Steeljaw Scribe

"At a minimum, Washington should delay the planned 2010 retirement of the Space Shuttle until a new space plane can replace it, as a way to retain a deterring potential military capability. China’s unwillingness to comment on its military space plans, coupled with the Shenlong space plane, confirms its larger aversion to military transparency. The [...]

About this time last year (11 Jan), China conducted the now infamous direct-ascent ASAT (Anti-Satellite) hit-to-kill test.  We have written to some degree about it already - notably here  and here  .  Both articles describe the notorious aspect of the test - the addition of significant amounts of debris to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).  [...]

WASHINGTON (CNN) – China has refused nine U.S. Navy ships and one Air Force jet entry to Hong Kong in the past month, U.S. military officials said Friday.  Senior Navy officials said that Beijing denied permission for the USS Reuben James, a Navy frigate, to make a holiday port call for sailors at the end of [...]

 A bit more about China and the Kitty Hawk deal, plus some more below the fold about another failure of Russia’s Bulava SLBM and some other aspects of the Russian defense industry.

 
Panda Bashing?

On the heels of the story of the Chinese turning away the Kitty Hawk comes that of the two minesweepers that were denied [...]

Given our predilection to trying new things around here (as opposed to say, oh, the local pro-football team)  we’re trying out a new PDF embed and share process from Adobe called, surprisingly enough, SHARE.  Of course it is in beta, so it may or may not work.  If it does, what you will see below [...]