Jared Keller
The national security of the United States is currently imperiled by a new threat from Russia, according to the White House: a "troubling" emerging, anti-satellite weapon that, while ostensibly incapable of "physical destruction" on the ground, could severely disrupt U.S. military and civilian operations in outer space. Some U.S. government officials suspect the system may be nuclear, a prospect that raises concerns that the Russian government could not only disable strategic satellites in orbit, but, in turn, deal a major blow to the U.S. economy by degrading both government and civilian space-based operations. The threat is apparently so dire that lawmakers in Congress are sounding alarm bells to the public.
Luckily, the U.S. military has a relatively simple countermeasure in place to deal with space-based weapons: just send up a fighter jet to blow the damn thing out of the sky. After all, the Air Force had done it before -- once.
A F-15 fighter jet piloted by then-Maj. Wilbert 'Doug' Pearson Jr. flies an ASM-135 anti-satellite missile on Sept. 13, 1985. (Paul E. Reynolds/U.S. Air Force photo)In 1985, as the Cold War was winding down, the U.S. military found itself with a relatively new problem. The Soviet Union had developed a "robust" ability to launch small satellites into orbit that could keep track of U.S. Navy warships at sea, a capability that diminished the Pentagon's ability to suddenly project power at any shore in the world without significant risk of detection, according to Maj. Gen. Wilbert "Doug" Pearson Jr. (ret.), the one and only Air Force pilot to
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