Recent Google Earth images reveal construction at what appears to be a sophisticated laser system at a Russian space facility designed to blind adversary satellites.
The construction is taking place at the Russian Ministry of Defense's Krona space facility near Zelenchukskaya in Russia's far southwest, home of the massive RATAN-600 radio telescope. The existence of this new complex was brought to light in an in-depth open source investigation(opens in new tab) published by The Space Review that analyzed public satellite imagery, solicitation documents from Russian industrial contractors and Russian financial documents.
All of these sources lay out the construction of a project named Kalina, described in the financial documentation obtained by The Space Review as a laser system designed for "electro-optical warfare" that can permanently blind adversarial satellites by shining laser pulses so bright they can damage optical sensors. (This is distinctly different from other lasers known as "dazzlers," which are aimed at only temporarily blinding optics systems.)
does this break UN charter?
Building a giant anti-satellite laser doesn't violate the UN charter, but there's a lot of things you can do with it that do. But why would Russia care? They're actively involved in an illegal war of conquest.
all the main character countries have nukes in space even if they pretend like they don't
Do you realize how expensive that would be to build and maintain? This is pants on head moronic.
Same as ICBMs, just pre-launched for your convenience? Retrieving expired warheads might be problem though but i guess you have to keep X37-B busy.
Who cares. There is no rules in war. Last one standing will write history.
>Last one standing will write history.
The last one standing will not be Russia just fyi
With how poor and corrupt Russia is, how hard would it to be to bribe the Russians into setting their own factory on fire, lol?
just after the soviet collapse you were able to get mig 29's for a pair of shoes.
Or rather, a mig 29 was traded to yugoslavia for a pair of shoes, at least. No idea what model of mig 29 though; they have been around since 1983
Outer space treaty doesn't apply to a ground facility. Also Russia has been ignoring all of the laws of war in the Ukraine invasion so why worry?
Either it doesn’t do anything or they start blasting allied nato satellites and get gang raped
The more sats they blast, the more difficulty NATO will have striking through their air defenses.
They USSR attempted to orbit a similar, chemical laser on the second Energia launch, but it mysteriously failed
Shoot one NATO satellite and it's Article 5. Russia won't get an opportunity to shoot more about five minutes after the first. Maybe they'd get three total, then the laser facility will cease to exist.
American doctrine is centered around SEAD and air supremacy. Russia might have a week before F-35s are over Moscow in a real war, satellites be damned.
Shoot a single satellite and the Polish flag will be flying over Moscow within a week.
>bu-b-but we will uhhhhh
>total economic collapse!
>you will surely starve!
Would you look at this moronic vatnik crap. Come back to us with space warfare when your T14 and fricking su57 are more than a meme hey you bullshitting lying rapist murder subhumans. NATO will tear you Russias butthole wide open if Russia farts in NATOs direction and imaginary space wunderwaffen won't change that. Again Russia is a shithole with an economy the size of spain, it is not some space rival superpower anything. It can't even make a consumer car
destroying satellites is grounds for nuclear retaliation in US doctrine. The early warning system has to stay operational at all costs or else you are open to being destroyed in a first strike
In other news some very confused aliens are beginning to learn morse code
Bingo
Pretty sure satellites are one of the few defenses the US has against ICBMs. Gulp.
could a ground based laser really do anything to a sattelite? I think lasers get fricked over hard by all the air inbetween and the more powerful they are them the less accurate you can make them
We've been told for over a decade that China is blinding or overheating US spy satellites with lasers
Wouldn't light refraction be a problem for lasers trying to shoot down satellites?
If brute force doesn't work, you aren't using enough.
Well luckily the people who develop population devastating weapons have too many brain cells that get in their way
So would several other things, such satellites being so fast that even a laser would have to lead them to hit them. But these problems can be solved with math and engineering
Light's travel time to low Earth orbit is less than 5ms. You wouldn't need to lead shit.
a satellite in LEO movies 25 feet in 5ms. so thats 25 feet from where you see it, so add another 25 feet to that for your laser.
you dont seem very bright so ill do the math for you. this means you need to *lead* your laser shot by 50 feet
refraction isn't really a problem
diffraction will frick you up hard though
also a laser passing through air will heat it up which will make it even worse
>Recent Google Earth images reveal construction at what appears to be a sophisticated laser system at a Russian space facility designed to blind adversary satellites.
They already have dozens of these.
>Recent Google Earth images reveal construction
I remember how this game is played. Last year foreign policy wonks made a map with a bunch of dots drawn on it to say China is pointing new missiles at freedom and the baby Jesus.
>t. yellow
>noooo the islands in SCS are for peaceful purposes and light houses!
>noooo those runways are for commercial tourist flights!
>places military planes and missile defenses on islands anyway
no one believes you, bugs.
Still remember the brown fingers of Amerimutt bugmen astroturfing this Amerimut state propaganda larp on nu-/k/ only to obviously memoryhole it when people scrolled 1 second to the right on the cut off section of the map to see the finished "silos" that looked awfully like winderturbines
>all clustered in one spot
Well that makes it quite easy to shitstomp them deeper into the ground, now doesn’t it Xiao?
Damn homie I always wanted to live in the ace combat universe
>mf excalibur
Oh shit, frick yea~
>Russians are belkans
OH NONONONONO
>Russians are belkans
Oh yes, we well know what will happen in the end.
lasers are multipurpose
>blind satellites
>intercept artillerydrones
>recharge friendly drones
Time to coat everything with metallized polyethylene terephthalate that spacecraft use that reflect 97% of thermal radiation. AKA the cheap emergency space blankets they give out in disasters.
the trick is having lasers hot and concentrated enough that even only the 3% that doesn't get reflected does the job
Problem is thermal blooming, ever see the weird air distortions above a hot engine on your car, that distortion diffract a laser more and more the more power you put into it.
The more thermal blooming you get the greater % per distance it suffers and the more it the shortens range.
It's best to compensate with higher power.
>air can't heat-haze if it's instantly burnt away
pretty sure that at that point you just ionize the air and it becomes a great absorber of all sorts of photons
Sovietgays had the right idea to for a chemical laser in space but could not pull it off because their heavy launcher fricked up when it actually mattered
buran flew for a photo op
Wasn't the construction of a Russian anti-satellite laser the basis for the plot of one of the early Dale Brown novels, Flight of the Old Dog?
>Russia
>building sophisticated laser system
>building sophisticated anything
Actually let's go back to that
>Russia
>building anything
lol
lmao even
Oh cool, have any pictures?
So let's have that factory have an "mystery fire" already.
Russias back to muh space again. Sounds like they're losing
>Can't produce optics for their tanks or chips for it's rockets or even a fricking tank
>'SPACE LASERS!'
Nah.
>can't produce optics
lol what russia has their own indigenous 1st and 2nd gen thermal sight
>chips for rockets and tanks
Are you actually moronic why would the russians need 7nm chips when all military tech still runs on 24nm chips that they can produce even mutts don't use 7nm
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/captured-russian-weapons-are-packed-with-foreign-microchips
>Ukraine intelligence reports
kek
>There were at least 35 U.S.-made chips found in the Kh-101 cruise missile
KEK hohols will just make up shit the kh101 doesn't have 35 chips not to mention these chips are 24nm something russia already produces
>these chips are 24nm something russia already produces
>24nm
lol
lmao
xd
kinda weird how Russia had to use TSMC to make their 28nm Elbrus chips, eh?
TSMC has virtually world monopoly over microchip manufacturing and it is only now that its monopoly is eroding.
Why isn't Russia destroying SpaceX satellites (with missiles)?
Russia could harass satellites of Polack and Baltic scum without any intervention. If the US with their old Minuteman III ICBM from the 60s is going to frick around it gets vaporized.
NATO is such a joke, little trannies wont even come to help while we kill Ukrainians. Grow some balls.
The face you make when you find out Putin fried all your assets and all you have left is few hundred dogecoin left on your computer
He has more kids than you tho.
Demon Semen Kids
>Dudes one of the riches people in the world and a life long practitioner of Satanism..Hummm, think theres a correlation between the two???
>/chu/ggers actually believe Monke is Hank Scorpio.
>Believing Rossya has another James Bond wonderwaffle.
You are so gullible.
Remember when Vatnigs were bragging about their lasers frying Ukie drones?
No, but it sounds like typical vatnig agitcope, like this whole COMMIE SPACE LASER thing.
I mean, it's going to get bombed the second it starts targeting American satellites