Comment on California startup to demonstrate space weapon on its own dime
t3rmit3@beehaw.org 1 day agoTo be fair, you don’t need it to perfectly counter China and Russia to have value. There are other countries that have nuclear capabilities or ambitions, who don’t have thousands of ICBMs.
JillyB@beehaw.org 1 day ago
North Korea is the only one that could fall under that category. It just seems like a ton of resources to throw behind a tiny fraction of the nuclear threat to the US. Couldn’t we station boost-phase interceptors in South Korea and/or Japan for a whole lot cheaper? An anti-satellite capability is much easier to get than a nuclear ICBM. If they can make a nuke, they can take out a satellite.
Ultimately, Golden Dome is a wunderwaffe. The Trump administration is excited about it for the same reasons the Nazis were excited about their military vanity projects. It’s hard to discuss it purely in it’s own merits without also considering the reason it is being pursued. It isn’t being pushed by top people in the military or Pentagon. It’s pushed because some high up fascists saw the Israeli Iron Dome and were like “we gotta have one of those, but BIGGER, and make it GOLD”. It’s an aesthetic marketing halo project for MAGA fascism.
t3rmit3@beehaw.org 1 day ago
I agree 100%, I’m not arguing it’s a good idea, these are just other arguments than “in order for it to be useful it needs to be able to counter Russia and/or China, otherwise it would be strategically useless and economically infeasible”.
In the status quo, I still don’t think that’s true; India and Pakistan are both nuclear-equipped, but with moderate-to-low warhead counts that could potentially reach the US. Western European countries have nukes (France and UK), and very small land areas to cover. SLBMs are another issue altogether, ofc. If you’re planning to make any of them enemies, it could absolutely be useful.