Redstate

...election. The DPP apparently have turned off a lot of Taiwanese.

Your anecdotes compare very well to mine. Ordinary Taiwanese are tightly tied to friends, relatives and associates on the mainland. Blood and desire for wealth may indeed be thicker than love of freedom.

This fact alone may be what will bring the people along when the PRC decide that the time is right to press the unification issue. Part of what will make the time right will be a much more developed state of business and financial ties between the two countries. And with this election, the Taiwanese have chosen to accelerate the process.

One easily-imaginable end-state may be a unification in all but name. In that case, if there were an armed struggle over the island, it might be that the Chinese rather than the Americans would be seen as the liberators.

for Hunter! He seems to be the only candidate who looks at China with any amount of concern. But I can't say I have a lot of hope left in his campaign right now.

The LDP is solidly on our side, and on the side of a strong Japan being a force for good in the world, no matter who's in charge. There will be no change in policy unless they lose the lower house of the Diet.

Abe was run of the mill for them. Now. I will say that *his* predecessor Koizumi was special. He knew what he was doing and was good at getting it, for both domestic and foreign policy. But guys like him are rare in Japanese politics, and we can't hold our breath for the next one.

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Japan unfortunately isn't a country that deals in leadership much. They're good followers, though.

Just what should the response have been ?

Personally I was much more upset about N Korea bracketing Hawaii with missile tests.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Yes, it was their satellite, but the hundreds of pieces of debris it created are a hazard to many other satellites-ours and those of other nation's.

For one thing, we should have undertaken our own anti-satellite program-we already have the ability to destroy them if necessary, but we need to develop new weapons and doctrine for anti-satellite work, as to my knowledge the only way we can destroy one is to fly a fighter as high as possible and use a modified air to air missile. We need to develop land based methods, as well as from the air, such as kinetic kill vehicles, which is what the Chinese used, and direct energy weapons, such as lasers that can be used to blind or disable satellites. Their have been reports that some of our satellites have been blinded by lasers emanating from China.

We also need to tighten restrictions on sensitive technology sold to China and other countries.

It is also important to increase our counterintelligenc capabilities. It seems like every week I read about Chinese agents stealing secrets from somewhere. They have highly classified information on the propulsion system of our newest class of attack submarines, the Virginia Class, for instance.

We can also do other things such as deploying a second carrier group to the Pacific, or more F-22's to Japan, any kind of show of force. For example, it didn't get hardly any publicity, but a while ago we quietly flew some B-2s to Guam from Whitman Air Force Base, just to show that we can.

The naive forgive and forget.
The foolish forget but do not forgive.
The wise forgive but do not forget.

First what is it with people on this site constantly belittling our Aerospace/Missile tech.

Our Asat is the best in the world. When you say we have to put it on a plane and launch it, you fail to realize we have the only system that can't be taken out by a pre-emptive strike, is mobile and flexible.

As for landbased systems just what do you think the BMD program is. All a satellite is, is an exceptionally predictable missile payload.

You just aren't thinking clearly on the laser issue. The Chinese actually using the technique is a sign of stupidity on their part. (Google laser adaptive optics and then think what our actual capability must be).

Sensitive tech to china ? sorry far too late. We have chosen a different path and now we are stuck.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

First of all, yes, in theory, a ground based system would be vulnerable to a preemptive strike. However, such a strike would have to consist either of either an airstrike-using bombs or missiles, or a ground based attack using special forces.

To begin with, obviously no Chinese aircraft is going to make it over U.S. soil to use laser guided weapons(which the Chinese have developed, helped by our technology)or even long range standoff missiles. This leaves ICBMs as the only way to take it out by air. As you pointed out, our ABM tech is excellent. As for a special forces attack, that is where good old fashioned security and intelligence is involved.

In order to take out a satellite using a plane, the anti-satellite missile would have to be transported to wherever the mission was going to be flown from, and mated onto the plane. It would take some time. If in the future the Chinese initiate conflict, we may have a need to degrade their satellite system very quickly. Ideally, we should have both land and air based capability.

As for the assertion that satellites can be taken out using ABM systems, I am not sure. Satellites orbit higher than missiles travel. Besides, if a conflict breaks out, we want our ABM to be focused and ready to rapidly destroy any incoming missiles, not out shooting at satellites. That needs to be the responsibility of another unit, designated solely for that purpose. Perhaps they will use the same technology.

And I fail to see how I am not thinking clearly on the laser issue. Just what to you mean it was stupid on their part? Their goal was not to destroy our satellite. Perhaps it was an actual test of their ability to momentarily blind our satellites, but what it really was was a test to see how far they could push us.

And if you are implying that they already have some of our most sensitive technology, than you are correct. However, I see no need to allow them continued access to anything they haven't recieved or stolen already.

As for us being the world's policeman and space's hall monitor, there is a very real possibility that debris from their test could have caused the destruction of one or more other satellites. Now that could be harmless, resulting in people losing satellite TV for a while, or it could be dangerous, causing for instance a disruption in U.S. military communications somewhere, or the GPS system on a 400,000 ton oil tanker to go down. And even if it this wasn't the case, it was the Chinese again testing us. This test was as much a political test as it was military.

The naive forgive and forget.
The foolish forget but do not forgive.
The wise forgive but do not forget.

first ground based or mobile air launch or sea launch any space mission has to be launched from a particular window of coordinates determined by the capabilities of the launch vehicle. So any groundbased system is going to have much more limited time windows to attack a given target all things being equal. As to having to transport our current Asat, the thing attaches to an F15. Transportation problem solved.

Geosynchronous satellites are indeed above the range of our ABMs . They do not comprise the bulk of Military satellites which are in leo (Low Earth Orbit).

As to the chinese being stupid. All they did was let us know they have a laser blinding capability. We can now act accordingly. In effect they neutralized their own capability.

As to the test putting junk in space, do you realize just how much crap is in orbit ? Just what percentage of it is ours. If we made the chinese clean up after themselves the rest of the world would be on our butt about our litterbug practices. Its a major effort just track where all the stuff is, god knows what it will take to start cleaning it up.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777