America Considers Declassifying Military Information on US, Chinese, and Russian Space Programs (defensenews.com) 55
Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike quotes Defense News:
The U.S. Air Force's top civilian and a key member of Congress agreed Saturday on the need to declassify a large amount of information about America's military space programs to both intimidate foes and encourage support among the public. "Declassifying some of what is currently held in secure vaults would be a good idea," Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett said during a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum. "You would have to be careful about what we declassify, but there is much more classified than what needs to be."
Fellow panelist Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said he met with the secretary earlier in the week to discuss that very issue, calling the information on space programs "overwhelmingly classified." For Rogers, that overclassification is one of the reasons it's been so difficult for him and others to build support both in the public and with other members of Congress for a Space Force, a sixth branch of the military under the Air Force uniquely focused on space as a war-fighting domain.... "I don't think that can happen until we see significant declassification of what we're doing in space and what China and Russia are doing, and how space is in their day-to-day lives."
Barrett also argued that America's way of life "is more dependent on space than any other nation's. And our capability in space was predominantly built at a time when we thought space was a benign environment."
Fellow panelist Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said he met with the secretary earlier in the week to discuss that very issue, calling the information on space programs "overwhelmingly classified." For Rogers, that overclassification is one of the reasons it's been so difficult for him and others to build support both in the public and with other members of Congress for a Space Force, a sixth branch of the military under the Air Force uniquely focused on space as a war-fighting domain.... "I don't think that can happen until we see significant declassification of what we're doing in space and what China and Russia are doing, and how space is in their day-to-day lives."
Barrett also argued that America's way of life "is more dependent on space than any other nation's. And our capability in space was predominantly built at a time when we thought space was a benign environment."
Never Say Anything (Score:4, Insightful)
Satellite-based Psychotronic Microwave weapons (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think you were even there, whatever you thought you did was probably done by our Thai allies.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll mention here that the first step in keeping a secret is not letting anyone know that you have a secret.
Re: (Score:3)
But what about the "If I told you I'd have to kill you" guys? They just love saying that, and people love them saying it. It's like a job perk for having done classified work.
Note: Not me. At best I have "If I told you I'd have to go curl up in a ball and freak out about it" secrets.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, that's no longer accurate - there was a major policy change after the 9/11 attacks. Now it's "I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you first". I think it's based on Thomas Jefferson's old quip: "Two people can keep a secret, as long as one of them is dead".
Anyway, now you know.
Finding an excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
So a dose of Scary Reds Above our Beds (you cannot really be under the bed and in space) as well as "look what gung ho thingie we are building" are exactly what the doctor ordered.
Just another thing to move the doomsday clock closer to 12 midnight.
Re: (Score:2)
Fine by me. The good communist is a dead communist.
Do you realise that you will be dead too? A war fought in low orbit will bequeath the earth to the cockroaches.
All it takes to put a country into a stone age is one 1Mt nuke (3-4 for USA, 2 for China and 5-6 for Russia) in orbit. No grid. No cars (EMP will destroy ECUs on nearly all modern vehicles). No comms. No water - even if the grid survives, the SCADA controller which run the pumps and the chlorination will be all dead. No transport. No working agricultural machinery (ECUs dead). No...
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
An EMP is nowhere near as bad as you think. You've been watching Escape From LA.
Re: (Score:3)
An EMP is nowhere near as bad as you think.
People like to think of themselves as being sciencey, even if they can't picture the implications of an inverse square law. (hint: ying-yang)
Tractors with fried ECUs of course being already scattered across the landscape. If you're far enough away to avoid the blast damage, only the most sensitive (running) equipment might be damaged. People forget that induced EMF follows Faraday's Law, the coupling is path dependent. Even a powerful magnetic field is going to have substantially reduced coupling at a dista
Re: (Score:2)
Starfish Prime caused an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that was far larger than expected, so much larger that it drove much of the instrumentation off scale, causing great difficulty in getting accurate measurements. The Starfish Prime electromagnetic pulse also made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 898 miles (1,445 km) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights,[6] setting off numerous burglar alarms, and damaging a telephone company microwave link.[7] The EMP damage to the microwave link shut down telephone calls from Kauai to the other Hawaiian islands.[8]
This was in the days where nearly all electronics were lamp based and no car had an ECU. I do not subscribe to your optimism - the electrical harness present in every car is a pretty good "long antenna" to throw the induced current onto the ECU or any of the other control chippery. Nice long twisted bundles of cables which run along the whole car all the way from your rear bumper to t
Re: Finding an excuse (Score:2)
Starfish prime also knocked out a number of the very few satellites in orbit at the time AND high energy electrons from the blast were causing problems for satellites for 18 months afterwards.
Nukes in space detonated inside the magnetosphere are a spectacularly bad idea
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't optimism, it is Maxwell's Equations.
And look, if you think they're "twisted bundles of cables," you should expect that noise to mostly cancel.
Also, you're quoting wikipedia but you didn't pay attention and learn anything. Next time keep your fucking link, but read the material yourself instead. There is PDF linked as the citation for the 300 streetlamps. If you actually read that document, it will immediately become apparent that the risk is only to streetlights with a certain orientation to the bl
Re: (Score:2)
It's not going to fry all the cars, but it will fry power grid transformers, and that will be serious. And it will cause a percentage of cars to die on the freeway. Though the majority of them will start right back up, that's still a problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you explain how it will fry a transformer? It's two coils of wire on a laminated core, inside a steel can. It will be just fine.
Re: (Score:3)
Because the transformer is connected to a power line, which is effectively a long antenna. Or in this case, rectenna.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it's impressive how wrong you manage to be.
You vastly overestimate the area of effect for EMPs, and vastly underestimate the effect of even slight levels of shielding. Cars, houses, your computers and cell phones - all are almost guaranteed to continue working after an orbital nuke EMP goes off. Just as a simple example, when dozens cars were tested for EMP vulnerabilities, all but one was able to be started up right away... and these were all exposed to higher effects than an orbital EMP would prod
Re: (Score:3)
All it takes to put a country into a stone age is one 1Mt nuke (3-4 for USA, 2 for China and 5-6 for Russia) in orbit. No grid.
Have you heard of Solar flares? Yeah, very big nuke up there every day, and sometimes it gets wild. The people who actually operate the power grid are very concerned with this sort of disruption. Admittedly, it's worse when they can't see it coming, but most of the US power grid now has reasonable safety mechanisms in place as were about 20 years into "doing something about it".
An EMP in the 80s would have taken weeks or months to recover from, which would have gotten very rough. These days? Most of th
Re: Finding an excuse (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure that's true. I think it's a lot more peace-loving, tolerant, and understanding than most people think. But the people who have power stand to gain, and the worst of them would gladly sell out to the most evil, murderous, dictators because they themselves are such damaged human beings that they have to pay washed up porn stars to have sex with them.
Most people, and I mean most people every
Re: (Score:3)
Kind of funny thinking, when you stop to think about it. We are already at MAD mutual assured destruction, there is no more being more powerful than the other fellow, just being more MAD, so MADDD mutually assured destruction but our side comes with triple 'DDD' destruction, rather than just one serving of destruction.
All that US first strike policy, mind you the only country on the whole planet with a nuclear first strike policy, has done is to motivate every other country with the desire to get nukes to
Re: (Score:2)
Kind of funny thinking, when you stop to think about it. We are already at MAD mutual assured destruction,
The 80s were a long time ago. There are almost no ICBM silos left operational. Russia has very little left in the way of delivery systems. Oh, they have the technology, as does China, but the huge arsenals are long gone.
But carry on with the rant against the Reagan years you're clearly so attached to, if it makes you happy.
Re: (Score:2)
MAD didn't prevent us from fighting before — in Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea — and it does not prevent it today (Libya, Syria, Ukraine). The clear superiority of America's "conventional" weapons allows us to win battles with barely a scratch on our side [wikipedia.org]. This superiority is to be celebrated — and maintained, as is obvious to everyone, who is not rooting for the other side.
Re: (Score:2)
It's all US derangememt syndrome, that evils in the world can be tied to the US because you can trace an effect, and that becomes the controlling influence.
The world is not nice, and you have to deal with it as it is.
1. Most countries are dictatorship shitholes. They are shitholes because they are kleptocracies with massive corruption, and business can't do anything without permission and kickbacks. So it doesn't.
2. In the cold war, if the US didn't send aid, Russia would. This is money designed so dicta
Re: (Score:2)
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. "If we just talk to them, they will stop it." For f's sake, they torture and cut heads off to remain in power. Any weakness is taken advantage of.
Clowns sit safely in free countries and think that's the default state of things. This is 4D chess and all you have to do to lose is sit there and do nothing while they build and expand their RTS bases, minus the S. Wtf do you think that kind of game is simulating?
Hmmm...safe good people just have t
Re: Finding an excuse (Score:2)
you should pick the side you're on or at least, the side where you keep all your stuff.
Re: (Score:3)
The "Space Force" has nothing to do with troops or weapons in space.
It's entirely about putting all space resources under one branch, rather than having the Air Force manage these satellites, and the Navy those, but the Army gets that one, and the NSA has a whole bunch, and the NRO gets more, but then the DIA wanted some too, and of course the Marines needed something dedicated to them, and you can't forget the CIA!
In other words, you are completely off topic.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, it's a bad idea, but I'll get the popcorn. Russia and China are still smart enough to keep space militarization as quiet as possible.
Re: (Score:2)
(you cannot really be under the bed and in space)
Just as much of space is under your bed as is above it. Assuming it is flat, anyways.
Re: (Score:2)
(you cannot really be under the bed and in space)
Of course you can, space is just 12,756kms further away in that direction.
Re: Finding an excuse (Score:2)
doomsday clock closer to 12 midnight.
It's already past 12, we're just waiting for the click and flash. Smile and say cheese.
Hmmm (Score:2)
Hint: it will be the last one for a while.
And the big thing is that it doesn't take high tech systems other than launch vehicles. Load up a rocket with bags of sand, open then up in a retrograde orbit, and watch the fun.
If we're gonna do this, we better be prepared to lose a lot of things we take for granted, like GPS for one example.
Re: (Score:2)
If we're gonna do this, we better be prepared to lose a lot of things we take for granted, like GPS for one example.
Actually something GPS-like can work on a lot of orbits so even if one is contaminated we can probably find a different plane. Low earth orbit would also clear up in a human time frame. It's GEO that's the long term disaster. there's just one narrow band where you match earth's rotation and if we fuck up that we don't get another. But then if you're desperate enough to do that I'm thinking it'll be ICBMs flying and a whole lot of issues to deal with here on Earth. For example that the reason we can feed 7.6
Re: (Score:3)
If we're gonna do this, we better be prepared to lose a lot of things we take for granted, like GPS for one example.
Actually something GPS-like can work on a lot of orbits so even if one is contaminated we can probably find a different plane.
One of the first things I would do from a strategic standpoint would be to take out the geosynchronous orbital planes. Take away my enemies main location sensors, and I have scored a huge blow. On a related note, I laught at people who want to build a few large as possible nuclear power plants. I want my enemies to do exactly that. Makes my job of waging war easier. Knock out GPS and large swaths of Electrical power, and I'm halfway to victory.
Now all that being said, I'm all about keeping space war free
Re: (Score:3)
Load up a rocket with bags of sand, open then up in a retrograde orbit, and watch the fun.
If we're gonna do this, we better be prepared to lose a lot of things we take for granted, like GPS for one example.
It's actually pretty expensive to get a payload up to the semi-synchronous orbits GPS sats use. And because those orbits are so high, the volume of space nearby is huge. The most likely result of a few tons of sand is ... nothing. Once it spreads out enough that the occasional grain of sand hits something, the armor on those sats will handle it easily.
Low Earth Orbit is different. It's much easier to get a payload there, and everything is tightly packed. Everything designed to be there long term is als
Re: Hmmm (Score:2)
things we take for granted
GPS? What about electricity? The only thing that doesn't need electricity is fire, which you'll be sitting around since there won't be much to do other than survivong.
Re: (Score:2)
things we take for granted
GPS? What about electricity? The only thing that doesn't need electricity is fire, which you'll be sitting around since there won't be much to do other than survivong.
I was kinda keeping to the topic and noting that it really isn't that difficult to wreck the various orbital planes, and their uses. North Korea could easily do the bag of sand attack right now.
More of the same? (Score:3)
Thirty years ago much of the Apollo space suit technology was still classified. The reason given was that the Russians were using compressor based coolers and the Americans used Peltier effect devices. The excuse for keeping things secret was the Russians didn't have the up to date technology. The reality is the Russians had the technology, they just preferred their compressor based systems since they were very reliable.
That stupid spat resulted in NASA misrepresenting facts for their educational materials. One of the issues was "Q: what is the space suit used for" with "A: it helps keep astronauts warm in space". The real answer is that a 170W human in a perfect insulator is going to get very hot very fast and the heat has to be removed. The odd thing the real facts were released in other public documents and it was well know that Gene Cernan nearly died of heat exhaustion during the Gemini 9 EVA.
Re: (Score:3)
Peltier coolers are very reliable, but they are also less efficient than compressors. If you're willing to deal with the weight and bulk, a compressor is a reasonable choice. But it's not more reliable.
Re: (Score:2)
Chinese? (Score:2)
"America Considers Declassifying Military Information on US, Chinese, and Russian Space Programs "
Are the Chinese OK with that?
ut, but, but... (Score:2)
Go for broke. The world is in for a SHOCK (Score:2)