politics

But none of this gets to the most jaw-dropping part of this. Musk and Thiel propose making this network of hundreds of surveillance and attack satellites into a subscription service that the Musk/Thiel/Luckey consortium would own and the Pentagon would subscribe to. Not only is this crazy and absurd but it goes without saying that in no normal time would anyone at the Pentagon be okay with the US not owning the hardware at the center of national defense. We’ve seen how this goes with Starlink, where Musk routinely threatens to turn the system on or off based on his whims and opens up separate lines of communications and perhaps deals with adversary leaders like Vladimir Putin.

Of course Musk and Thiel and Palmer freaking Luckey would use this opportunity to not only get apparent no-bid contracts to build this unworkable mess, they'd get permanent parasitic access to government funds just to keep it going.

No part of this makes any strategic sense.

the dude that can't even keep four wheels on a fucking truck is gonna do wut?!?!

The three companies met with top officials in the Trump administration and the Pentagon in recent weeks to pitch their plan, which would build and launch 400 to more than 1,000 satellites circling the globe to sense missiles and track their movement, sources said.

A separate fleet of 200 attack satellites armed with missiles or lasers would then bring enemy missiles down, three of the sources said.

People in one forum speculated about Trump's "Golden dome" fantasy a few months ago. I did a calculation on the back of a napkin. My result: not 1000 or 200, but about 9000 interceptor vehicles are required for good coverage. Very lucrative contract, very impractical system - they'll drive the US bankrupt doing this.

And what will a nuclear-armed adversary do? At first, they might do an atmospheric nuclear detonation high over their own country - to get a little privacy. After that, a small number of missiles will launch on flight paths not leading to the target - to create gaps in the sensor and interceptor network by detonating near them in space. Maybe a few minutes later, the main attack will follow. When approaching the target area, the vanguard of the main attack will detonate in atmosphere to ionize air (turn it opaque to radar). Nuclear weapons do not need sensors to navigate or communicate, they use inertial navigation and remain silent. Interceptors need to see and communicate, which can be denied with nuclear weapons.

End result: an advanced attacker will have to spend about 10 minutes to penetrate this defense. It only buys more time to launch a nuclear counter-attack (which could be launched anyway, based on mere observation and early warning).

Satellites are bound by their orbits to spend a lot of time in useless places from the viewpoint of defending a location. This kind of a system makes the defending side over-invest in infrastructure, which is not economical.

No. that would be taxpayer dollars. taxpayers will pay for this fraud.

Wannabe feudal lords come for military power, as they always have.

Omg its just like Moonraker

Wrong.

Musk plans to take a bunch of money and not deliver.

One of the sources familiar with the talks described them as “a departure from the usual acquisition process. There’s an attitude that the national security and defense community has to be sensitive and deferential to Elon Musk because of his role in the government.”

Following in the hallowed (retch) footsteps of Dick Cheney and Halliburton's no-bid contracts to "rebuild" Iraq.

This is the setup to a Bond movie

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

Never considered the pros of Kessler syndrome. Also I guess alien defense?.. speed bumps.

It'd be a shame if the targeting software got corrupted.

You mean to pay him to have someone else use it, right?

Because he’s got the cerebral capacity of a cloud of fart particles, and half the personality.

project insight?

https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/AG-3_satellite

Headline needs a pair of commas.