brilliant pebbles is the way to go for ballistic missile defense IMO. Fewer technical hurdles that anything you can do from inside the atmosphere… and a side benefit is that it could be used to deniably sabotage ballistic missile testing by rogue states.

Random thought #1 – re the challenge of exploding a large nuclear bomb over Chicago. Ever seen those huge Russian heavy lift aircraft that are sometimes parked at Houston Intercontinental? There to pick up very large very heavy loads of oil field equipment & carry them direct to the Middle East. Then fly back.

Random thought #2 – re the long march of the internal enemy. Suppose that Soros et all do want to weaken the US, and Barry is their boy. Having achieved the summit of power, they could now disarm the US. Or they could instead use the US military power they now command to advance their global aims. Shades of the temptation of the Ring-Bearer in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings — destroy the source of power, or use it?

Well yeah! But let me rephrase. Is there any official alternative course of action?

“Is there any alternative course of action?”

Yes, there is, but I’m not supposed to expound upon that here.

So what if we had a scenario of a nuke going off in the US and Barry reacts exactly as you would expect a Leftist to act: he does nothing but suck his thumb. Even in the face of massive public opinion and even the cretins in Congress pretending to want to strike back. What if he just says no? Is there any alternative course of action?

Why on earth are we worried a jot about these morons *ever* being able to put together something as sophisticated as a nuclear bomb, let alone transporting it, let alone getting it to go off on target at the right time.

The problem with all these scenerios is that the American response would not really be hindered by any single nuclear strike. The US military probably (and should have) failsafes to make sure strike orders can be issues with little to no delay. The danger has always been that an adversary would deliver a big enough strike to disable our ability to strike back. This is the entire cornerstone of the MAD doctrine; create a big enough system that only an overwhelming strike could knock us out; and no one has it. The Soviets knew any first strike on their part would result in an overwheleming response by us; hence they never truly were willing to use it. That’s why both sides really backed down during the Cuban Missile crisis; Kennedy and Kruschev knew any attack would be the apocolype.

The fundamental difference between the Soviets and the Arabs is Islam. But that only has influence if we have a Cuban Missile Crisis type situation. However the amount of resources Iran or Lybia would have to devote to creating that type of nuclear arsenal is even today prohibitively expensive.

That is why I prose to use our technological power to destroy the oil market. Removing oil as a commodity will render the financial power of the Middle East ineffective. They will not be able to invest enough resources into developing nuclear weapons. This will also remove the Islamic power based because as the nations get poorer their population will rise up against them. Then we deal with whoever is left over. That would be the right time to develope a missile defense system.

We need a quick ‘apollo program’ on scram-jets, and we could launch a fleet of sub-orbital detroyers post haste, imagine squadrons of B-52’s at 50,000 feet launching two to four Auroras each over the North Pole.

Of course, all of the above is just rambunctious sci-fi boy thinking. The true solution is the Sword of Damocles, space-based carriers that shoot updated X-15 clones DOWNWARD into stratospheric space above enemy launches.

These clones don’t need pilots, they only need a shed load of high-impulse, self-steering simple radar guided rockets to shoot down anything within a thousand cubic miles of sky. (that’s a small swath of sky, I admit) These remotely piloted space fighters will carry minor upgrades of currently deployed technolgy. In the airless void of space, minor mods to air-to-air missiles will work like charms, using current targeting tech and rocket engines.

Missile Defense is technically feasible, and a rapid response program would employ thousands of high-paid Americans! Isn’t that what our Office of the President-elect wants?

In contrast, space boosters generally go to much lower altitudes (100-200 miles)and then fire upper stages as required to attain the required orbits. And they require much more energy to do so than do ballistic missiles. A stock LGM-30 Minuteman III ICBM can’t put anything into orbit.

An orbital nuke would be one way of getting the weapon in place but that would require much more energy and greater sophistication than a ballistic missile, completely aside from the command and control problems associated with detonating it. I suppose they could use an INMARSAT transceiver to do that if they could figure out where the payload was.

I have no idea how large a weapon would be required to produce the required EMP, but I think it very likely that it would exceed Iran or North Korea’s space launch capabilities for at least the immediate future.

As for weaponizing space, every ballistic missile that is launched already does that.