The United States has deployed weapons in space and will use them to defend American forces, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Monday – the first public acknowledgment of such capabilities in orbit and a deliberate signal to those that pose potential threats in the domain.
“China develops and operates space and counterspace capabilities as part of a military modernization strategy,” the US Space Force says on its website, while “Russia views space as a warfighting domain and believes space supremacy will be a decisive factor in future conflicts.”
US military officials have repeatedly warned the two countries are testing new offensive space capabilities, citing examples such as Russian satellite constellation training missions that Washington says could demonstrate “attack and defend tactics” for future combat and China’s development of a nuclear capable partial-orbit hypersonic missile.
It’s worthless. What are you gonna do throw solar panels?
You don’t need anything near that destructive. Even tiny grains intercepting other satellites at orbital speed will destroy them.
And the concept (hopefully just a concept) of Rods from God is terrifying.
it’s worse than that, it’s fucking stupid
If you want to know what’s terrifying it’s that Musk has the technology and capability to make it a reality today. The Starship rocker could deliver the rods to orbit and the fins and targeting systems used by the boosters for their landings could ensure they hit ‘close enough’ to their intended targets.
I mean put a 100lb tungsten rod in 1,000 satellites and they wouldn’t do “much” but surely they’d hit whatever they hit at a velocity that I cant see anyone countering shy of being in bunkers.
Not so much a matter of if as when. Sure, small things traveling quickly can do a lot of damage, but getting them to move quickly either takes a lot of force or a lot of time. Weapons generally aren’t things you want to wait weeks or months to see a result from firing at your target for.