The lead story at Military.com covers the Navy’s shoot down of the errant spy satellite and by all indications, it appears the shot went off without a hitch. Here’s the AP video news coverage:
Noteworthy is the fact that the missile didn’t have a warhead. Now whether it was about the hydrazine or the possible compromise of spy tech is another matter … and one that seems somewhat moot now. In any case, a DT high five to the Pacific Fleet blackshoes who pulled this feat off.
– Ward
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Now we know it works, lets expand on this.
Great job, kudos to missile ship crew & Missile Team.
Great job.
Ward -
Most missile defense interceptors don’t have warheads. When your collision velocity is in the high single digits of kilometers per second, momentum does all the work. Kinetic energy of this impact was equivalent to ~200lbs of TNT. Who needs an extra 10 pounds of explosive taking up valuable payload mass?
Great Job to the Contractors and Defense Companies too….
The space weapons race is on. I now believe that the chinese only attacked that sat because they knew the US was modifying SM-3 missiles for the same task.
Just like the russians and the space race. Our tech is better, but their spies are betterthan ours.
Hey man, Nice shot!
HAHA now the chicoms want data on the navy strike.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080221073800.tgg06ozy&show_article=1
like they would every give up information on their asat strike. im sure if bilary was in charge she would sell it to them for the campaign coffers.
Shouldn’t this title be
China 1, US 1?
Since they both smacked down both their own satellites?
I like how he named the vessel, pride of the sailors and all. – plus that’s where I live so it’s kinda cool.
The good thing about the US here is that we don’t know just how Good our spies really are -they might be great!
The bad thing about the US here is that we don’t know just how Bad our spies really are – they might suck!
So maybe our spies are better… maybe not. But you just never really hear about it at my (low) level.
Actually Foreign Boy if you count it that way it would be China 1 US 2 since we already destroyed one in the 1980s
you guys are amazing. kudos for shooting down a billion dollar failure? And chicoms? welcome to 1956, sintax.
Space race is on? I think China basically launched Sputnik last year, and we – by comparison – just put the finishing touches on the ISS.
I’d argue that our sea-launched, 10-second launch window, direct-hit of an object in decaying orbit, with a standard missile with only software mods EASILY trumps China’s ground-based, 24-hour launch window, direct-hit of a object in stationery orbit, with a dedicated ASAT weapon.
In fact, I think we just proved that our billions of dollars in the missile shield has successfully developed … a missile shield.
Given the dynamics, what’s the difference between that satellite and an ICBM?
How can this be? As we’ve been told time and time again by DefenseTech, missile defense spending is an utter waste of time and money.
Politics aside, Thats gonna be a heck of a battle star on the side of the USS Lake Erie. I wonder if the crew will attach a broom to her mast when she sails into Pearl?
This is just great! Why can’t we take all this wasted money on this successful defense technology project that make offensive nuclear weapons questionably useful and dump the billions of dollars into failure social programs and wealth redistribution schemes? I for one want to know why can’t we just learn to stick our heads in the sand with dignity and like our intellectually superior friends. (fallingdumbbombbucket or whatever) After all it would be less offensive to everyone. Maybe the Chinese won’t be forced to steal our technology and we won’t have to continue to finance the rebuilding of Russia’s Northern fleet through misappropriated treaty funds. That’s it, a new treaty. That will fix everything!
You know, its just these kinds of in-your-face successes that turns everyone again us Americans. If we defend ourselves it will only make matters worse?
2 ways to minimize this success:
1. The SM3 is only one small success in the on-going arms race that existed long before the cold war.
2. Considering the SM3 is only one piece of the multi-layered ABM systems now in development, our foes should take comfort in the fact that we haven’t been able to shrink the anti-matter death ray to a usable platform, yet.
Didn’t they originally have to postpone the launch because of a rough sea state?
Thanks for the detail, Jim. And dig the Filter reference, Grandjester. Rock on.
What’s the need for an expensive & extensive GMD network when the Aegis equipped destroyers can do the same?
What can the GMD do that the Aegis system cannot?
freefallingbomb
you are right. however just because the chinese are capitialist. doesnt mean that all the sudden we are best friends. i mean the nazis embraced capitialism. the reality is that the chinese are using every method possible to steal american military tech for a future war for tawian. dont believe me? check this out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11R5Pgrivko
story on feb 8 chinese spy tries to steal tech from a c-17
http://www.ocregister.com/money/chung-china-chinese-1983494-space-technology
people say that have problems understanding chinas long term military and politcal goals. i say actions speak louder then words.
Congrats to a job well done to the US Navy.
Good shot, good kill. I worked on that project back in the late ’90s and knew we had something that was going to work, even with the usual fits and starts.
As for the America as Chinese province commentary, I’d point out the obvious – if there was no America to rail against, it’d be hard to whip the proletariat into shape with visions of taking on the Great American boogeyman. Same deal with Russia. Anyways, gonna be a mighty interesting Summer Olympics. Kinda hard to whitewash the streets with that many foreigners around…
To the poster “slntax”: You wrote: “The reality is that the Chinese are using every method possible to steal American military tech for a future war with Taiwan. Dont believe me?”
and
“I say actions speak louder then words”
You’re a classical victim of what I call “the chicken-thief syndrome”: If you spot a typical bum reaching into a fine dressed shopper’s pockets (wanting money for food) you reflexively howl “Grab that thief!”, but if you read for example a headline in a shop-window saying that your company’s or your bank’s etc. famous W.A.S.P. C.E.O. retired, quit or even got fired for incompetence, with a 100 million dollar pension (“compensation”), you don’t even think a single second about it and stroll on leisurely, minding your own life.
Your revolt against “Chinese spies” only reveals the same grass-root perspective:
1) In the ’60s the U.S.A. kick-started Japan’s post-War economical ascent (creating a chimera in the process) by placing large orders to the oozing Japanese heavy industry (ammunition and other items for the Vietnam War, because of their favourable geographical location and low wages, back then). In the following decades, the Japanese were initially accused of manufacturing only cheapish, kitschy, sloppy, short-lived goods, especially of being “copy cats” of every possible Western gadget. Today, I believe, the U.S.A. wouldn’t really mind trading all their industrial secrets and patents for the Japanese ones. Do the Japanese spy on the U.S.A. or… the other way around? Things change…
Lesson learned, lesson forgotten, now the U.S.A. insist on repeating the same mistake with China too. Their economical miracle is still only 20 years young, therefore China STILL can’t compete honestly with U.S. American, European or even with Japanese quality products (which include, as you pointed out, weapons = top technology), relying on huge outputs of cheap goods instead, exploiting especially the “advantage” of their own ultra-low wages. That’s why it still makes ( EXTREMELY short-sighted…) sense for the U.S.A., for Europe and for Japan to outsource the production of all labour-intensive, low-tech stuff (“slave work”) to China, retaining only the design bureaus and labs in their countries of origin. But Chinese genes are the same as Japanese genes, their perfectionism is the same, only their History was different. The Chinese are also 10,4 times more people (= a larger internal market that helps national companies grow and evolve before going abroad) and China itself is 25,4 times bigger than Japan (= more material autarky = more political independence + more price stability, etc.). And on the day the Chinese know exactly as much as the Japanese do, they’ll be even MORE advanced and richer than the Japanese, because their bigger critical mass allows them to engage in MORE large national projects of ANY nature! In simple words: Having the same knowledge, the Chinese will have the same QUALITY , but simultaneously MORE QUANTITY OF IT than the Japanese!
Maybe that explains too how the first Chinese A.S.A.T. test-shot was an immediate success…
But who is fomenting = worsening this “game”, helping the Chinese to become that very monster that’s going to destroy all our descendants’ – even the Japanese’s! – life-styles and perspectives, in the next two or three generations?
Mainly YOU U.S. Americans (again…), YOUR OWN elected, “loving”, “patriotic”, “impeccable”, “born again” politicians to be precise (“the people’s democratic representatives, throbbing with Fatherland Love”), each time they give the Chinese unfair trade advantages: From constantly pardoning instead of confiscating imports in excess of the agreed quotas to agreeing to trade IMbalances and different trade rules in the first place to not forcing them to reduce highly CO2-emitting industries the way we do, etc. etc. etc., and all this under the immutable spell of the “sanctity, infallibility and untouchability of Capitalism”!
I can’t even MENTALLY CONCEIVE what drives your politicians to deprive their own nation, even their own personal kids and everybody else too potentially of a future (of a survival?), when every small man on the street already understood the absurdity of this course!!!
(Same goes for that other open secret called the “North American Union” too…)
What, do you think, is this all leading up to?
So, before (unjustly or impulsively) accusing any Chinese Commerce Attach
Can someone please help me remember why it was that we saved the French (twice) last century?
If the French would stick to their strengths: food, wine, and lovemaking we’d be far better off as a whole than when they fiddle with things they are just so demonstrably awful: engineering, politics, and warfighting. (Veuillez me pardonner, Byron.)
Freefallingbomb is a perfect example of why I love France but so often just can’t stand the French. He/She is likely just a clacqeur for the PCF; IOW just a useful idiot for the Communist Party in France.
Are you are anything like the KKE (Communist Party of Greece) stooges I knew when I lived in Greece? Arrogant little gobshites whose primary achievements were plastering the towns with snazzy posters, spray painting the hammer-and-sickle everywhere, and being generally uncivilized at rallies and marches. Mind you, among all the invective about the horrors of capitalist society, the evil that is America, and the promise of a Worker’s Paradise, among all these these things what stands out is the image of youths singing the Internationale in their designer clothes, smoking Marlboros, and driving BMWs.
Cheers Comrades,
Chief B.
re: Freefallingbomb
Your rather a bit mouthy for a citizen of a post-colonial has-been country that hasn’t won a battle since Napoleon, builds crappy cars, has the WORST airport in the world (CDG), and lives in fear of Arab branleurs.
On top of all this the French are rude and do not shower frequently!
Vous p
A (literally?) CRUSTY U.S. American just scorned my impeccable French hygienic habits and refined toiletterie accessories, saying: “On top of all this the French are rude and do not shower frequently!”. Now I’m miffed:
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/050921_dirty_hands.html
http://www.webmd.com/news/20060828/2-out-of-3-americans-dont-wash-hands
Son, don’t go near the Cowboys
Please stay away.
Son, don’t go near the Cowboys.
Please do what I say…