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The US military is looking to outfit Starlink, Kuiper and other commercial LEO satellite constellations with hypersonic missiles, for an on-demand kill of any s
by perigee58 7y ago
The US military is looking to outfit Starlink, Kuiper and other commercial LEO satellite constellations with hypersonic missiles, for an on-demand kill of any spot on Earth within 90 seconds. Project has been in the works for nearly two decades but the exponential reduction in cost per kg to LEO has made this nightmare finally fully viable.
See Space Development Agency under the newly minted Space Force for more information.
- dirtyid 7y agoThis seems like the kind of space weaponization that's in every significant geopolitical players interest to ban. Ditto with conjectures that cost-effective commercial launches makes SDI satellite missile defense viable. It's just going to encourage all the players to go all-in on ASAT, park SLBMs near each others coasts while racing to a constellation of hypersonic missiles of their own. The last thing US wants to do is encourage China / Russia to hit any spot in mainland US in 90s. Or anyone for that matter, it's way too destabilizing for all parties involved.
- NotSammyHagar 7y agoyes, it's incredibly destabilizing if you worry in 2 minutes all your bases and defenses could be destroyed, leading to accidentally launches. In the cold war it almost happened by accident (launch or we'll lose our ability to respond!) multiple times. Short time to react just makes it much much worse!
- NotSammyHagar 7y agoDo you have any evidence, or links? They would have to be really tiny missiles, so it's not really possible today. Also you couldn't just hide stuff easily in the starlink constellation because they are always moving around.