Satellites carrying nukes.

The recent Chinese experiment, where they shot down a satellite in space with a missile, suggests that they are worried about the development of satellites carrying nukes. Why else shoot down a satellite? I suspect that tere are already a number of such experimental satellites in orbit and China wants to able to shoot them down should they enter their airspace (or spacespace).

yep theres bound to be sats up there already carrying nukes. a jones has an article on it today, and he is right in saying how can americans talk about china when america lead the way in space wepaons we all assume that really

Still reading this www.wand.org... - it seems relivent.

While there are no known nuke-carrying satellites operated by the US or anyone else - that would violate about a half-dozen international treaties - the public probably wouldn't know about them if they did exist, so I suppose that is one possible reason for China's recent test.

That said, there are plenty of reasons to destroy a satellite. Military weather, GPS, and some spy satellites function in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Those are the kinds of satellites that China would want to disable/destroy before going to war with another space-faring nation.

And it wouldn't have to be the US, either. Russia and Japan have various kinds of military and intelligence satellites, and South Korea is working with Energia to develop a launch vehicle; South Korea has also launched a number of satellites using the LV's of other nations. Russia, Japan, and South Korea all have various long-standing (if relatively low-level) disputes with China, and are as likely to be targets of Chinese agression as is the US.

It is far more likely, IMHO, that this is another instance of China proving that it can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the US, Russia, and the Europeans when it comes to their military and technology.

What he said. You shoot down satellites to damage the other guy's C3I, command, control, communications and intelligence.

We have all sorts of imaging, communication, ELINT, SIGINT and command satellites that you'd like to take out if you were China, in addition to GPS and what not.

Originally posted by Prokurator
The recent Chinese experiment, where they shot down a satellite in space with a missile, suggests that they are worried about the development of satellites carrying nukes. Why else shoot down a satellite? I suspect that tere are already a number of such experimental satellites in orbit and China wants to able to shoot them down should they enter their airspace (or spacespace).

wHY ELSE? HMM GPS AND COMMUNICATIONS... just maybe. THey should be more worried about subs carrying nukes then satellites.

But if you can take down US military satellites you can go a good distance in leveling the playing field.

This isn't what it suggests at all this thread is off target.

Could they just be testing air to space missiles? Possibly. And when doing so destroying a satelite can coincide with the idea that hey we can shoot down the other guys satelites too..

Originally posted by American Madman

Originally posted by Prokurator
The recent Chinese experiment, where they shot down a satellite in space with a missile, suggests that they are worried about the development of satellites carrying nukes. Why else shoot down a satellite? I suspect that tere are already a number of such experimental satellites in orbit and China wants to able to shoot them down should they enter their airspace (or spacespace).

wHY ELSE? HMM GPS AND COMMUNICATIONS... just maybe. THey should be more worried about subs carrying nukes then satellites.

But if you can take down US military satellites you can go a good distance in leveling the playing field.

They can't hit the satellites the US military most heavily rely upon they are 24,000 miles away.

Originally posted by FreiMaurer


They can't hit the satellites the US military most heavily rely upon they are 24,000 miles away.

While we do have some geosync satellites such as the DSP sats, the GPS constellation, the laser sub comm sats, ground imaging sats and many others are in LEO, and are NOT 24,000 miles away.

Originally posted by Prokurator
The recent Chinese experiment, where they shot down a satellite in space with a missile, suggests that they are worried about the development of satellites carrying nukes. Why else shoot down a satellite? I suspect that tere are already a number of such experimental satellites in orbit and China wants to able to shoot them down should they enter their airspace (or spacespace).

Actually your probably wrong, you shoot down a satellite not because they could carry nukes you do so to eliminate an advantage the enemy has over you. You do so especially because your main strategic threat is the US and their intelligence gathering and war making capabilities and communications rely on big part on satellites. But ASATs from China aren''t that big of a deal, they dont have a large global navy that can hurl missiles into the atmosphere at will to attack satellites with and bases all over the world to track and attack all US satellites with. Their ASATs are land based missiles. So meaning they can only hit those that orbit over China. While it probably would greatly reduce the US's capabilities they could not neutralize all American satellites as not all orbit over China and further more you need tremendous tracking abilties ideally spread out over the globe to track them in their orbit to coordinate a attack on it. Satellites can slowly change their orbit especially intelligence satellites. So if you can only attack whats over your country then you would take out some but not all and you lack the ability to attack them all at once so their going to divert the path their satellites orbit to avoid interception.
But thats the path im sure the PLA is going. Im sure soon they will attempt to put ASAT into their navy to extend their reach and especially now improve their satellite tracking abilities. So if they wanted to initate war they can try to intercept every satellite the orbits over China. As they dont have the luxury of bases and ships all over the world to track satellites with. Keep in mind those bad boys orbit the earth at something like 4000mph or was it kph?

[edit on 21-1-2007 by pilotshinjiikaru]

I'm gonna look for some stuff now, but I know I’ve heard of ceramic ball bearing 'guns' being developed for sats. I know it don't sound like much compared to sats delivering nukes - but bear in mind the damage rail guns that have already been developed for naval ships are intended to cause, and the accuracy that they will deliver.
ATS thread on rail guns - pleanty of info elsewhere also

All I know is that Lockheed and Boeing must be secretly smiling like a cat who ate the mouse, revving up glossy proposal brochures with their sexy-ass dark airplanes.

There's nothing like the smell of fresh contracts in the morning

Shooting down a satellite is not really a hard task for any half way decent country. They are huge radar targets, fly along easily predictable paths and have pretty much zero evasive or defensive abilities.

Theres also more then one reason to shoot them down. It would be a huge blow to any modern military Intel, communication and even navigation wise. You knock all the GPS satellites out for example and that it for GPS navigation and everything that uses it. Missiles, bombs, ships, planes etc.. etc.. time to break out the compass. Russia and the US have plans to do this to each other for quite some time.

The US and perhaps Russia might have a way to keep some important birds safe thanks to stealth tech. Theres no reason you cant make a Stealth satellite in much the same way as a plane, you have no real IR sig. to worry about and you have many thousands of pieces of space clutter to blend in with.

Perhaps a side could get away with hiding a few nuclear armed ones up there since its otherwise a huge international violation to do so. I would bet they wouldn't be used to blow up cities if anyone has them. At about 300 miles up they would be a far more effective large area EMP weapon.

[edit on 1-2-2007 by ShadowXIX]

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
...the GPS constellation, the laser sub comm sats, ground imaging sats and many others are in LEO...

12,500 miles is considered LEO? In any case regardless of other countermeasures, China would have to hit a GPS satellite that is 25 times farther away than the one it took four tires to destroy.

Oh, sorry, thought we'd already decided GPS was more MEO than LEO or GSync a couple of days back. Was that on another thread, or did the posts fall off?

I remember posting to the effect that it was probably more for imaging sats in low orbit than GPS.

edit:

whew thought I was getting the Alzheimers..it was on "Implications of downing satellites" or something to that effect.

[edit on 1-2-2007 by Tom Bedlam]

Yes we did, which is why I was surprised that you referred to ~12,500 miles as LEO this time. Anyway, NRO sat's are not in the same altitude as GPS, that all.

I think the post in this thread predates that one. I sort of moved over to the other thread at that point.

Originally posted by Prokurator
The recent Chinese experiment, where they shot down a satellite in space with a missile, suggests that they are worried about the development of satellites carrying nukes. Why else shoot down a satellite? I suspect that tere are already a number of such experimental satellites in orbit and China wants to able to shoot them down should they enter their airspace (or spacespace).

China wants to have the capability, should it find itself in conflict with the US, of shooting down the US's 'eyes' on China. Get rid of them, and China goes some way to blinding the US.