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Comment by lanthissa | Hacker News Reader

icbms and hypersonics exist, theres no defense against the top end anywhere atm.

if you're in a war where people are shooting your satellites out of the sky you're past the point where defenses matter. theres no grey war in space like russia hiring people to blow up stuff in europe and very few states could take out multiple satellites in space.

beyond that if we ever did get to that point, you could develop anti missile tech in space, you effectively have the high ground sitting at the top of the gravity well.

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Oh no! Our PeaceSat went haywire and bumped into your WarSat! Sorry dude, let's swap insurance.

Had a good laugh thanks. Indeed area of denial, increased maneuvering etc. can all be used as attacks. Space is big, but stuff moves fast.

I'm reasonably sure there are more states that could destroy a satellite than hit infrastructure on US soil. And if you try to use an ICBM to hit the US then you risk getting nuked.

> people are shooting your satellites out of the sky

If space powers have any sense at all they'll develop a fleet of satellites that deploy small limpet craft that attach to the enemies' satellites and drag them toward earth.

Literal shooting sounds like mutually assured satellite destruction.

This. Orbital debris are an area denial attack, and since there's only one shared planetary orbit (in aggregate), debris-creating weapons are more like biological weapons, poison gas, and tactical nuclear weapons. Even if you win, you've impeded yourself.

The internationally hoped for outcome should be that China continues scaling their orbital use, to the point where it becomes mutually advantageous to sign a treaty with the US banning orbital debris-creating weapons (and ideally imposing mutually-supported consequences on non-signatories who breach the agreement).

Then everyone would be left with more sane options of disabling-only (microwave, laser, targeted EMP, etc).

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