Why not much reaction from the Pentagon about China's antisatellite?

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US military has been quietly working on an array of defenses against attacks on its satellites, including tiny new satellites that could one day be armed for wars in space, analysts say.

hat may explain the muted US response to China's anti-satellite test two months ago.

When China destroyed one of its own weather satellites with a ballistic missile in the January 11 test, the White House waited a week until news of it leaked and then issued only a mild expression of concern.

Experts said the test came as no suprise to the US military, which had anticipated that China would develop an anti-satellite capability to put US spy satellites at risk in the event of a conflict over the Taiwan Straits.

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The Pentagon's virtual silence about the Chinese test "is hard for me to understand except to conclude they already felt they had already dealt with this problem some time ago," he said.

Analysts say the military is pursuing other so called "counter-space" strategies -- some defensive and some with offensive applications.

Well that pretty much makes sense. Don't go out screaming, just quietly go into your garage and do something about. Wonder what kind of technologies could they counter with besides higher orbit and stealth. Possible lasers to counter any anti-satellite warhead? Bullet to bullet kinetic weapon launch from outerspace, instead of ground based platform? Many ideas and guesses.

But, to their effects, they do fly pretty looking balloons.

Seriously, though, spy satellite technology is of extreme sensitivity, with little knowledge other than their existence being acknowledged. This has been standard procedure since their incarnation, shortly developed after Russia's launch of Sputnik.

simple

because the US had their own anti-sat ability long time ago, it's not like that it's a high end tech or anything

[edit on 3/10/2007 by warset]