Last October, Orbital Sciences Corporation announced that the U.S. Air Force ordered a Minotaur space launch vehicle to launch a classified payload in 2005. The Minotaur launch vehicle provides “low cost, reliable space launch capability in support of U.S. government small-satellite launch requirements” for programs such as the NFIRE and the XSS-11. I’ve got this …
Reporting on WMD
by | 2004-04-30 | No Comments
A colleague notes this paragraph in Susan Schmidt/’s review of The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife/’s CIA Identity by Joseph Wilson: On the heels of Wilson/’s public criticism that intelligence was exaggerated and his statement that his trip to Niger had turned up no uranium sales …
Near Field IR Experiment Will Hit to Kill
by | 2004-04-29 | No Comments
MDA now hopes the NFIRE KV will collide with its target during the “simulated” engagement with a ballistic missile. This would, as ABC News reported, be “the first real step” towards the “unprecedented weaponization of space.” The anonymous Pentagon official who told Jim Oberg that “the kill vehicle/’s fangs have been pulled: It lacks the …
Distorting Intelligence on North Korea
by | 2004-04-29 | No Comments
After the Washington Post reported the intelligence community will raise its estimate of the number of North Korean nuclear weapons from “possibly two” to “at least eight”, Colin Powell tells reporters in Berlin that he is “not aware of a new number” and has “not been given any such information by the intelligence community.” This …
