Beijing secretly fires lasers to disable US satellites

This should come as no surprise – that is, unless your only source of news is the US MSM. Fortunately, there is the London Telegraph to help us keep up with what our own government is up to.

As disturbing as hostile action against US spacecraft from the ChiComs is, there is, unfortunately more to this story than just that.

China has secretly fired powerful laser weapons designed to disable American spy satellites by “blinding” their sensitive surveillance devices, it was reported yesterday.

It’s left to the reader’s imagination to determine whether or not there was any effect. Based on the Chief’s knowledge, atmospheric interference could have been a problem, but then again, sensitive optics may be vulnerable due to their high sensitivity.

Another associated problem with this is in our own backyard:

The hitherto unreported attacks have been kept secret by the Bush administration for fear that it would damage attempts to co-opt China in diplomatic offensives against North Korea and Iran.

Sources told the military affairs publication Defense News that there had been a fierce internal battle within Washington over whether to make the attacks public. In the end, the Pentagon’s annual assessment of the growing Chinese military build-up barely mentioned the threat. “After a contentious debate, the White House directed the Pentagon to limit its concern to one line,” Defense News said.

Once again, we pull our punches in the alleged interest of maintaining some sort of diplomatic influence – with a power that has little or no serious interest in helping us to do ANYTHING! What a joke!