[George W. Bush]

Atomic Weapons and the Means to deliver them are the international, universal Ace Card.

Not if we have space-based energy weapons in orbit already.

I think we do. The gubmint'll inform us about this in 20-30 years. Given the amounts we can see spent from the public record on such weapons research, the black budget items must be far larger. And the track record for actual deployment of such weapons and technology in earlier Pentagon research projects is pretty consistent (stealth and spy aircraft, nuclear weapons, electronics/satellite intel).

Yeah, I think we have some ray-guns in the vicinity of Korea and China. Probably x-ray lasers on satellites to attack the missile electronics. We wouldn't necessarily need orbital platforms either. You could also mount MIRACL systems on warships near Japan where they could protect the fleet and provide an anti-ICBM capability for strategic land launches. The strange official silence about the MIRACL program since its successful test against a missile in flight in 1996 is very provocative. I think it went into production under black budget but it'll be a while before we find out.

[HanBaal Barca]

nice perspective mr George... I wonder how that MIRACL project stands today too ;)

[Robert_Paulson2]

yup.
we got it.
they know it.

When the shuttle went down, I was concerned that China had gotten it from clintong, and used it against us on an overflight.

But they tell us that they are pretty sure, it was the foam that did the damage. So, I feel better about it.

Does china have any satellite program compared to ours?

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

You could also mount MIRACL systems on warships near Japan where they could protect the fleet and provide an anti-ICBM capability for strategic land launches. The strange official silence about the MIRACL program since its successful test against a missile in flight in 1996 is very provocative. I think it went into production under black budget but it'll be a while before we find out.

Good point. At this point, we (civilians outside the Pentagon) just don't know -- but a comforting thought, if true.

[SauronOfMordor]

Not if we have space-based energy weapons in orbit already.

We don't even need them on NK. We already publicly have high-precision conventional bombs and missiles, including precision bunker-busters.

As far as dealing with NK's massed, bunkered artillery, what we need is a set of platforms that can loft several thousand precision munitions into range of the NK's artillery emplacements, and ripple-fire them very rapidly. This could be done with a moderate-size fleet of stealthy blimps