On 1 May 2007 08:16:04 -0700, in a place far, far away, Allen Thomson
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

On May 1, 9:16 am, (Rand Simberg) wrote:

I would have thought it obvious. In terms of cost and value for some
of NRO's battlestar galactica, it's like sinking an aircraft carrier.

Since it's a bit hard to imagine zapping someone else's satellite
outside of an already warlike context, the question is probably
somewhat moot.

However, aircraft carriers and aircraft have people in them and most
satellites that are candidates for zapping don't. Add to that the
fact that zapping could well occur over the national territory of the
zapper, and the parallel with the aircraft carriers isn't, IMHO, all
that close.

"Over the national territory" hasn't had any meaning for space objects
since October, 1957. LEO is like the high seas, from a territorial
standpoint.

Are you saying that if an aircraft carrier was uncrewed (a theoretical
possibility) that sinking it wouldn't be an act of war?

And even if it is declared to be an act of war, there remains the
question of what to do about it.

That's always the case. When Iran took the embassy hostages, it was
an act of war (and in retrospect, had it been responded to as such, we
might have saved ourselves a lot of trouble since). When the Iranians
committed their piracy against the UK a few weeks ago, it was also an
act of war. It doesn't really matter if one doesn't want to have a
war.