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> guidance with GPS This sounds like a major liability, GPS is an extremely brittle and vulnerable system--you'd only need one or a small handful of nuclear wa

> guidance with GPS This sounds like a major liability, GPS is an extremely brittle and vulnerable system--you'd only need one or a small handful of nuclear warheads detonated in space to knock it out completely. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-happens-if-a-nuclear-weapon-goes-off-in-space/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-happens-if-a... OTOH it would be so much easier now to develop a celestial navigation system that works optically than it was back in the 1950s.

bartonfink 2y ago
lmao at equating "extremely brittle and vulnerable" with "susceptible to multiple nuclear missiles shot to geostationary orbit". thanks for the chuckle.
- jcgrillo 2y ago
  If you (a superpower) deploy a bunch of GPS dependent equipment, and I (another nuclear power) am fighting you--and I'm less dependent on GPS--why would I not destroy GPS immediately, given that it's not very hard? EDIT: Destroying GPS completely with nukes lobbed into space isn't the only way to mess it up either, it's susceptible to more terrestrial electronic countermeasures as well. It's generally not a good idea to depend on GPS alone, you need other backups as well. Pilots know this It's why they fly with a paper chart and a compass as well as GPS. EDIT: Also, if my opening move is nuking space, I don't just deny you GPS, I also deny you all your other space-based advantages. I'd guess that would be one of the very first things any nuclear adversary of the US would do, because the damage is so asymmetric.