Chinese test Anti-Satellite weapon

In article ,
mumbled

"Tankfixer" wrote in message:
With the cessation of trade between our two countries, Wal-Mart goes
belly
up.

Actually Wal Mart just goes to another source

I've heard that they do that every so often anyhow, once the villagers
start getting bolder and asking for raises and improved working conditions
and such. Once that happens, they just shut it down and relocate somewhere
else where the people are hungrier and less likely to complain about details
like this.


Hate to burst your bubble but Walmart doesn't own the factories in
China.

Tankfixer wrote:
In article ,
mumbled

"Tankfixer" wrote in message:
With the cessation of trade between our two countries, Wal-Mart
goes belly
up.

Actually Wal Mart just goes to another source

I've heard that they do that every so often anyhow, once the
villagers start getting bolder and asking for raises and improved
working conditions and such. Once that happens, they just shut it
down and relocate somewhere else where the people are hungrier and
less likely to complain about details like this.


Hate to burst your bubble but Walmart doesn't own the factories in
China.



Walmart has 60+ stores there though. I guess they're not too
competitive on price, coming up against the existing stores and street
markets.


They _do_ have the edge on customer service. As of 2000/01 when I was
there last, most of their department stores & retail outlets were based on
the old, archaic Soviet model.


Bizarre with a capital F.



--

Cheers

Dave Kearton

With the cessation of trade between our two countries, Wal-Mart goes belly
up.
Good bye small town America :-/
HAH! More like hello small town america being Wal-Mart is driving all
the mom and pop stores under. Wal-mart is evil and those that work for
higher mangement are traitors and the truckers and clerks etc. are
being exploited and used as a tool against their own country. Wal-mart
may have started noble but what China has maniuplated it into as its
personal direct crap goods pipeline into the USA its truly sad.


George

Tankfixer wrote:
In article . com,
mumbled
Jack Linthicum wrote:
We apparently tracked the launch, thank someone for that. A direct hit
by an MRBM warhead that splinters a 1600 pound satellite into large
significant pieces is hardly a direct hit.
As opposed to a "near miss"?
Really it's the old hitting a bullet with a bullet
problem that the most advanced US ABM
systems have problems with.

Or you put a reciever on the "test" missle and tune it to hone on a
transmission from the "target"

Launching both missiles from the same site and similar amounts of
fuel will tend to get them to orbit at the same height and
inclination. Give one a speed boost and wait for them to crash.

There is a big difference between a bullet and a satellite, your
interceptor gets another go at the satellite every 100 minutes.

Andrew Swallow

David E. Powell wrote:
Thought folks might want to know about this one.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1188

Chinese Test Anti-Satellite Weapon
By Craig Covault, Aviation Week & Space Technology, Cape Canaveral
Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Courtesy of Aviation Week & Space Technology and Aviationnow.com

U. S. intelligence agencies believe China performed a successful
anti-satellite (asat) weapons test at more than 500 mi. altitude Jan.
11 destroying an aging Chinese weather satellite target with a kinetic
kill vehicle launched on board a ballistic missile.



I saw a Japanese report that some liaison officer with the Chinese
embassy or the foreign office said he hadn't been informed. Some might
see this as a demonstration of the PLA that the "government" isn't the
only force in China. It took a week for the U.S. end of the
intelligence chain to finally get a piece of news out, " protests filed
by the United States, Japan, Canada and Australia, among others, were
met with silence - and quizzical looks from officials in The Chinese
Foreign Ministry, who seemed to be caught unaware."

"In an interview late Friday, Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush's
national security adviser, raised the possibility that China's
leaders might not have fully known what their military was doing."

January 22, 2007
U.S. Tries to Interpret China's Silence Over Test
By DAVID E. SANGER and JOSEPH KAHN

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 - Bush administration officials said that they
had been unable to get even the most basic diplomatic response from
China after their detection of a successful test to destroy a satellite
10 days ago, and that they were uncertain whether China's top
leaders, including President Hu Jintao, were fully aware of the test or
the reaction it would engender.

In interviews over the past two days, American officials with access to
the intelligence on the test said the United States kept mum about it
in hopes that China would come forth with an explanation.

It was more than a week before the intelligence leaked out: a Chinese
missile had been launched and an aging weather satellite in its path,
more than 500 miles above the earth, had been reduced to rubble. But
protests filed by the United States, Japan, Canada and Australia, among
others, were met with silence - and quizzical looks from officials in
The Chinese Foreign Ministry, who seemed to be caught unaware.

The mysteries surrounding China's silence are reminiscent of the cold
war, when every case of muscle-flexing by competing powers was examined
for evidence of a deeper agenda.

The American officials presume that Mr. Hu was generally aware of the
missile testing program, but speculate that he may not have known the
timing of the test. China's continuing silence would appear to
suggest, at a minimum, that Mr. Hu did not anticipate a strong
international reaction, either because he had not fully prepared for
the possibility that the test would succeed, or because he did not
foresee that American intelligence on it would be shared with allies,
or leaked.

In an interview late Friday, Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush's
national security adviser, raised the possibility that China's
leaders might not have fully known what their military was doing.

"The question on something like this is, at what level in the Chinese
government are people witting, and have they approved?" Mr. Hadley
asked. He suggested that the diplomatic protests were intended, in
part, to force Mr. Hu to give some clue about China's intentions.

"It will ensure that the issue will now get ventilated at the highest
levels in China," he said, "and it will be interesting to see how
it comes out."

The threat to United States interests is clear: the test demonstrated
that China could destroy American spy satellites in low-earth orbit
(the very satellites that picked up the destruction of the Chinese
weather satellite).

Chinese military officials have extensively studied how the United
States has used satellite imagery in the Persian Gulf war, the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and in tracking North Korea's nuclear weapons
program - an area in which there has been some limited
intelligence-sharing between Chinese and American officials. Several
senior administration officials said such studies had included
extensive analysis of how satellite surveillance could be used by the
United States in case of a crisis over Taiwan.

"This is a wake-up call," said Robert Joseph, the under secretary
of state for arms control and international security. "A small number
of states are pursuing capabilities to exploit our vulnerabilities."

As a result, officials said, the Chinese test is likely to prompt an
urgent new effort inside the Bush administration to find ways to
counter China's antisatellite technology. Among the options are
efforts to "harden" vulnerable satellites, improve their
maneuverability so that they can evade crude kinetic weapons like the
one that destroyed the Chinese satellite and develop a backup system of
replacement satellites that could be launched immediately if one in
orbit is destroyed.

American officials noted that the United States and Russia had not
conducted such tests for two decades, and that the international norm
had changed, in part because so many private satellites had been
launched by many nations. "The Chinese seem out of step on this one,
and we don't know why," one official said.

But the more immediate mystery about the destruction of the satellite
revolves around China's prolonged silence - and what it says about
the commitments President Hu and President Bush have made concerning
increasing their communication, and diminishing the secrecy around
China's military buildup.

Chinese leaders often hesitate to engage with foreign officials on
matters of military secrecy. It took days to get the Chinese to respond
in the first foreign policy crisis to confront the Bush administration
- the forcing down, on Chinese territory, of an American spy plane in
2001. Eventually the plane's crew was returned, unharmed, but the
prolonged silence unnerved American officials.

In this case, the communication blackout raised the possibility that
top Chinese officials were either trying to anger the United States or
that the test was conducted without the full involvement of the one
official who has authority to coordinate the military and civilian
bureaucracies: President Hu. American officials said they believed that
the Foreign Ministry - the one department that deals daily with the
rest of the world - was left in the dark.

"What we heard, in essence, was, 'We'll get back to you,' "
said a senior American diplomat. "It was unclear they even knew what
was going on."

Chinese political and military analysts, who would not speak on the
record about an issue the Chinese government still regards as secret,
said they considered it unlikely that the army's Second Artillery
forces, in charge of its ballistic missiles, would conduct a test of a
sophisticated new weapon without approval from the highest levels.

But they suggested that the test might have been approved in principle,
with little advance preparation for the diplomatic fallout in the event
it was successful. That entails not just new military worries; the
destruction of the weather satellite left debris in space that could
damage satellites from other nations.

"It's the kind of silence that makes you wonder what's happening
inside the country," said another senior American official who has
been monitoring the case. "I'm sure the Chinese leadership knew
there were tests under way, in a general sort of way. But they don't
seem to have been prepared for a success, and they clearly had not
thought about what they would say to the world."

The timing is significant. Chinese officials have hinted in recent
months that they are prepared to grant an American request to establish
a military-to-military hot line that may be used to enhance
communication. But China has moved slowly to establish the link, which
is based on the cold war hot line to Moscow, and there is little
evidence that Chinese military officers would have offered an
explanation for the antisatellite test if it had been set up.

President Bush and Mr. Hu hold regular phone conversations about
continuing issues, including how to manage North Korea's nuclear
program. But Mr. Hu and Mr. Bush never developed the kind of close ties
that Mr. Bush's aides forecast once the pragmatic-sounding Mr. Hu,
who is close to Mr. Bush's age, took office.

Their relationship suffered during an awkward trip by Mr. Hu to
Washington last spring, when Mr. Bush declined to hold a state dinner
for him - there was a working lunch instead - and the arrival
ceremony was marred by a mistaken announcement that the anthem that
would be played would be for the Republic of China, the formal name for
Taiwan.

"Andrew Swallow" wrote in message
...
Tankfixer wrote:
In article . com,
mumbled
Jack Linthicum wrote:
We apparently tracked the launch, thank someone for that. A direct hit
by an MRBM warhead that splinters a 1600 pound satellite into large
significant pieces is hardly a direct hit.
As opposed to a "near miss"?
Really it's the old hitting a bullet with a bullet
problem that the most advanced US ABM
systems have problems with.

Or you put a reciever on the "test" missle and tune it to hone on a
transmission from the "target"

Launching both missiles from the same site and similar amounts of
fuel will tend to get them to orbit at the same height and
inclination. Give one a speed boost and wait for them to crash.

There is a big difference between a bullet and a satellite, your
interceptor gets another go at the satellite every 100 minutes.

Andrew Swallow

"Give one a speed boast........" and the orbit will change! They may never
meet.

Its not simple as changing speed, that's why they call it rocket science.

Diamond Jim wrote:
"Andrew Swallow" wrote in message
...
Tankfixer wrote:
In article . com,
mumbled
Jack Linthicum wrote:
We apparently tracked the launch, thank someone for that. A direct hit
by an MRBM warhead that splinters a 1600 pound satellite into large
significant pieces is hardly a direct hit.
As opposed to a "near miss"?
Really it's the old hitting a bullet with a bullet
problem that the most advanced US ABM
systems have problems with.

Or you put a reciever on the "test" missle and tune it to hone on a
transmission from the "target"

Launching both missiles from the same site and similar amounts of
fuel will tend to get them to orbit at the same height and
inclination. Give one a speed boost and wait for them to crash.

There is a big difference between a bullet and a satellite, your
interceptor gets another go at the satellite every 100 minutes.

Andrew Swallow

"Give one a speed boast........" and the orbit will change! They may never
meet.

Its not simple as changing speed, that's why they call it rocket science.

Yes the ability to change orbit is one of the great assets of the U.S.
recce program, it is carefully laid out in the descriptions of the
KH-11 and KH-12 improvements.

"The KH-12 can adjust its orbit to provide coverage of areas that are
of particular interest, and can maneuver to avoid anti-satellite
interceptors - powered by a large rocket engine attached to a frame
that also resembles the Hubble Space Telescope."
http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/satellites-pr.cfm

In article ,
mumbled
Tankfixer wrote:
In article . com,
mumbled
Jack Linthicum wrote:
We apparently tracked the launch, thank someone for that. A direct hit
by an MRBM warhead that splinters a 1600 pound satellite into large
significant pieces is hardly a direct hit.
As opposed to a "near miss"?
Really it's the old hitting a bullet with a bullet
problem that the most advanced US ABM
systems have problems with.

Or you put a reciever on the "test" missle and tune it to hone on a
transmission from the "target"

Launching both missiles from the same site and similar amounts of
fuel will tend to get them to orbit at the same height and
inclination. Give one a speed boost and wait for them to crash.

I understand the target was a out of service weather satellite.


There is a big difference between a bullet and a satellite, your
interceptor gets another go at the satellite every 100 minutes.


I'd wonder if there arn't some "trailers" out there sitting a hundred
miles back and waiting for the "go" signal to boost and catch up.

Hehe, some funny stuff in that article. I suggest flexing of muscle or
not, one should always be on the lookout for more information about
the deeper agenda, since almost by definition government agendas are
not laid out openly. The gaffe about the national anthem is funny too:
does that reflect on how the US administration feels a real Republic
should be run? :-)
--
BOFH excuse #87:

Password is too complex to decrypt

. And since China's
economy is still *not* an export-reliant industry, like for example
Japan's, export restrictions will probably not have terrible effects

I wonder how this statement was arrived at. China has large numbers of
agricultural and subsistence farmers. Their kids go to the city to build
coffee pots and radios and so on. I tend to think that if the US marekt
was closed that the economic impact would be enormous. Of course, the
1.077 trillion that China holds in US Treasury debt would last for a
while.

. But China now has something it has wanted for a very long time - a
western-style economy.

Perhaps. But the foundation it is built on is a third-world country.
The major problem is water. 90% of the rivers in China are too toxic to
touch. Wastewater treatment seems to be more difficult that letting all
of the stuff just flow into rivers. Not to mention almost unregulated
dumping of mercury, arsenic, acids, etc.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese are illiterate peasants living in crude
mud houses. The whole country is a ramshackle mess except for a few
percent of the economic elite, who put their money in Switzerland with
the hope of retiring somewhere other than China. I am unimpressed by
China on multiple levels. Local police are used as the personal
enforcers for local Pary bosses to whip any political opposition into
submission. Any sort of widespread social disruption would quickly lead
to a mass holocaust as the prevailing psychology of the population lacks
any really valid social contract, to say nothing of morality or what
civilized people regard as common decency.



--
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