How Russia would use space nukes to cripple the US — and the world
NY Post
What does the future of warfare look like? America got a glimpse way back on July 9, 1962, when t he United States fired a Douglas Thor missile well beyond the Kármán Line that marks the beginning of outer space.
Known as Starfish Prime, the 110,000-pound intercontinental ballistic missile carried a 1.4 megaton W-49 thermonuclear warhead that was detonated high over the Pacific Ocean.
That one bomb not only damaged Hawaiian electrical systems and equipment hundreds of miles away, it damaged or knocked out more than one-third of the world’s 24 orbiting satellites.
Today, six decades later, there are more than 5,500 known satellites orbiting the Earth. 3,500+ are American, 541+ Chinese and 172+ Russian.
And unlike then, these satellites are key to our modern society, carrying Internet signals, communications and global positioning systems.
Knocking out these satellites with a nuclear explosion would ground drones, cut off troops — even blind an entire nation to a first-strike attack.
