Avatar photoRed Star Rogue: Pinch Loaf

One of the persistent problems with the intelligence community (and its critics) is a form of selection bias—some of the folks who take an interest in intelligence matters do so because they’ve seen one to many James Bond movies. Even a tiny number of these folks can really gum up the works for the vast …

Avatar photoXSS-11 Images Minotaur Upper Stage

Dawn Stover of Popular Science obtained this image through the Freedom of Information Act. The image, taken by the XSS-11 microsatellite, shows the upper stage of the Minotaur 1 that carried the microsatellite into orbit. If you are interested, here is an AFRL briefing on XSS-11. Arms Control Wonk.com wrote a pair of stories about …

Avatar photoIndian Space Driven By Microsat Hoax

More images of space-themed stamps from India. K.S. Jayaraman of Space News (“Indian Government Set To Create Aerospace Command”) reports that Indian Air Force (IAF) Chief Air Marshal Shashindra Pal Tyagi told reporters India would establish Aerospace Command for various military space missions. I blogged this back in May. IAF officers have been pushing such …

Avatar photoSteinbruner on Iraq

I usually limit my commentary about Iraq to WMD-related issues. That reflects both my own relative expertise, as well as my sense of futility about the entire endeavor. The course of this catastrophe follows a terrible, inexorable logic that I believe immune to the efforts of policymakers or protestors. In a way, that’s moral cowardice …