The U.S. already has a counter-space strategy that is different from the kinetic method employed recently by the Chinese, according to knowledgeable space experts and former intelligence officials. They say the United States has adopted a method that relies on spy satellites' most vulnerable aspect: the need for constant housekeeping from the ground.
The U.S. intelligence agency that tasks spy satellites to monitor military maneuvers and to find secret weapons plants has been pressed into service to help in the relief effort following Sunday's earthquake and resulting tsunami.
Intelligence experts say that the top-secret intelligence project which held up approval of the recent intelligence reform bill in the U.S. Senate is a satellite that would, or maybe already can, intercept and shut down other countries' spy satellites.
UPDATE: The Washington Post is now reporting that the program in question is a low-observable, "stealth" satellite project and not an anti-satellite weapon.
For more than a decade, the United States has had at least one and possibly more stealth spy satellites capable of peering down at targets without fear of detection but they were eventually discovered by a small cadre of civilian space trackers.
U.S. government officials as well as Iranian Americans and communications satellite operators confirm that all U.S.-based satellite broadcasts to Iran are being jammed by an unknown group or individual, possibly Iranian agents operating out of Latin America.
An experimental NASA spacecraft could well be the harbinger for a small armada of billion-dollar space bombers — “space operations vehicles” that could be launched from a U.S. base and fire weapons at almost any target on Earth, all within 90 minutes of a presidential order.