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.
I mean, it’s not like a bunch of Starlink satellites couldn’t be a weapon if you really wanted them to be. Adjust course just enough and boom, no more target.
Starlink satellites are in LEO, and in order to hit anything in a higher orbit, would need way too much delta-V for the amount of propellant that they carry. Otherwise you’d need to be very lucky to have one within striking distance when a launched object crosses the LEO boundary.
I think they mean ground targets, deorbit and slap whatever you want. They’d probably burn up and disintegrate before hitting the ground though.
You ain’t wrong, but, y’know, read all of my post there.
And my response still stands. Adjustments that can be made with on-board propellant, for ANY satellite, is far smaller than you seem to think. There’s a lot of room out there around Earth for orbits, and only so many that are actually under US government control. A laser (or particle beam weapon) would be able to extend a satellite’s reach far better, and generates less debris that would cause more problems down the line.
Right, and I never disagreed with you in the first place, as proven:
Also,
So are you just talking to talk…?
It doesnt have to me a gun or missile to be a weapon, starlink massively invades privacy, is used for survalience, and used to deny certain countries access to information while sharing it with others.
I think they use starlink to help coordinate airstrikes just because they are like 90% of the satelites in space.
They are also just cluster up the sky to the point its going to become increasingly hard to launch more and more satellites in space.