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Weapons in Space Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of SDI
- pdevr 2y agoJust want to point out that this is a free book. Direct link: [1]. Also, the real content is only a little over 200 pages. The rest is notes, references, and other resources. With the recent advancements in AI and space technology, space militarization may become the top existential threat we as human beings face, probably topping both climate change and the depletion of essential resources. [1] https://direct.mit.edu/books/book-pdf/2369358/book_9780262377386.pdf https://direct.mit.edu/books/book-pdf/2369358/book_978026237...
- metadat 2y agoIs there a mobi or epub version? My ebook reader can't handle PDFs, sadly (Lithium Pro on Android)
- pomian 2y agoWon't Firefox open that? And through fdroid there are pdf readers also.
- metadat 2y agoThey'll open it but not remember my place.
- waveBidder 2y agocalibre has a converter, though often that can get jank
- metadat 2y agoYes, I tried it once... Ultra Jank. Womp womp.
- whoopdedo 2y agoSDI was never meant to be deployed. It was a ruse to make the USSR overspend on weapons development. The research was real, and some new tech came from it. As well as lots of federal money paid to private contractors. But actually creating a "space shield" was a bluff.
- mitthrowaway2 2y agoHow do you know this? I haven't had time to read the book in the link. But I have talked to people who worked on the SDI project. They weren't, at the time, under the impression that it was a bluff, and were frustrated when it was shut down. The idea that making your strategic adversary overspend on weapons development might be a good thing also sounds like a post-hoc justification. An enemy who spends more resources on weapons is more dangerous, and places global stability in peril, even if you have invincible defences yourself. And all the more so if you don't have invincible defences because your research program was a bluff and never intended to be deployed in the first place!
- whoopdedo 2y agoI've also talked to a person who was in the Pentagon when some disks went "missing" from a room because it had poor locks on it. He had tried to tell someone that they were the wrong locks for the security level of the room but was told "that's not your business". Kissinger became aware during the SALT negotiations of how much the Soviets were misinformed about US nuclear capabilities, and that they tended to overestimate. That imbalance helped him negotiate those treaties. One can assume the State Dept. would want to keep that advantage if they could. The USSR was also concerned about how they would defend themselves against a Western attack. If they weren't they wouldn't be making these treaties. Everyone assumed that if war broke out both sides would be wiped out. The point of the arms race wasn't to win in a war, it was to see who would fold first. Don't forget that "SDI" was an umbrella. If you had some project and could slap that tag on it you were guaranteed a substantial contract for it. That you could get away with promising an arbitrary delivery date made it that much more of a cash cow. And the Pentagon was fine with that since it would never need to be finished. It only had to look convincing.
- wbl 2y agoWith the cost of launch so low does Brilliant Pebbles become affordable again?
- virtue3 2y agoextremely, probably. But then again - lets imagine having a few thousand missiles in space that are remotely controllable. So any nation state actor(maybe less) could conceivably take them over and retarget them at a whim. That sounds fun.
- m4rtink 2y agoBriliant pebbles were in-soace missile interceptors. You could perhaps use them to strike satellites or space stations but as designed, they would not reach the ground.
- HarryHirsch 2y agoStarlink is Brilliant Pebbles.
- briandw 2y agoIt's not a directed energy weapon like many of the SDI program ideas, but the US Navy got it's first live ballistic missile intercept recently. https://news.usni.org/2024/04/15/sm-3-ballistic-missile-interceptor-used-for-first-time-in-combat-officials-confirm https://news.usni.org/2024/04/15/sm-3-ballistic-missile-inte...
- 2rsf 2y agoAnd many others were intercepted by Israeli Arrow missiles.
- throwaway11460 2y agoThat's a very different class of target. Israel is not intercepting anything that measures velocity in km/s.
- amenhotep 2y agoThey have been scoring exoatmospheric interceptions on missiles fired at them from Yemen. What velocity do you think those targets had?
- jibe 2y agoThe Israel Defense Forces (IDF) estimate the missile traveled over 1,500 kilometers from Iran to Israel in roughly 12 minutes, reaching a speed of approximately 7,500 km/h, or roughly Mach 6. The ~100 Emad ballistic missiles Iran fired would be in in that class.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- unixhero 2y agoGlobal Defence Initiative selected
- Rinzler89 2y agoUnited Citizen Federation
- unixhero 2y agoIon cannon ready
- temporarely 2y agoreddit this way -> www.reddit.com
- fakedang 2y agoWe fight for Nod! The oppressors must die!
- throwaway13337 2y agoThe scary thing with the future of weapons is that they seem to increase plausible deniability thus changing the game theory equation to one of more aggression. The basic tenant of a lot of the games we play are of attributing past actions to another agent. If there is no attribution, playing fair makes less sense. Hacking, media manipulation ops, and commodity drones can be used in a way that does not reveal the origin. That means that there cannot be retribution or, more perversely, it can mean incorrect attribution and retribution. This lowers the cost of aggressive acts substantially. I don't have a solution to it but I hope there is one.
- simmerup 2y agoWonder if anyone can comment on how this played out in other periods where states could maintain large plausible deniability, like when we it was normal to hire privateers to interfere with other nations trade? Maybe if people move towards the actions with plausible deniability, it reduces the risk of major (attributable) action being taken
- holonsphere 2y agoCryptography + guerrila warfare go hand and hand. AI too if you'd believe it. Look to history. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1566253522001580 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S156625352...
- sorokod 2y agoPrivateers had to be officially sanctioned by a state (e.g. letter of marque). Don't think that plausible deniability was an expected benefit.
- Yeul 2y ago(Personally I'm biased. The batshit insane Christian nationalists in America scare me more than the Chinese. There's a ideological rift between Western Europe and the US that few people truly appreciate. The things Republicans say are just not normal). In the cold war we were all saved by de-escalation and SALT. The US going on record that they want to strangle the Chinese leads to inevitable conflict. A
- throwaway11460 2y agoThe batshit insane Christian nationalists are still way less batshit insane than the New Chinese Man racists.
- nebula8804 2y agoDepends on if you are on the receiving end of their ire (ie. Minorities and non-Christians)
- throwaway11460 2y agoEvery non-Chinese (and many Chinese, too) is on the receiving end of the New Chinese Man crazies. The Christian crazies are mostly isolationists - I am not in the US so I don't care much.
- 1986 2y ago"mostly isolationists" except for wanting to kick off a war in the Middle East so Jesus can come back
- bilbo0s 2y agoI am not in the US so I don't care much. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but if that be the case, why should Americans "care much" about anything not in the US? Just saying, you can't expect to get what you yourself won't even give.
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- dorothycleary 2y ago[flagged]