like where this is going. A nation full of ignoramuses as to what makes their stuff work.
I learned long time ago how risky it is to build anything with single-sourced components. It is a sure recipe for disaster.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @10:26AM (2 children)
You are not following the news? We are living a WW now, only it is not what we thought it would be: It is an asymmetric war against global enemy who is not a technological industrial superpower.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday May 25 2017, @10:37AM (1 child)
Looks to me we are being bled to death by swarms of mosquitoes when we came prepared for a bear.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:43PM
That seems pretty apt. And, of course, we're all playing Macho Man so hard, that we refuse to put up any sissy mosquito nettings, thus providing the mosquitos with a never ending banquet. But, TSA will save us, right? Right? Amirite? Please, tell me I'm right!!
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:47PM
Sounds like a Space Invaders clone. Or a bad 50's movie.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 1) by oldmac31310 on Thursday May 25 2017, @05:02PM (1 child)
Yeah right.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:19PM
Got something coherent to share with the class?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday May 26 2017, @12:32AM
please give us a cost-plus contract for F-35s... in spaaaaaaaaaace!