Sometimes it is just time to goPeople are looking for ulterior motives for the shootdown because the official explanation – preventing a thousand pounds of hydrazine falling from the sky – seems a bit thin.
Hydrazine is highly dangerous stuff. It’s unstable, corrosive and explodes easily. That means that the fuel tanks for hydrazine are made extra tough. Unfortunately, the strength that lets the fuel tank carry hydrazine safely into space also means that the tank is tough enough to survive catastrophic reentry. When the shuttle broke apart on reentry a few years ago, the hydrazine tank was one of the few items to survive the fall unscathed. In that case, however, the tank contained only a few pounds of hydrazine. In this case, the tank is full. The risk is that the equivalent of a 1000-pound bomb could end up crashing down into a populated area.
Lots of debris falls from space every year – the boosters that carry satellite up come down pretty quickly. Elderly satellites are deorbited without much notice. The difference is that these are usually controlled reentries, where the impact point is planned (usually in water) and there is a degree of control as to the timing. This is an uncontrolled reentry. It’s possible to predict where impact will occur with some accuracy, but a number of factors can through the prediction off. Presumably, the U.S. predicts it will fall near or close to a populated area. Usually these things fall into water – it covers ¾ of the planet’s surface – or an unpopulated area. I know of only one reported case where someone was hit by a piece of a falling satellite, when a 20 pound chunk of aluminum from a Chinese CBERS satellite hit a boy in Shaanxi province – the press reported that he suffered a “fractured toe.”
The hydrazine explanation seems far-fetched, but the alternative explanations make even less sense. The U.S. doesn’t need to do this to impress the Chinese. They were already impressed by earlier successful tests, including the last one where an SM-3 missile launched from an Aegis cruiser hit a warhead 87 miles above the Pacific Ocean. This didn’t get a lot of public attention, but the Chinese military was sure to have followed it closely, if only because the U.S. has a cooperative missile defense program using Aegis with Japan, which the Chinese think could be used to defend Taiwan.
This test and China’s ASAT test really aren’t comparable. This is a ballistic missile defense test rather than an anti-satellite test. An anti-satellite test would have attacked the target while it was in orbit. A BMD test attacks when the target is in reentry. Hitting the target at a lower altitude reduces the risk of debris. One of the problems with the China ASAT test (aside from not telling anyone in advance) is that it left a large debris cloud orbiting the earth. The debris from this Aegis test will be at a lower altitude and be more quickly drawn into the earth's atmosphere, where they will burn up.
Success is likely in this effort, but not assured. Of the ten Aegis tests, eight resulted in hits. There is also the possibility that the satellite will behave erratically as it hits the atmosphere, making it a more difficult target. Variants of the SM-3 missile can be used against aircraft or ships, but these variants carry explosive warheads with proximity fuses (meaning the warhead only as to get near the target, not actually hit it). The missile defense variant uses a ‘kinetic’ warhead, basically a large lump of metal that crashed into the target. It will be moderately embarrassing if it misses.
The notion that secret high tech gizmos would fall into the wrong hands has some merit, but not enough to justify a shoot-down. There are always pieces of wreckage when a satellite falls to the ground. When they fall in the Canadian Arctic, the U.S. and Canada collect the pieces. When a nuclear powered satellite built by the Soviet Union crashed in Canada in the 1970s, the Soviets said they didn’t want the pieces back. When a Chinese rocket carrying a Western-owned communications satellite blew up shortly after launch, the Chinese carefully collected all the pieces and tried to examine them before turning them back, but the most sensitive items were charred and cracked beyond recognition. The probability of gaining useful information from the crash is low, as the best technology would have to survive reentry and the debris would have to fall in an opponent-controlled area. The probability of surviving reentry and landing in a hostile controlled area are too low to explain the decision to shoot down.
The one scenario that doesn’t get as much attention is planetary defence, possibly because it sounds silly. The notion that the U.S. should add intercepting meteorites or asteroids before they strike the earth to its defense missions seems pretty far-fetched. These events are so rare as to be improbable. On the other hand, supporters say, an asteroid strike wiped out the dinosaurs, drastically changed the environment, created a year-long winter and so on. It still sounds far-fetched. On the other hand, a 200-foot wide meteorite that struck Tunguska Siberia in 1908 had the effect of a nuclear explosion (without the radiation aftereffects). If there was warning that a similar event was about to occur over a populated area, it would be nice to have the ability to stop it. It's not worth spending much time worrying about being hit by asteroids, however, or even by satellites, but having spent all that money on missile defense, it’s nice that it finally has some practical use.
The surge is over come July.Al-Sadr threatens to lift cease-fireBy QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA,
Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has threatened to lift by the end of the week a six-month cease-fire widely credited with helping reduce violence in Iraq, officials said Wednesday.
Sheik Salah al-Obeidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, said that if the cleric failed to issue a statement by Saturday saying that the cease-fire was extended "then that means the freeze is over."
The cease fire was declared in August and due to expire at this month's end.
Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army is among the most powerful militias in Iraq. The crux of the message being sent by the organization was that al-Sadr followers would be free to resume their activities if no message was sent by the cleric on Feb. 23.
According to al-Obeidi, this "has been conveyed to all Mahdi Army members nationwide."
The threat was confirmed by another al-Sadr official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The U.S. military has welcomed the cease-fire, saying it is a major factor in the estimated 60 percent decline in violence in the country in the second half of 2007.
But the military has insisted on continuing to stage raids against what it calls Iranian-backed breakaway factions of the Mahdi Army militia, and anger among the cleric's followers has been building.
Influential members of al-Sadr's movement said recently that they had urged the anti-U.S. cleric to call off the cease-fire when it expires.
Al-Sadr's followers claim the U.S.-Iraqi raids, particularly in the southern Shiite cities of Diwaniyah, Basra and Karbala, are a pretext to crack down on the wider movement.
The maverick cleric announced earlier this month that he would not renew the order unless the Iraqi government purges "criminal gangs" operating within security forces he claims are targeting his followers.
That was a reference to rival Shiite militiamen from the Badr Brigade who have infiltrated security forces participating in the ongoing crackdown. The Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army also are involved in a violent power struggle for control of the oil-rich south.
Israel kills terror chief with headrest bomb
Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv, Hala Jaber in Beirut and Jon Swain
NOTHING seemed very remarkable about the short, bearded man who mingled with other guests on Tuesday evening at a reception in Damascus, the Syrian capital, to mark the 29th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iranian revolution.
Yet before the night was over he was dead in the twisted wreckage of his car and the inevitable assumption was that Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, had killed him with an ingeniously planted bomb.
The news spread rapidly that the dead man was Imad Mughniyeh, an elusive figure known as “the Fox” who had been one of the world’s most feared terrorist masterminds.
Robert Baer, a former CIA agent who spent years on his trail, said Mughniyeh was “probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we’ve ever run across”.
As the Israelis rejoiced, Iran and Hezbollah, the militant Shi’ite group, which together had harnessed Mugniyeh’s expertise, mourned his death at a huge funeral in Beirut, where he established his terrorist network.
Mughniyeh’s mother, Um Imad, sat amid a sea of black chadors, a lonely, sombre figure as mourners held their hero’s picture aloft.
“If only I had more boys to carry on in his footsteps,” she sighed, confessing that she did not have any pictures of him, even from his childhood, as he had taken them away. He was the third of her sons to die in a car bombing.
With a price of $25m (£12.7m) on his head, he was always vigilant. Some say he had had plastic surgery to alter his face in an effort to elude the Americans and Israelis who blamed him for plane hijackings and other bloody attacks which killed hundreds of their citizens in the Middle East and as far away as South America.
He had grown accustomed to living dangerously and there was no reason he should have feared for his safety last Tuesday as he sipped fruit juice at the party at the Iranian cultural centre. Mughniyeh was on fairly good terms with everybody present – almost all the leaders of the Damascus-based militant groups were represented.
At 10.35pm he decided to go home. Having exchanged customary kisses with his host, Hojatoleslam Ahmad Musavi, the newly appointed Iranian ambassador, Mughniyeh stepped into the night.
Minutes later he was seated in his silver Mitsubishi Pajero in a nearby street when a deafening blast ripped the car apart and killed him instantly.
According to Israeli intelligence sources, someone had replaced the headrest of the driver’s seat with another containing a small high-explosive charge. Israel welcomed his death but the prime minister’s office denied responsibility. Hezbollah accused the “Zionist Israelis” of killing its “brother commander” but believed the explosive had been detonated in another car by satellite.
One witness said: “I held his head in my hands, kissed him farewell. His face was burnt but intact and he had received serious injuries to his abdomen.”
Whatever the truth about the bomb, Mughniyeh, 45, died as he had lived – violently. He was a product of the Lebanese civil war that transfixed western governments 25 years ago.
Born in a south Lebanon village, the son of a vegetable seller, Mughniyeh joined Force 17, Yasser Arafat’s personal bodyguard, when scarcely out of his teens. After the Palestine Liberation Organisation was forced to leave Lebanon in 1982, he stayed behind and joined Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’ite Islamic group that emerged in 1985 as a militant force resisting Israeli occupation.
He came to the attention of Sheikh Mohammed Fadlallah, Hezbollah’s spiritual leader, and rose quickly up the ranks. He was shaped into a remarkably effective terrorist as, under the auspices of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the organisation grew into one of the deadliest forces fighting Israel and America.
Western terrorism experts say he was the dynamo behind some of Hezbollah’s most lethal operations. These included the bombing of the American embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people and the attacks on the US marine and French paratrooper barracks that left more than 200 dead. It was Mughniyeh’s decision to kidnap Terry Waite, the Church of England envoy, as he tried to broker the release of other captives.
Another notorious act attributed to him was the hijacking of a TWA flight when an American passenger, a US navy diver, was shot and his body thrown onto the runway.
In the 1990s Israel made him a priority target for his involvement in two attacks in Buenos Aires – the 1992 Israeli embassy bombing, which killed 29, and a 1994 suicide bomb attack on a Jewish community centre, in which 85 died. Then he went to ground. The FBI placed him on its most-wanted list but had to use a 20-year-old photograph for its reward posters.
Despite these difficulties, the CIA came close to capturing him. The Israelis were also hot on his trail. “We tried to knock him down several times in the late 1980s,” revealed David Barkay, a former major in unit 504 of Israeli military intelligence who was in charge of Mughniyeh’s file.
“We accumulated intelligence on him, but the closer we got, the less information we gleaned – no weak points, no women, money, drugs – nothing.”
Mughniyeh lost two brothers, Jihad and Fuad, in car bomb explosions in Beirut. In 2000 he was targeted by an Israeli sniper in southern Lebanon. But in Meir Dagan, who became head of Mossad in 2002, he faced a committed opponent under whose leadership the organisation built a strong record in assassinating Israel’s enemies.
Israel fought a bitter 34-day war against Hezbollah in 2006 to eradicate it in southern Lebanon. It believes that Mughniyeh was instrumental in rebuilding the group after the war, rearming it with Iranian-made Fateh 110 rockets which are capable of hitting Tel Aviv and which it fears could be equipped with chemical weapons.
Informed Israeli sources said that at the time of his death Mughniyeh was working for the Syrians on a terrorist attack against Israeli targets. This was to avenge Israel’s airstrike on what was believed to be a secret nuclear site in Syria last year.
Since Mughniyeh’s death, Israeli embassies and Jewish institutions around the world have been on high alert. “I’ve no doubt the Syrians and Iranians will retaliate,” said Barkay.
Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s general secretary, warned in a fiery oration at Mughniyeh’s funeral that Israel had committed a “major stupid mistake”. It was now “open war”, he said.
In Lebanon, a close friend of Mughniyeh was certain that he would be avenged by Hezbollah in an attack that, ironically, he had prepared himself before his death. “Most likely the retaliation when it comes will be one that had been planned and masterminded by Imad himself,” said Anis Al-Nackash, a Lebanese expert on Hezbollah.
He said Mughniyeh had prepared a variety of “spectacular” attacks to be executed by Hezbollah if one of its top leaders was assassinated. These were now being dusted off and updated.
On the day Mughniyeh was buried, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, summoned Dagan from his cottage in Galilee to Jerusalem.
“It was a one-on-one meeting,” said a source. But it is believed that Dagan was complimented by his boss and told that he would stay as head of Mossad until the end of 2009.
Time will tell whether, as Israel fervently hopes, Mughniyeh’s death has gravely weakened his organisation or if the effect has merely been to harden Hezbollah’s resolve.
Taken out
The Israeli security service, Mossad, is thought to have killed six other militants abroad since Meir Dagan became director in August 2002:
December 2002 Ramzi Nahara, Israeli agent who defected to Hezbollah and planned attacks against Israel. Dagan knew him personally. Killed in Lebanon by car bomb
March 2003 Abu Mohammed Al-Masri, Al-Qaeda member building cell to target Israeli border with Lebanon. Killed by car bomb in Lebanon
August 2003 Ali Hussein Saleh, Hezbollah explosives expert. Killed by car bomb in Beirut
July 2004 Ghaleb Awali, Hezbollah official with links to activists in Gaza Strip. Killed by car bomb in Beirut
September 2004 Izz el-Deen al-Sheikh Khalil, Hamas official liaising between headquarters in Syria and members in Gaza and West Bank. Killed by car bomb in Damascus
May 2006 Mahmoud Majzoub, Islamic Jihad official liaising with Hezbollah. Killed by car bomb blast in Lebanon
Damage to several undersea telecom cables that caused outages across the Middle East and Asia could have been an act of sabotage, the International Telecommunication Union said on Monday.
"We do not want to preempt the results of ongoing investigations, but we do not rule out that a deliberate act of sabotage caused the damage to the undersea cables over two weeks ago," the UN agency's head of development, Sami al-Murshed, told AFP.
Five undersea cables were damaged in late January and early February leading to disruption to Internet and telephone services in parts of the Middle East and south Asia.
There has been speculation that the sheer number of cables being cut over such a short period was too much of a coincidence and that sabotage must have been involved.
India's Flag telecom revealed on February 7 that the cut to the Falcon cable between the United Arab Emirates and Oman was caused by a ship's anchor. But mystery shrouds what caused another four reported cuts.
"Some experts doubt the prevailing view that the cables were cut by accident, especially as the cables lie at great depths under the sea and are not passed over by ships," Murshed said on the sidelines of a conference on cyber-crime held in Gulf state of Qatar.
The Falcon cable has since been repaired, along with the Flag Europe Asia (FEA) cable which was damaged off Egypt's Mediterranean coast. The status of the remaining cable is still unclear.
The Iraq war has strained the US military to the extent that America could not fight another large-scale war today, according to a new survey of military officers.
Nine in 10 officers said the war had stretched the military “dangerously thin”. However, 56 per cent disagreed with the suggestion that the conflict had “broken” the armed services, while 64 per cent said morale was high.
More than 3,400 current and retired officers, including more than 200 generals and admirals, participated in the survey by Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for a New American Security, a centrist think-tank.
The results underscore the concerns of officers about the strain that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have placed on the military. Of respondents, 60 per cent said the military was weaker today than five years ago.
The results of the independent survey come as the Pentagon debates whether to pause the reduction of forces in Iraq, or whether to make further cuts to ease the stress on the military. The Pentagon is unwinding the “surge” by reducing the number of combat brigades to the pre-surge level of 15, which would leave about 130,000 troops in Iraq by the summer.
General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, wants to pause the reduction to assess the impact of removing the surge, which commanders credit with dramatically reducing violence in Iraq. But General George Casey, his predecessor in Iraq and now the army chief of staff, advocates further reductions.
Gen Casey has warned that the military was deploying at unsustainable rates, and was in danger of crossing a “red line” beyond which it would take a generation to rebuild.
Retired Lieutenant General Greg Newbold, a survey respondent who also participated in the generals’ revolt – a string of calls from senior military figures in 2006 for the resignation of then defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld – said the survey showed that the Pentagon could not afford to be complacent.
“If the question had been ‘Are we in danger of straining the military in ways that may take a generation to recover?’, the answer might have been different,” said Lt Gen Newbold.
“We ought to be very careful that we don’t overplay the degree of selfless sacrifice and patriotism that we are relying on from a number of people in the military, the mid-grade officers and mid-grade non-commissioned officers that are really the backbone of the services.”
The extended and repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to concerns about the US military’s ability to respond to other potential threats, including Iran, North Korea or a conflict with China over Taiwan.
According to the survey, 80 per cent of respondents believed it would be “unreasonable” to ask the US military to wage another large war today; 37 per cent also said Iran had gained the greatest strategic advantage from the Iraq war, compared with 19 per cent who saw the US as having gained the most.
In a worrisome result for the Pentagon, which has attempted to repair the damage done to its image by the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, 44 per cent of respondents disagreed with the statement that “torture is never acceptable”; 43 per cent also disagreed that waterboarding – an interrogation practice that simulates drowning – was torture, in spite of the fact that it is banned by the army field manual.
