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| ▲ | littlecranky67 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Why is that? Undersea cables makes way more sense - the issue is we have maritime law that allows any nation state to freely roam over important cables. During wartimes this is a complete different story - ships won't be allowed near the lines, and if they do get close they will be destoryed without prior warning. No more anchoring "accidents". | | |
| ▲ | amiga386 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > maritime law that allows any nation state to freely roam over important cables. I'd like to see your version of maritime law that doesn't allow freely roaming over important cables. Your country's enemies would gladly drop cables totally encircling you and say "uh uh uh, important cables!" if you tried to leave your perimeter | | |
| ▲ | thejazzman 5 days ago | parent [-] | | This assumes people are very stupid, no? Like, as if they wouldn't know what was happening and just had to let it happen? I realize US politics may suggest otherwise but I can't imagine the military is just gonna stand by and entertain such a farce.. | | |
| ▲ | amiga386 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I think you therefore agree with my reductio ad absurdum argument against the GP's claim. Changing maritime law to prohibit free roaming over "important cables" would be a farce. Therefore, the absence of such a law is not "the issue" |
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| ▲ | nradov 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It isn't either/or. Satellites and undersea cables serve different use cases. Cables are great for high bandwidth communications between fixed points but they aren't very useful to mobile military forces and they can't be used for anything beyond communications. We don't have enough ships and patrol aircraft to realistically defend undersea cables outside the littorals. Satellites can serve multiple purposes including communications, navigation, overhead imagery, signals intelligence, weather, etc. They are also vulnerable, but it's possible to launch replacements faster than repairing damaged cables. | |
| ▲ | zelphirkalt 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Inofficially Europe is already at war, whether it wants to or not. Maybe someone needs to inofficially keep a close eye on those cables and take inofficial countermeasures against inofficial sabotage acts. | | |
| ▲ | RandomThoughts3 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Europe is not at war with another nuclear power, no. Ukraine is at war and Europe is giving support to Ukraine as that's aligned with its interest. This support is neither unconditional nor total and doesn't include going to war with Russia. | |
| ▲ | delusional 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | No we're not. Nobody in the EU has transitioned to a wartime economy. We are helping out a strategic ally. If Ukraine falls tomorrow an cedes add territory to Russia, the EU is not going to continue fighting, because the war will be over. That of course assumes that Putin stops at Ukraine. The point is that this isn't our war. | | |
| ▲ | jyounker 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Nine years ago I was in Riga talking with a Latvian friend, and even then she was telling me how Russia was broadcasting separatist propaganda into Latvia While the EU may not be at war with Russia, Russia is already at war with the EU. | | |
| ▲ | snowwrestler 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Russia is pursuing low stakes, plausibly deniable, minor nuisance actions against the EU and U.S. It does enough to fool itself internally that it has a great enemy in The West, to which it is bravely standing up. The purpose of this is to unite enough of the domestic population to suppress dissent and keep the current regime in power. The reality is that it is actually at war with only one small neighbor, which is going so badly that they have had to import troops from North Korea. Embarrassing. If they actually engaged in war with the EU, more specifically a member of NATO, they would lose quickly. So they stay well back from that line. |
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| ▲ | weweersdfsd 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The truth is that Russia has been making war preparations for a long time, also within the EU. In Finland even during the "good years" (between fall of the Soviet Union and Georgian war) Russian businessmen kept buying property that made zero financial sense, but was located close to strategic infrastructure or military bases. | |
| ▲ | K0balt 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You’re in a zero lot line flat and your neighbors house is on fire. I’d be pretty motivated to help out as well, but I don’t think I’d be quite so cavalier about not being on a wartime footing. Russia has shown repeatedly throughout history that it does not honor international agreements in good faith, and that it sees military adventurism as a legitimate way to expand its borders. After the dust settles on the Ukraine war, if Putin still has the capacity to wage war, he will not likely stop with Ukraine. It is by now obvious that a limited incursion into Poland, for example, will not spark a global thermonuclear war. Ukrainian suffering is both the litmus test and the vaccination against nuclear escalation that Putin needs to contemplate further expansion. Political alignments aside, if I were based in Europe I would be very, very concerned. | | |
| ▲ | valval 5 days ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | aguaviva 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is a wildly unpopular opinion after 2022, but ... False. Ukraine not only has everything to do with Europe -- it is unequivocally European in culture, language, historical involvement and (to the extent that Russia is also considered to be unequivocally European) geography. It isn't something one can even have an opinion about. Any more than one can have an "opinion" about India being a part of Asia. | |
| ▲ | throwawaymaths 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes, and Ukraine has steadily going down in corruption since Zelenskyy. So if you actually care about corruption and aren't a concern troll, you will want to encourage the current regime and not the reverse. | | |
| ▲ | valval 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Zelenskyy has stifled opposition and politically persecuted his enemies, actually. | | |
| ▲ | K0balt 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Your comment is pretty myopic considering the fact that Ukraine is in a state of martial emergency and is actively being invaded by a merciless and lawless regime. She is on a wartime footing, with her very existence as a country once again in jeopardy at the hands of a much more powerful, longtime aggressor. Realigning political positions in a way that keeps them firmly aligned with the martial interests of the state is expected and required. For better or for worse, Ukraines civil government is, for now, primarily a military organization as the country and its people are fighting for their lives. This is the one specific case where it is reasonable, just, and needed to require loyalty, focus, and vigor within an otherwise democratic system. There is a reason why martial law grants the president extraordinary powers. If Ukraine survives, she will have to sort out the return to normal democratic rule, but for now the government is at war. | | |
| ▲ | valval 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Don't worry about that, he's been doing it since his inauguration. If you think his actions played no part in this war coming to be, you've been informed a bit selectively. | | |
| ▲ | K0balt 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Frankly it would be shocking if there wasn’t some kind of fuckery afoot in any given Eastern European nation. But that in no way justifies this territory grab by Russia, or the invasion in 2014. Russia is clearly attempting to annex a neighboring country through military adventurism, and is doing so in contravention with all international law, and also in a way that is intentionally cruel and borderline genocidal. Russia has lost all legitimacy as a nation worthy of being taken seriously as a global citizen, and has reduced itself to a kleptocratic mad-dog rouge state. | | |
| ▲ | valval 3 days ago | parent [-] | | The propaganda has landed well on you, it seems. | | |
| ▲ | throwawaymaths 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | How can you be so certain it hasn't landed on YOU? After all I mentioned that corruption has gotten better and you responded with a cookie cutter response about authoritarianism, which is not necessarily the same as corruption. You've basically eaten Russian talking points and regurgitated them wholesale without even stopping to critically think about context. | |
| ▲ | K0balt 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not so much. I have personal involvement that informs my opinion. |
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| ▲ | concordDance 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Even Botswana and Zambia aren't in the same league: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?... | | |
| ▲ | valval 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Frankly Botswana is beating Ukraine in GDP and Zambia in perceived corruption. | | |
| ▲ | aguaviva 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Frankly Botswana is beating Ukraine in GDP Ukraine's GDP is close to 10x that of Botswana, and in the last year has grown 10 percent over that of 2022. | | |
| ▲ | valval 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Try GDP per capita PPP, the measure that matters for average living conditions | | |
| ▲ | aguaviva 5 days ago | parent [-] | | When your first attempt at dropping a random statistic gets blown out of the water -- try shifting the goalposts. | | |
| ▲ | valval 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I bet you had to look it up as well. I bet you had to go out there, and confirm that Ukraine, a country with 15x the population of Botswana, does indeed have a higher GDP. To make your discussions easier and less embarrassing in the future, assume that 100 % of the time when someone speaks of GDP, they're speaking of GDP at purchasing power parity per capita. | | |
| ▲ | aguaviva 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Assume that 100 % of the time when someone speaks of GDP, they're speaking of GDP at purchasing power parity per capita. And you can assume that 100 % of the time when someone speaks of the size of their gas tank, they're really talking about MPG while in cruise mode. | | |
| ▲ | valval 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I’m serious. Please don’t assume anyone is ever speaking or absolute GDP unless they make it explicitly known. That would be utterly silly. | | |
| ▲ | aguaviva 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm serious, too. But given the wildly untenable opinion statement of yours that this now long-flagged thread started off with -- and the obvious irrelevance of any economic performance measures to the Russo-Ukraine conflict -- we see that the entire thread has been utterly silly, from the get-go. | | |
| ▲ | valval 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm a bit lazy to type right now so Claude can type the message in my stead: "
Think about comparing two families: the Smiths have 5 people and earn $100,000 per year, while Jones is just a couple earning $70,000. If you only looked at total household income, you'd think the Smiths were doing better. But when you realize the Smiths have to split that money five ways ($20,000 per person) while the Joneses get $35,000 each, the picture changes completely. That's exactly what happens when we compare countries by total GDP. China's total GDP might dwarf Denmark's, but China has to spread that wealth across 1.4 billion people, while Denmark only needs to support 6 million. It's like comparing a pizza between a huge family reunion and a dinner date - the total amount of pizza matters less than how many slices each person gets. This is why economists prefer to use GDP per capita - it's like looking at how much pizza each person at the table gets, rather than just admiring the size of the whole pie.
" I presented some hard to digest (for some) facts in my opening comment here. You'll only need to read European, Ukrainian, and Russian history for 30 minutes to know that. Of course you wouldn't, you're just a parrot repeating propaganda. You have no interest in the truth. | | |
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| ▲ | groby_b 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, we are. Outside of Poland, everybody's closing their eyes to it, but war is coming. We might be able to stop it before it becomes a hot war, but the ambition is there, the indicators are there, the opportunity is there. Assume it's a war. (Unless you're German. I guess our national sport is now making excuses for Russia) | | |
| ▲ | K0balt 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, near a strategic Cold War military base. I still remember seeing the TU-95 “bear” bombers flying overhead being escorted and turned around by our fighter jets. It makes it pretty real when 7 year old me is wondering if this one has any nukes on board, and if this will be the day that they drop. Russia is not to be trusted, imho. They do not honor their international commitments in good faith, and they will expand their territorial claims if they are allowed to do so. Europe, like a frog in a pot, is in peril and they need to take steps to make sure that Russian war fighting capabilities are destroyed through exhaustion in Ukraine. This of course is tragic for Ukraine, because it means that she will be utterly razed in the process. But if Russia prevails or backs down with strength, it will happen again. And again. Russias ability to project force in a strategic way must be destroyed. They are not trustworthy stewards of coercive force. | | |
| ▲ | nradov 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I don't trust Russia either, but are you certain that's a real memory? I'm not aware of any confirmed incidents in which USSR bombers actually flew within sight of Fairbanks. They routinely tested our defenses but they didn't penetrate that far into US airspace. | | |
| ▲ | K0balt 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I wish I had a photograph. I’ve been told before that this was impossible by others. I’ve also been told by others that were there that yes, it happened. It may not have been , however, an aggressive incursion, I have no way of knowing that part for sure. Having fighters scramble from Eilison was not unusual at all, and when hunting out in that area with my father we saw a few of those. It was pretty distinct from the training and combat training they did, so it wasn’t that hard to distinguish the intentionality and risk tolerance that was reserved for that kind of urgency. Anecdotally, I’m pretty darn sure that I saw a bear flying overhead just a few miles east-southeast of Fairbanks. I watched it be turned by 3 F4 phantoms. I was with my father and a few of his friends, as well as my brother that would have been 13 at the time. Everyone there remembers the event, and it was talked about for days in Fairbanks, we even had a subsequent training the next week in my elementary school on survival in the event of a nuclear attack lol. Perhaps it was some kind of clandestine fuckery, perhaps it was an authorized flight, or perhaps it would have been to embarrassing / inflammatory to make it an event of record? I’m sure the answers are quietly sitting somewhere in a musty filing box. |
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| ▲ | zelphirkalt 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sadly as a German I must agree. AfD (financed by Russia) and BSW (probably also financed by Russia, or simply hopelessly naive) will fall over themselves making those excuses. Poor Putin, if only someone _talked_ to him ... while Russia is sabotaging of critical infrastructure like train service, hospitals, Internet, politics, and probably more. Russia is like this annoying bench neighbor, who under the table pokes you in the side during class, until they get shoved hard and then act all hurt. Kinda makes AfD and BSW traitors of their own country. I for one am in favor of giving Wagenknecht a list of must haves for a ceasefire and peace treaty, which obviously will contain giving back all territory to Ukraine, costly reparation for many years to come, and denazification in Russia. With that list we send her to Russia to negotiate. She is only allowed to return, when the points on that list are achieved. She will be the negotiator, the change she will be the change she wants to see. (If it is not obvious to someone, this is rather a joke, since she cannot be trusted to have meaningful negotiations with her idol.) |
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| ▲ | hex4def6 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The exercise left for the reader is to choose two countries that are not adjacent, and try to plot a path between them without crossing an undersea cable: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ | | |
| ▲ | cperciva 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Looks like you can get between Costa Rica and El Salvador without crossing any cables. |
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| ▲ | greenavocado 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | We are at war. The United States guided an ATACMS missile into Russian territory yesterday. Imagine the absurdity of if China put missiles on the Mexican border and guided them into missile storage facilities 186 miles inside the border. | | |
| ▲ | NovemberWhiskey 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I think you'll find the ATACMS missile guided itself, based on inertial navigation and satellite positioning data. If your argument is that the United States guided the missile because the US provides GPS, that's a pretty flimsy argument. | | |
| ▲ | greenavocado 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Ukraine would have folded within a few weeks without the weapons systems of the combined Western nations. The Biden administration has given Kyiv permission to use U.S.-supplied missiles in Russian territory in a major escalation that now threatens nuclear war due to the first use doctrine updates. A few hours ago reports of UK Storm Shadow missiles being fired into Russian territory emerged. The West is at war. | | |
| ▲ | avereveard 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | By that logic every dictator t72 field trip would make Russia participant in that local war... Absolutely absurd statement. Siria civil war would see Russia waging war on Russia since their equipment was in both hands. What a contrived statement that the arm provider is at war itself. | |
| ▲ | maximilianburke 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The passive voice is doing a lot of work here. Who is now threatening nuclear war? |
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| ▲ | anigbrowl 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why do folks like your self make such foolish analogies? If the US had invaded Mexico like Russia invaded Ukraine then yes, it would be completely fine for Mexico to fire missiles into the US. | | |
| ▲ | meiraleal 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Russia took land from Ukraine. For how long do you think Ukraine can fire missiles into Russia? | | |
| ▲ | maximilianburke 4 days ago | parent [-] | | As long as they're able to, until they get their land back. | | |
| ▲ | meiraleal 4 days ago | parent [-] | | What about México then? The US took 55% of the country, not only 20%. | | |
| ▲ | maximilianburke 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Pretty sure we are talking about Ukraine and Russia here, not other conflicts. | | |
| ▲ | meiraleal 4 days ago | parent [-] | | You joined a discussion inside the discussion that was about Mexico firing missiles at the US. If you don't want to discuss similarities of both scenarios, don't join the discussion. |
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| ▲ | aguaviva 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Imagine the absurdity of if China put missiles on the Mexican border ... Imagine the US engaging in an invasion of Mexico as equally stupid and unprovoked as Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Then not only would Mexico have a perfect right to seek whatever help it needed to resist the aggression directed at it, we would -- unless we were damned fools -- fully expect Mexico to seek and obtain that help. | | |
| ▲ | geomark 5 days ago | parent [-] | | When people say "unprovoked" do they not know the history, or they think the history doesn't matter, or do they just not care? | | |
| ▲ | abenga 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | What did Ukraine do? Just exist ... menacingly? | | |
| ▲ | com 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Actually, that’s probably the key insight. A democratic, successful Ukraine (not a guaranteed thing at any point) would be an existential threat to the “Russian World” narrative from Moscow, and upend the regime. Even a partially successful Ukraine with working if imperfect pluralism, and regular transitions of power would probably be an profound threat, proving that other models could work. |
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| ▲ | aguaviva 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Or they know the history all too well. |
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| ▲ | jeltz 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | As far as we know Ukraine both put them there and guided the missiles. Please provide proof otherwise. |
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| ▲ | Gud 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If someone starts blowing up satellites it’s pretty much game over for space based communications. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome | | |
| ▲ | tialaramex 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Kessler is often overplayed. Kessler trashes a low orbit and you wouldn't want to launch more birds into the trashed orbit. But, loads of com sats live in MEO or GEO, which is far too high for the numbers to work. They're all fine. You will even see Kessler cited as some sort of barrier to leaving, which is nonsense. Imagine there's a 1x1m spot where on average once per week, entirely at random and without warning a giant boulder falls from the sky and if you're there you will be crushed under the boulder. Clearly living on that spot is a terrible idea, you'd die. But merely running through it is basically fine, there's a tiny chance the boulder hits you by coincidentally arriving as you do, but we live with risks that big all the time. If you're an American commuter for example that's the sort of risk you shrug off. Likewise, Kessler isn't a barrier to leaving, humans won't be leaving because there's nowhere to go. The only habitable planet is this one, and we're already here. | | |
| ▲ | rickydroll 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | GEO is safe for now. But... https://spacenews.com/intelsat-33e-loses-power-in-geostation... The most likely explanation for the unexplained disassembly is that Boeing made it. Second, most likely, is a collision with a hunk of something invisible. | |
| ▲ | jgalt212 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The latency on GEO orbits exclude them from many use cases. | |
| ▲ | davidt84 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | GEO is very cramped. It's just a circle, not a sphere. Edit: I guess I was assuming geostationary. There's a whole sphere of geosynchronous orbits to play with. Edit2: I was right the first time, GEO (geosynchronous equatoral orbit) / GSO (geosynchronous orbit), apparently. Now my head hurts. | | |
| ▲ | tialaramex 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > GEO is very cramped. It's just a circle, not a sphere. "cramped" the way that like, Alaska is cramped on account of how everybody has to live on the surface, not evenly distributed through the volume of the planet? Like yeah, it's "just a circle" but did you check the radius of that circle? Remember if there's debris, the debris isn't stuck in the circle, but, any time it's not in the circle it's harmless. This has the effect of significantly defusing the problem, so in total it's too low risk to be worth considering. |
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| ▲ | Gud 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | LEO is where starlink is stationed.
Really, there is no good scenario where LEO is unusable due to some dumb reason, like blowing up junk in space. I'm not sure our "world leaders" appreciate this. |
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| ▲ | elif 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Not true. China has taken down 2 US satellites in the last few years. | | |
| ▲ | bgarbiak 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | They shoot down their own redundant satellites, and it was in 2007 in 2010. | |
| ▲ | K0balt 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Really? Thats wild. How is this not seen as a military provocation? | | |
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| ▲ | nradov 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The military is shifting toward LEO constellations for communications such as SpaceX Starshield. Kessler syndrome isn't a serious concern for those because the orbits decay fairly quickly anyway. | | |
| ▲ | yencabulator 6 days ago | parent [-] | | That "quickly" is on the order of years (as opposed to decades, centuries, etc). If the Starlink constellation goes boom, you can't start launching new ones for several years -- and then the build-up would take years, from there. | | |
| ▲ | nradov 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Nah. In any major future conflict, the combatants will go ahead and launch replacement satellites immediately regardless of the risks or long-term consequences (or they'll do it at least as long as their manufacturing and launch facilities survive). A constellation of hundreds of satellites can't go "boom" all at once. Even with a bunch of orbital debris floating around the hazards will be sparse and some satellites will live long enough to be operationally useful. | | |
| ▲ | yencabulator 5 days ago | parent [-] | | For the purposes of the crisis, sure. But commerce and average consumer internet access will suffer hugely. Similarly, severing the sea cable had no direct military effect, but was economic damage. Kessler syndrome is still a serious concern even in LEO, just not to the same extent of practically denying access to space for the foreseeable future. |
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| ▲ | varispeed 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Could they place a giant electromagnet in space to collect debris? | | |
| ▲ | kube-system 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Space is too big, and the field of even the world's strongest electromagnets are too small for this to be practical. And even if it did work, you'd only collect ferromagnetic material. | |
| ▲ | datadrivenangel 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | A large enough electromagnet could actually increase effective drag in conductive materials, which may help. All the non-conductive materials would still be there, and paint chips can be brutal at orbital speeds. |
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| ▲ | dylan604 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can have the ability to launch 100 satellites in 10 days, but that doesn't really help if you don't have 100 satellites | | |
| ▲ | nradov 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Well obviously you need to have a supply of replacements in stock. From a military perspective, think of satellites as rounds of ammunition that will be expended during a conflict. | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 6 days ago | parent [-] | | I think it'd be more apropos to compare them to fighter jets/tanks vs bullets | | |
| ▲ | nradov 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Not really comparable. A new Starlink satellite costs ~$1M. A new F-35 costs ~$100M, and some of the guided missiles it carries actually cost more than the satellite. The militarized Starshield satellites probably cost more than their Starlink cousins but still I think you get the point that there are orders of magnitude differences in unit cost. | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 5 days ago | parent [-] | | And a bullet costs $0.0001, so it's off just as much in the other direction. Also, your focus on cost was not the point. The point was numbers necessary. You need $lots of bullets, but you don't need any where near the same number of jets/tanks. You don't need $lots of satellites. You need a much smaller number closer to the number of jets/tanks. At least based on Starlink constellation numbers. | | |
| ▲ | thfuran 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I assume you can get some significant bulk discounts at DoD scale, but it's probably still more like $0.10 than $0.0001, which is admittedly still rather less than $1M | |
| ▲ | nradov 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think you might be getting a little confused by terminology. In military terms a round of ammunition doesn't necessarily describe just a small arms cartridge. It can be any munition that's stored for a long period until needed with minimal maintenance. So even an expensive missile or satellite might be treated as a round of ammunition, depending on the design and concept of operations. | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Unless the satellite is meant to collide with another object, it's never going to be considered ammunition. It is a strategic platform for communication or intelligence gathering or maybe both. So calling a satellite ammunition is just belaboring the point for internet points or something. | | |
| ▲ | nradov 5 days ago | parent [-] | | No, you're still missing an important point. This isn't just semantics. Some types of satellites will be considered ammunition in the same way that some (expensive) aerial recon drones and decoys are already considered ammunition today. Not all rounds of ammunition are intended to physically strike a target. |
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| ▲ | PaulDavisThe1st 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "we" are not doing anything AFAICT. Various privately owned corporations might be, and that's very different. Yes, I know the undersea cables are privately owned too. | | |
| ▲ | nradov 5 days ago | parent [-] | | At this point it's a distinction without much of a difference. For better or worse, SpaceX has now been fully integrated into the US military-industrial complex. They have huge DoD contracts to build out the Starshield constellation, including the prompt replacement capability. The US government is going to treat attacks on our critical communications infrastructure seriously, regardless of whether the hardware is publicly or privately owned. | | |
| ▲ | PaulDavisThe1st 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Not clear how the world's richest man sees this situation. He certainly appeared to feel free to make his own decisions in Ukraine. | | |
| ▲ | thejazzman 5 days ago | parent [-] | | It's acknowledged in his original biography that the government could seize SpaceX from him for national security purposes etc But that's an awfully gray area after the last few months |
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| ▲ | 1oooqooq 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | weren't those cut exactly because they are the starlink backbone when over Ukraine? |
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