A missile launches from a secret base hidden deep in the desert and not much more than a minute later, it enters space and achieves a top speed of over 5,000 miles per hour. The warhead deploys — 2,600 pounds of high explosive — and the inertial guidance system directs it at an enemy port.
Far, far away, a state-of-the-art radar detects the launch and begins a series of complex calculations resulting moments later in the launch of an intercept missile, also bound for space on an intercept course with the first missile.
The warhead on the second missile is almost ten times smaller, but its sensors and computer brains are almost from the future. A combination of passive infrared seeker and active radar makes it virtually impossible for the first warhead to avoid lock-on — and yet, flying towards one another at a closing speed of nearly 12,000 miles per hour, the success or failure of the intercept missile is measured in impossibly small fractions of a second.
Despite desperate evasive maneuvers, the intercept missile warhead cannot be shaken. Closing within a dozen feet of the incoming warhead, the interceptor detonates its directed high explosive fragmentation warhead. Only one or two tiny pieces of shrapnel hit the incoming warhead, but the kinetic energy released at such high speeds is devasting.
In one moment, the incoming warhead was the highest technological achievement of its owners. In the next, it was a brief flash of light and then... nothing.
That little story isn't science fiction. It's reality. It happened last week when an Israeli Arrow 2 ABM battery engaged and destroyed a Qader medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) fired by Houthi tribesmen in Yemen and headed for the southern port city of Eilat.
If you're wondering where Yemeni tribesmen got hold of an MRBM, the Qader is a modified version of Iran's Shahab-3. It is capable of reaching targets anywhere in Israel — assuming it can get past Arrow 2.
Here's the kicker: Last week's intercept is believed to have been the first time human combat took place in space.
The video quality might not be quite up to the standards of Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects company founded by George Lucas to make Star Wars possible, but this Star Wars is for real.
צפו: לוחמי ההגנה האווירית של חיל האוויר מיירטים באמצעות מערכת ההגנה לטווח ארוך 'חץ' טיל קרקע קרקע במרחב בים האדום.
— משרד הביטחון (@MoDIsrael) November 2, 2023
צילום: דובר צה"ל pic.twitter.com/FX8XzUgqvl
The official IDF announcement is so dry, merely stating that "The air defense fighters of the Air Force intercept a surface-to-surface missile using the long-range defense system 'Arrow' in the Red Sea."
But a human weapon just tracked down and destroyed another human weapon. In space. For the first time.
It won't be the last.
On Friday, the United States Space Force — thank you, Donald Trump! — and SpaceX announced Starshield. While not armed (yet?), Starshield will provide Starlink-style global internet communications for the U.S. military. Starting with a $900 million contract to establish "space architecture," Starshield will eventually consist of hundreds or even thousands of mil-spec satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), just like Starlink.
Low-latency communications provided by a series of redundant and cheap-to-replace satellites is a game-changer for a 21st-century military for whom the network effect means exponentially increased lethality. Eventually, Starshield spacecraft will do more than provide communications — future versions are expected to have sensors for detecting threats anywhere in the world and passing that targeting information on to almost any friendly weapons system in the world.
Nearly instantaneously.
We had such high hopes in the 1960s that President John Kennedy's New Frontier meant that the exploration and exploitation of orbital and deep space would be entirely peaceful. But people are people, and like the pioneers in our Old Frontier, armed struggle was inevitable.
The first action in space was fought last week. Look to this space right here at VodkaPundit for details of the next action.
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