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posted by takyon on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the start-wars dept.

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


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:14AM (4 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:14AM (#515278) Homepage Journal

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:18AM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:18AM (#515282) Journal

    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

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday May 25 2017, @05:02AM (#515290)

      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

    by anubi (2828) on Thursday May 25 2017, @07:12AM (#515334) Journal

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 25 2017, @02:58PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday May 25 2017, @02:58PM (#515485)

    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?

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