The White House’s national security adviser said Wednesday that he had already scheduled a classified meeting with congressional leadership before a top House Republican requested that President Joe Biden declassify all information that relates to serious national security threat.
An anti-satellite nuclear weapon would likely be something that would generate an electromagnetic pulse.
In 2018, there was talk about Russia developing a submarine to deliver a 100 megaton nuclear bomb to generate a 300 foot tsunami wave.
Russia as a military and economic country is basically like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan combined but a Pakistan with 40 to 100 times the nuclear capability. Russia and Saudi Arabia have comparable levels of combined oil and gas production.
For decades, Russia has had advanced nuclear weapon capability and has had all kinds of nuclear weapon concepts, space capability and hypersonic missile concepts.
The US-military industrial complex would want to maximize concern about Russia to justify more funding for Ukraine. The Senate passed a $95 billion bill to provide military funding and support to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
New York Times: 'A current and a former U.S. official said the new intelligence was related to Russia’s attempts to develop a space-based antisatellite nuclear weapon… Current and former officials said the nuclear weapon was not in orbit.' https://t.co/OiX1ub394N
— JgaltTweets (@JgaltTweets) February 14, 2024
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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If I were Musk and he did this, I would put a couple of Brilliant Pebbles on every Starlink and let Space Force handle the battle management. It would quickly obsolete Russia’s ICBM and SLBM forces. The sheer number of Starlink’s would make them immune to an ASAT attack. They would become more costly to destroy than their instruments of destruction. It would bleed Russia dry to try.
Also, with the mass budget of Starship, you could shield and harden the piss out of everything.
So this announcement is based on a scheme by the industrial/military complex to get more money for Ukraine? Brian, what team are you and Trump playing for? This statement is presented with no evidence and has the strong aroma of a pizza gate conspiracy. Do you think that our alliance in NATO is also questionable?
My recommendation, as commandant of the air force of near peer (Russia) or lesser foe (Iran), would be to scatter several hundred tons of pea gravel in whichever orbits were of concern…. upon initial hostilities. Actually, just dump pea gravel, maybe fishtank gravel, in every orbit and make artificial satellites impractical for the next 10,000 years…. An old SCUD could put a ton of gravel into orbit. You got a hundred of them? Then you can level the playing field.
A Scud couldn’t put its empty self into orbit.
It would be interesting to model the result of orbital nuclear EMP attacks on Starlink/Starshield. SpaceX has a lot of capability to route around and repair damage and any single EMP nuke would just punch a hole in the network – which is literally a net of laser links between internet nodes that can route data packets around gaps.
Many years ago, it was my job to estimate the “hardness” of US satellites to Soviet nukes in space. The big threat was not EMP but shock produced by the deposition of low energy x-rays in the first few microns of a satellite. Imagine. 1E12 watts/ cm2 of 1kev x/rays being deposited in 30 nano seconds. It is a huge impact. As if the entire satellite was hit by a huge hammer. Military satellites are hardened by coating them with A low Z layer to reduce the shock. Explosion to satellite distances of over 1000 were considered.
One can estimate the problem by assuming a 1 MT bomb and 75% of that is low energy Xrays and the emission time is 20 nanoseconds. Anything over 4Joules/cm2 could cause damage
Fascinating comment. Some little math that put it into perspective:
my $yield = 1000; kT of TNT;
my $kton = 4.184×10¹²; J/kT definition;
my $energy = $yield • $kton;
my $xray = $energy × 0.75;
foreach my $km ( 1, 3, 10, 30, 100, 300, 1000, 3000 ) kilometers
{
my $dist = 1000 × $km;
my $sphere = ⁸⁄₃ • PI • $dist •• 2; area;
my $intensity = $xray / $sphere;
my $watts = $intensity ÷ 25×10⁻⁹; 25 nanosecond pulse;
my $jcm = $intensity ÷ 100 × × 2; J/cm²;
printf “%4d km sp E %.0f J/m² W %.0f W/cm² %.2f J/cm²\n”, $km, $intensity, $watts/10000, $jcm;
next;
}
——–— OUTPUT ——————————————————————–—
1 km sp E 374571159 J/m² W 1498284634267 W/cm² 37457.12 J/cm²
3 km sp E 41619018 J/m² W 166476070474 W/cm² 4161.90 J/cm²
10 km sp E 3745712 J/m² W 14982846343 W/cm² 374.57 J/cm²
30 km sp E 416190 J/m² W 1664760705 W/cm² 41.62 J/cm²
100 km sp E 37457 J/m² W 149828463 W/cm² 3.75 J/cm²
300 km sp E 4162 J/m² W 16647607 W/cm² 0.42 J/cm²
1000 km sp E 375 J/m² W 1498285 W/cm² 0.04 J/cm²
3000 km sp E 42 J/m² W 166476 W/cm² 0.00 J/cm²
Looks like you would want to be at LEAST 100 km away from a 1 MT bomb in space, to be at-or-below the 4 J/cm² criterion. Right? At least that’s how the math worked out.
Thanks again
Looks reasonable. The 1000 to 3000 km distance was for a Soviet nuclear pumped X-ray laser that put 1e14 watt/cm2 on the satellite.
I hesitate to o do the actual calculation even using unclassified yields and fluencies cuz last time I did I got in trouble when I said my result was unclassifieed
100km is actually not that big of an area. Space is big even in LEO and there are thousands of Starlinks in orbit. The real damage would be what the EMP does to whatever is on the ground below the explosion.
Ok, lets analyze this article. Russia is a third world country, w/an economy based almost entirely on petroleum. When was the last time you wanted to buy something “cool” just because it was “made in Russia”. Don’t hold your breath thinking. No, gang the ONLY way Russia matters at all, is it’s got more nukes then other other nation on Earth. Including mine.
Hell, the USA is the largest producer of all petroleum products on Earth. Did you know that? Do your homework before you only graze at the trough of Fox News… Never forget being ignorant, is sometimes a deliberate choice. If your afraid of hearing what yo don’t want to.
Yes, Russia does have very advanced technologies, that could devastate us if they attacked us. Never underestimate your enemy, no matter how self absorbed and pathological they are. (Remind you of anyone?) Dictators do not have checks and controls multiple branch’s of state do have. They DON’T have anyone to say: ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?
This is what makes those in power who think “Oh I’m so great, I’m so wonderful, God “TELLS” me to be God on Earth. Why dictators are so dangerous is not that they think their better then everyone else. It’s because they DON’T THINK THERE IS ANYONE ELSE. And s***, is this so scary.
TDS patient.
Have you ever been to an actual third world country?
Oh yes, several, and Russia is one of them. Any questions?
I think this is just a distraction play, I fear Russia about as much as I fear my sisters Shih Tzu.
Even if Russia has developed a space EMP, our government has satellites that can withstand the pulse. Even if they wipe out every single satellite in orbit, the US government will go into overdrive to launch up new ones, and no country can match the US in launch capacity, in large part thanks to SpaceX.
Plus them doing so could lead to M.A.D., Putin may be a bit crazy, but he has no death wish.
most of the sattelites in orbit are not miliitary spy sattilies. most are communications, water and science satellites. These likely don’t have as much EMP protection as a military satellite. Also a nuclear explosion in orbit would likely affect many satellites at once. Most US antis weapons are designed to take out only one sattelite at a time. It wouldn’t take many warheads to take out most the geostationary communications satellites.
But you don’t seem to recognize that most of the satellites in orbit DO have a military purpose. Even if those who put them in orbit in the first place, don’t know this. Saying this you make an incorrect assumption. But you (IMO) make several correct assumptions, to a point. First, that EMP nuclear explosions will take out “everything”, and not one target, at a time. Well in space no can hear you scream, because there’s no air, but nuclear weapons don’t act the same way in space as they do when there is no air.
Nuclear weapons just don’t act the same when they don’t have an atmosphere to work against. There is no “bast effect” that only exists when there is air to make that happen. What you have (in space), is radiation and light. You (according to hypotheticals, that I know of) have to be VERY close to your target to take it out.
Last, your assumption that we’re smarter then our enemy’s is both a stupid, and possibly fatal POV. Don’t be so arrogant to think they don’t know what you do, or don’t. The moment you think that, your enemy can kill you. This may not seem polite, but I swear to God, it’s so true… Deal w/it. Then move on…