Subject: Iraqi ASAT gluegun From: thomsona@netcom.com (Allen Thomson) Date: 1995/09/25 Message-Id: <thomsonaDFHAGI.M01@netcom.com> Newsgroups: sci.space.policy,alt.politics.org.cia,alt.war And now, a special offering for connoisseurs of the truly bizarre: WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 1995 (UPI) [EXCERPTS] The high-ranking Iraqi defector Gen. Hussein Kamel al-Majeed said Iraq was working on a space weapon launched from a "supergun" that would "blind" Western spy satellites with a "sticky material." He also said the "supergun," which consisted of a more than 100- foot artillery barrel that was being constructed in northern Iraq, could have delivered a nuclear device. "It was meant for long-range attack and also to blind spy satellites. Our scientists were seriously working on that. It was designed to explode a shell in space that would have sprayed a sticky material on the satellite and blinded it." If there's anything to this, which I think is still very much TBD, it has the interesting implication that the Iraqis believed they could deliver a device to LEO with some precision. The radius of effective action of a gluebomb probably isn't very great. Imagine the ignominy of having a billion-dollar spysat slimed to to death by Iraqi artillery. ;-)