By: Joe Buff

Joe Buff — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 21:24:58 +0000

Ellie Cook does a thorough and readable job summarizing the very volatile Cold War II environment right now in and around Earth orbit. Who will be first to overtly weaponize space? One can argue that Russia and China have already begun to do so, with Beijing’s FOBS test and Moscow”s Sputnuke R&D. In that case the U.S. with America’s Iron Dome is simply trying to keep up with the adversaries, rather than fueling an “arms race” ourselves. Sadly, humanity has seen repeated examples of major nations arms racing each other with new weapons technology used in new ways and/or in new domains. Witness the invention of the tank in WWI to defeat enemy machine guns, followed by repeated leapfrogging of tank versus antitank. Likewise, it didn’t take that long to go from America’s Manhattan Project to the nuclear-standoff tensions of early Cold War I. Submarines and anti-submarine warfare have also leapfrogged each other for over a century now, with no end in sight to this particular crucial defense contest. Now the new domain is space, and the weaponization might or might not soon involve conventional weaponry based on orbit, and even covert or overt nuclear weapons based “out in the black.” Prior efforts to restrict weaponry via national bans (e.g., medieval Japan with their ban on firearms) or international treaties (INF, MIRV ban, Open Skies, etc.) have sooner or later fallen apart. Personally I expect that the China+Russia “friends without limits” are studying and preparing for maneuver warfare in space. Given the extreme spacecraft velocities possible “out in the Expanse,” combined with the substantial transit times over the vast ranges-to-target of even lightspeed comms and directed energy weapons blasts, nuclear warheads used well away from Earth orbit as “super proximity fusing” — some foreseeable, far off day — could too easily enter the fray of solar system militarized geopolitics. U.S. Government arms controllers have their work cut out for them. So does the U.S. Space Force.

By: George J Kamburoff

George J Kamburoff — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 15:42:01 +0000

Darned interesting. We are back in the Cold War, (I hope), but this one is more scary because Kim is as crazy as Our Rumpy.

Comments on: Donald Trump’s Iron Dome

By: Joe Buff

By: George J Kamburoff