China is beginning an unprecedented surge in the flight test of new ballistic missiles at the same time that the U.S. is starting a lengthy transition of missile-warning satellite systems, critical for providing intelligence on this test activity.
The Bush administration for the first time says it has intelligence proving detailed and ongoing collaboration between Iran and North Korea in the development of new ballistic missiles. The Pentagon has also just released previously secret intelligence data on new Iranian and North Korean ballistic missiles under development.
Commercial satellite operators say they're willing to pay for anti-jamming and other protective systems on their spacecraft to assuage the security concerns of government users, but only if the government will restructure its procurements to encourage such investments.
Aviation Week and Space Technology reports on a top-secret military space plane project that was recently shelved. The project, code-named "Blackstar", was a two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane system designed in the 1980s for reconnaissance, satellite-insertion and, possibly, weapons delivery.
Aviation Week & Space Technology surveys the high-powered U.S. spy satellite gear keeping watch over Iraq.
An attack on Iraq is expected to see the first use of high-power microwave weapons that produce a split-second spike of energy powerful enough to damage electronic components and scramble computer memories.
Virtual conflicts set 15 years in the future allow U.S. leaders to explore the pros and cons of using military space power in terrestrial battles.
As cyberwar gains operational maturity, the discipline has emerged as a tool of finesse and not brute force, in part to counter political concerns about the fallout from unrestricted computer attacks. "When you're discussing computer network warfare, you can get completely derailed and talk about worms and viruses and self-propagating programs and everyone thinks it's like unconstrained weapons of mass destruction," said Army Col. David Kirk, deputy commander of the Joint Information Operations Center.
Failure of NASA's faster-better-cheaper (FBC) spacecraft may be predictable, according to an Aerospace Corp. examination of the last decade of FBC missions. The study found that missions that crossed into an area of high complexity and low development time inevitably failed.