To be fair, this move is coming after fairly strong evidence that Russia and China have been breaking the treaty by deploying weapons into space for years. Which the US has highlighted many times in the past.
At some point you have to acknowledge that the treaty is no longer being respected, and match capabilities to avoid being left at a disadvantage.
That said, I'm sure there were tons of people in the US military establishment who had been pushing for this for decades and were ecstatic at being allowed to do it at a broad scale.
Neither Russia nor China's known weapons deployment is likely to breach the very narrow restrictions of the Outer Space Treaty, and the latest capability the US has vaguely claimed probably doesn't either.
In practice, the US has had practical counter space and electronic warfare capabilities in space for decades (even a regular satellite with enough delta V is a viable weapon, but superpowers have more targeted capabilities than that), and the observable difference is that the current administration's approach leans more towards bragging.
The Chinese have been bragging about taking out one of their own satellites in a test of their capabilities for 8 years now. Russia would but they don't have the money to even try.
This place is no better than X...seriously...it is just too small for the propaganda operations to target and yet it is still just as bad. I don't even think it is HN's fault, just the skew of the population HN attracts.
Not even sure who I'm supposed to be propagandising for here, but as the person that actually works on European dual use satellite tech I can assure you it's well established fact that all superpowers have taken out their own satellites with ASAT weaponry (Russia more recently than China fwiw, though China's in-space capabilities are likely a lot better). None of those are a violation of the very narrow anti-WMD proscriptions in the Outer Space Treaty, and whatever counterspace capability the US is vaguely announcing here (or indeed the capability they and their adversaries have had for years) is unlikely to be either.
Russia was at least planning to launch a space-to-space laser back in 1987, but the prototype (essentially just a mass simulator, no lasers inside) failed on launch quite spectacularly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_(spacecraft)
What kind of evidence are you expecting? Detailed photographs of the satellites on orbit?
These are credible institutions, with their statements regarding unusual orbital movements backed up by observations made by several independent groups.
The Chinese themselves blew up one of their own satellites as a test of their own capabilities. The missile was launched from the ground but targeted from orbit. They themselves say this and have since they did it 8 years ago. Your ignorance isn't an argument.
I'd like to see evidence which supports the claims and not have to rely on a call to authority fallacy[1] in order to agree with this collective-derived reality.
I have no doubt that there are weapons in space - Russian, Chinese, American - why wouldn't there be? - but I still want to see actual evidence.
None of the sources you give are impartial - all of them serve to profit from perpetuating fear of Chinese space activities.
Too often, xenophobic movements rely on authority figures to perpetuate their myths. Don't you agree?
What evidence would satisfy you that there are weapons in space? You either have to check yourself somehow, or trust a third party. Is there a third party you trust to provide evidence?
If they did, then all three are equally guilty of breaching the treaty and making weapons in space a new norm. That's plausible, sure.
If they didn't, it makes sense why they'd choose to compete on the same playing field now, as the norm is already broken.
None of what I'm posting is about saying the US are the 'good guys' here. Neither the US, Russia, nor China are 'good' for creating a new space arms race that puts everyone at more risk. It might be something we can understand from a purely rational perspective while disliking that it's happening.
Not really, LBH, if RU and PRC ask US to kneecap US launch tempo or set some Washington naval treaty tonnage to space limits, US would lol.
Rationally US (hegemonic stability) is incentivized to be uniquely bad, i.e. significantly MORE guilty of introducing new/more escalatory arms race conditions by virtue of having most space capability/tech stack, and incentivized to maintain capability gap. US typical the one pushing boundaries to seek absolute security because it cannot (and currently does not have to) accept parity.
Followed by RU simply because they're broke and have to do desperate shit like Cosmos 2542. Meanwhile PRC counterspace rollout has been within norm, i.e. match capability of others, land->space direct ascent ASAT, coorbital rendezvous / proximity ops, EW/dazzlers (land+space). PRC cooking from the regular menu, partly because catchup, but PRC also way past RU in space now, but hasn't introduced any destabilizing novel counter space tech that would escalate space arms race except doing normal stuff at scale that triggers US anxiety over size of gap. But ultimately, no one is forcing US to break meta continuously because it rationally won't accept vulnerability.
DoD/W didn't have to weaponize SpaceX... but they did, so we should not be surprised in future if general international space admin/order breaks down in future. i.e. US/SpaceX got first come first serve dibs on favourable civilian LEO orbital shells assignment from UN/ITU, but now SpaceX now civil military fusion platform, so probably expect PRC counter space mega constellations to simply ignore US space entitlements in future.
We don't know what the US does. They are just as enigmatic as the Chinese to the point that US Congress is not even allowed to learn about the secret projects.
Human rights violations, violations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, violations of related UNSC Resolutions, sponsorship of terrorism, and many others.
We can wholeheartedly disagree with the US's war on Iran without pretending Iran is a 'good' international actor. It's a rogue state and has been for decades.
It's optimised for distance to and from the depot and in-city store locations. Presumably it charges at the depot while loading.
Trucks have a lot more space for batteries, so with EV trucks it's all about balancing range and weight for the task. More range means less useful load.
Some Australian electric prime movers (truck that pulls the load on trailers) are using a fork lift in / fork lift out swappable giant battery pack - 10 minute change over from truck to charging station, freshly charged unit back to truck.
The US only became actively involved in supporting South Vietnam a decade after it had achieved independence from France in 1955, after the negotiated division into North and South Vietnam in Geneva, and after the last French forces left in 1956.
The cause of that intervention was North Vietnam sending Viet Cong insurgents into South Vietnam, attempting to overthrow the government, and ignoring the South's sovereignty.
That doesn't justify the US's later transgressions while engaged in the war, but their initial support to South Vietnam was neither unjustified nor illiberal.
That is a very particular arrangement of the facts, that really doesn't have the shape of truth to it. Vietnam was a former French colony conquered by the Japanese WW2, that wanted to restore their independence.The Allies liberated South Vietnam, restoring French colonial rule and seeking to reconquer the whole nation. It was deeply unpopular with the people. Moreover the South wanted to conquer the north with French support and US financing, they fought to a stalemate and an uneasy peace.
Who violated the ceasefire under what circumstances is contested, but ultimately does not really matter - neither side wanted peace, and the hostilities would've resumed anyway one way or another.
The end result was that the US antagonized a people who were fighting for their own freedom, and found itself in an unwinnable war - creating an allied (or at least independent) country from a people you bombed to the stone age is an impossible task.
From this follows that no, the US military wasn't just another dozen bombed out villages away from final victory, when it was backstabbed by those peaceniks at home.
An ounce of diplomacy at the right place and time would've been the best for both the United States and Vietnam, and would've netted them everything they wanted on top of international goodwill.
Fair call on the funding, I know the US was paying for the French military's involvement for years. Still, by active support I meant troops on the ground, which happened significantly later.
Who resumed the fighting does matter, as even though Diem refused the 1956 reunification elections that didn't justify resorting to an armed insurgency by the North. It's also not ambiguous, Hanoi's 15th plenum officially authorised that insurgency in 1959 and formed groups 559 and 759, and later the NLF (Viet Cong).
They were already killing hundreds of innocent South Vietnamese village chiefs, teachers, and officials by the late 1950s, trying to create a local insurgency and insurrection. That's what the US got involved with to oppose, and I really can't say it was a morally wrong decision at the time. Hanoi had the option of sticking with diplomacy and chose to send guerrillas south instead. You're giving only the US agency here.
It doesn't matter how much you go on about 'NATO propaganda', the simple truth is that Russia invaded Ukraine, illegally and without reasonable cause, and did so for its own interests.
What's more, Ukraine was nowhere near joining NATO, and in any case Russia's invasion would still have been illegal and reprehensible even if it was.
Can you name any examples? European countries and the EU as a whole don't have an equivalent of the US's ITAR 'See-Through' rule, which lets the US control the usage of a system that has any US components.
I'm not aware of any sale of a US weapons system containing European parts being blocked by any European government. It has been done within Europe, but only for major components, such as Germany's blocking at one point of sales to Saudi Arabia.
But this is the one-component-is-the-weapon, with everything going in one direction version of such a rule. An F35 has 300,000 components from 19 countries, so you can imagine what a maze the agreements for that one are.
It's also not just about the weapons and the danger they pose. It's also about jobs. Know-how (both spreading and restricting know-how). And even the traditional "synergy" (you've designed helicopter blah, hence you make radio component so-and-so, so how about you manufacture NATO standard blah radios and antennas) and the occasional monopoly (it's kind of secret but there aren't many companies that can make the obvious alloy needed for the trust vectoring to name one obvious thing)
Our side is NATO, and we make weapons that are designed to push the global integrated worldview and human rights ("America and it's allies") that we espouse as an alliance. And this view permeates all weapons. For NATO guns, one, you'll never get ridiculous ammo stores (that would enable you to eliminate a population for example), we all work on these weapons together, design them together, and if you try to use your own ammo, everything will fail. Most NATO weapons are defensive. You aim a NATO weapon at a (small) target, it finds that target and either kills it or it disables itself and falls to the ground, essentially intact. Russian weapons are the total opposite: they're meant to kill and if they can't kill their target, they'll just kill whatever and whoever's nearby. Sometimes up to the point they kill the weapon's operators. They will fire "cheap ammo" and literally come with instructions on how to make it. They are meant to kill on a very large scale, without precision and they are most definitely not safe to use. This philosophical difference applies to everything from machine guns to nuclear weapons.
A quick Google search will find you plenty of European legislation. And you should look at those laws like the Belgian laws here, like they were a company "Values" document. That is how the EU/Belgium (and other countries) react "by default", but specific treaties explicitly create exceptions to those rules between specific parties.
So like this: exporting guns and ammo is certainly not something any country allows their companies to do, but most/all countries make specific exceptions in treaties.
This just happens to have the advantage that it makes it extremely easy for politicians to deceive voters about weapons. "Belgian law says it's illegal to export weapons". 100% technically true, and totally misdirects people into believing Belgium doesn't export weapons, which is absolutely false.
Meanwhile, Belgium exports ~50 million euros worth of weapons. But Belgium is just an example, it's not like the Netherlands or France or (definitely) UK, or the EU as a whole are different.
You missed the point. The example asked for was this:
"I'm not aware of any sale of a US weapons system containing European parts being blocked by any European government."
That would be something like "Belgium says the USA can't sell F-35s to Israel because the wings are Belgian-made" similar to how the USA prevents ASML from selling their machines to China.
Oh that's what you want. In the clusterfuck with the Turkey involuntary withdrawal from the F35 program half the treaties were renegotiated (you see, can't have any Turk produce weapons unless he's a "genius", that would not be fair. In other news: the Turkish definition of genius is mostly being the son in law of Erdogan [1])
I believe this agreement is part of the restructuring after that cluster... Note that the agreement is both about production and buying. [2]
"Finland has required extensive domestic participation, with industrial cooperation valued at a minimum of 30 percent of the contract price of procuring 64 F-35A fighters. Under the agreement, Finnish firms will produce the F-35’s forward fuselage structures, including components intended for export aircraft. The agreement also includes ..."
As to how the EU is involved: https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-defence-indus... (ie. that's where you go to ask for loans to start a factory for making F35 components, they have a page listing the deals ... somewhere). Note that this is one of the EU institutions that isn't in the budget (well, the loans aren't). They're not spending tax money to make those loans, they're printing money to make those loans.
So the Finnish government is making this deal, including details on export (and this is obviously weapons exports).
How is it an example of European governments preventing American weapons from being sold? Are you saying the Finns unilaterally decided that Turkey can't have F-35s, even if the USA wants to sell F-35s to them?
You misunderstand. Everything is prevented by law, with the purpose to make any change in production involve negotiations with the government, who then negotiates weapons/jobs/local production/... Without those negotiations, and the resulting exceptions to the law nothing can be sold, even dual use items are restricted.
And, of course, the other side of that coin: weapons export regulation is Europe is not something that is meant to actually prevent weapons export. Rather it is used like a company policy: it makes sure everyone regularly has to give the government something they want.
Which is, to put it mildly, not how politicians present those laws.
No, you misunderstand. You keep talking about things irrelevant to the key point.
Look at the political pressure the USA puts on ASML in the Netherlands to prevent them from selling certain products to China because those machines contain some American parts.
The question is explicitly when the reverse has happened, not some general info about European weapon exports or legislation.
Things like Wassenaar Arrangement and MTCR(that applies to a lot of hobby stuffs I'm interested in) are multinational and global. The US implementation is the most painful, but they're like non-Linux unices, sameish in concept and not like first-worlders get free passes.
(And these regs aren't complete nonsense; the technologies regulated by these are useful for guided munitions. It just so happens missile technologies are fully commoditized by now and also happens to be immensely useful for totally peaceful purposes too)
These, again, are export control restrictions at the point of sale and transfer, and the US follows them too. It's not the same thing as what we're discussing regarding the US's changing requirements regarding systems that embed its components.
Note that dual-use items (which Wassenaar regulates) and MTCR are not the same as the US's ITAR 'see through' rule which it uses to block third party sales of systems that contain even small numbers of US components.
For dual-use items, the EU's Directive 2021/821 governs things and broadly authorises exports to the United States through EU General Export Authorisations (EUGEAs) that don't require individual approval.[0]
Leave them be, they retired at the top of their game and they’re enjoying life doing something different. If they rejoin and tour again it’ll be because they feel the desire to, not because of ‘fan’ campaigns like this.
Also the whole thing feels weirdly commercial and is mostly AI-slop.
No, Hubble didn't reuse any components from spy satellites. However, the chosen mirror diameter was decided by the size of the mirrors being produced for the Keyhole programme, as it meant NASA would be able to reuse Perkin-Elmer's existing fabrication facility.
It used to. The deeply ideological current administration has decreed that it may no longer do so, and must instead pretend that climate change doesn't exist. [0][1]
Say what you want about the military, I think most of the adults in the room, however many are left, are simply treating the threat is real even if they won’t explicitly say it.
Doesn’t mean there isn’t a chilling effect, but also, not everybody is the DEI hire Hegseth.
https://media.defense.gov/2020/Sep/01/2002488689/-1/-1/1/202...
https://www.ifri.org/en/studies/current-and-future-trends-ch...
https://www.swfound.org/publications-and-reports/2026-global...
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402390.2024.2...
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4431/1
https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Annual_Report/Chapt...
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