Was The Military's Shooting Of Satellite A Veiled Test Of Space Weaponry?

New York Times:

Videotape of the Navy mission to shoot down a dying spy satellite made available Thursday shows an interceptor missile ascending atop a bright trail of burning fuel, and then a flash, a fireball, a plume of vapor. A cloud of debris left little doubt that the missile had squarely hit its mark as the satellite spent its final days orbiting more than 130 miles above the Pacific Ocean.

A different kind of doubt still lingers, though, expressed by policy analysts, some politicians and scientists, and not a few foreign powers, especially China and Russia:

Should the people of the world be breathing a sigh of relief that the risk of a half-ton of frozen, toxic rocket fuel landing who knows where has passed? Or should they be worried about the latest display of the United States' technical prowess, and see it as a thinly veiled test for a shadow antisatellite program?

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[knowhelpnow]

Wow are we still trying to fool the fools?
You know the saying you can fool some of the people some of the time, but I'm thinking that you can't fool us all all of the time.

A test of course.

[ibsteve2u]

At the risk of stating the obvious, the plan is long range, highly accurate weaponry where possible, and effective air and ground combat fighting vehicles where not.

The kicker - and the danger - lies in the fact that the eventual goal is that each weapon system should be unmanned.

Why danger?

Can you imagine what a Bush/Cheney duo - or their future clones - would/will do to the world if they can pull the trigger on an invasion force without immediately putting real, live Americans into the line of fire?

And I take risks in assuming that even a Bush/Cheney clone would only use such unmanned, apolitical weaponry against the rest of the world.

[Kungfublood]

No a "veiled" test of space weaponry happened when Japan launched a more powerful spy satellite (than the us was willing to put up with)and the U.S. followed with a new launch of it's own- a space electronics weapons platform and tested it by knocking out the electronics of the Japanese satellite.

[NCDog]

Do you have a source for this theory?

[gangsterofboatsiv]

No this was not a veiled test of Space Weaponry.

It was a very openly revealed test of Space Weaponry.

[NCDog]

Actually it was a gamble, but the chance of a hydrazine tank hitting the ground somewhere, and causing a public relations nightmare, out weighed the probability of intercept failure.
Which would you choose?

[research]

You believe anything from BushCo? What about the self destruct that all satellite have? If the tank was full, why is it being de-orbited.

Could be just what they said, I doubt it.

[Robespierre]

Cat got an ass? Of course it was a veiled test!

[WilliamWallace]

Most Bush-isms are "veiled". Since these NeoCons sport instant wood at the thought of anything shooting down or blowing up anything.......

I'd think so.

[Miamiman]

I for one am Proud to be an American and proud that we have the technology. I could care less what the Russians or Chinese think...

[WilliamWallace]

I'm happy to be an American as well, but that emotion has nothing to do with how big our missile is.

If our American pride is based on how much we can vaporize, we have a big problem.

[Kungfublood]

we have a small problem...

[misterstudebaker]

"Was The Military's Shooting Of Satellite A Veiled Test Of Space Weaponry?"

Gee, YA THINK? Gads what a stupid freakin' headline. OF COURSE IT WAS. The Chinese blasted one of theirs to flinders, so OF COURSE the pencildicks at the pentagon got their knickers in a twist "OH! WELL WE HAVE TO BE ABLE TO BLOW UP SATELLITES TOO!"

Gads, I don't know who is stupider, the American gov't or the American public.

[rroy]

I don't have the time(or maybe the intellect)to be well informed about all of the things going on in the world and being covered by the press,but I feel I should give myslef credit for asking questions that are so often unasked and unanswered.
And that is,why did the extremely remote possibility of potentialy harmful fuel falling to earth with the sattalite come to light so long after discussions of shooting it down started?

And,this most certainly is not the first sattalite to suffer orbital decay or failure,so why was this never an issue before?

I can't help but get the feeling the M.I.C.considers the public a bunch of naive fools who will believe anything they're told.

[DelvinMcGee]

What the chinese loving conspiracy theorists here fail to realize or mention is that we have had the technology (and have used it) to shoot down satellites since the early 1980's

[WilliamWallace]

"chinese-loving"?.......OMG...hahaha. Out come the labels, baby.

[stupidme]

While they're at it, would they please destroy all of the Cell Phone satellites.

[WilliamWallace]

I love it, and couldn't agree more.

[rwe]

we know this post is thinly veiled contempt for the USA and the military , as usual.. Grasp this huffhos... The sattellite did have to be blown up and the USA was demonstrating its military prowess ... Once again anything that shows the USA and its military with success is the antithesis of the moonbat prograssive mantra

[MajorKong]

Pardon me for being a wee bit skeptical about the hydrazine cover story. F-16s fly over populated areas all the time with hydrazine in their EPUs (Emergency Power Units).

I'm sure this had absolutely nothing to do with testing the ASAT capability of the SM-3 missile. No sir. Not one bit.

< rolls eyes >

[NCDog]

Major, you are right about the hydrazine, but don't you think the importance of bringing this bird down was more about what type of satellite it was i.e. a recon bird?

[WilliamWallace]

Please save it, missile-chubby. Being Progressive has nothing much to do with weapons-addiction, and I'm ok with that ;)

[Kungfublood]

"Thinly Veiled"? Yes those are the words that reveal how you can still call your self a republican after all Bush has done to ruin the party and the nation.

[lastams]

Veiled?
I don't think there was anything veiled about it.
If the fuel tank had by some miracle landed intact in someone’s back yard (odds placed at several million to one) and that person had stuck his face in the hydrazine fuel, he might have gotten sick. Boy, now there's a threat!
One wonders when the navy will start shooting at all the chemical tankers parked along our rail system.
So, of course it was a demonstration of our ability to shoot down a satellite; to whose benefit one can only guess. I imagine however that defense contractors were besides themselves with glee. In the war on terror we'll now have Virginia Class Submarines AND a space defense system.
I feel safer already.

[NotALib]

And if that satelite had landed on a school in say, Moscow, Shanghai, or maybe the West Bank, and killed 300 children....then what would have happened? The odds of this happening are slim, as you said-several million to 1, but it's still not worth the risk if you can break it apart to prevent that possibility.

You people(Huffpo liberals) are so filled with anger and distrust that you can't think like a reasonable person.

"it was a demonstration of our ability to shoot down a satellite; to whose benefit one can only guess"
To the benefit of every citizen in the US, being able to defend this country is a GOOD thing, no matter how much you libs hate it.

I remember this site discussing how hitting a bullet with a bullet was an impossible pipe dream and we were waisting money developing the technology.......you're all hate filled idiots.

[MajorKong]

So by your logic we never should have been launching satellites for the last 50 years because we didn't have the capability to shoot them down.

After all, there was a slim chance one of them could have come down on a school in Moscow and we would have been helpless to prevent it since we had no ASAT capability.

It's not worth the risk, since we could have prevented the possibility by never launching the satellite in the first place.

[konchster]

Gee Whiz, Sparky you think ?

[Silpat]

Why do some Americans doubt our military, yet accept anything other country's piss out of their mouths?

[MilwaukeeDan]

Silpat, lets see you use this missile to bring peace to Afghanistan and Iraq, then you will impress me with your military prowess. Maybe Americans doubt the military because the United States wasted 54,000(?) American lives in Vietnam and 4,000 in Iraq and Trillions of dollars with no results to show for it. Almost true, the communist Vietnamese are making Nike shoes for us.

[MajorKong]

Because the civilian leadership of the military are still the people Colin Powell referred to as "Those f*cking crazies at the Pentagon".

[MilwaukeeDan]

MK, at least Powell got that right.

[lastams]

It's not the "military" we doubt.
But the military / industrial complex is another matter entirely.
For instance, it wasn't enough to award the Virginia Class submarine contract to ONE shipyard; no we had to pay TWO yards to build them. What's a few billion here or there, when Bin Laden might get a navy?
And why outfit our military with explosion proof vehicles from South Africa or anti RPG wepons from Israel when our OWN defense contractors will be able to have them in five or six years?
No, it's not the military per se that we distrust; it's the contractors making a buck off them, and star war technology has been the cherry on their sunday.

[NotALib]

Remember the New Deal??? That was nothing more than government spending on projects which was supposed to stimulate the economy and provide jobs.

Which is exactly what the military / industrial complex provides.

[WilliamWallace]

A wee generalization, Sil.