The first six hours of world war III

Space Wars by William Scott, Michael Coumatos, and William Birnes, Forge Books (April 17, 2007) describes how the first hours of World War III might play out in the year 2010. While fiction, it’s based on real-world military scenarios and technologies, dramatically highlighting the West’s vulnerability to destruction of its space-based commercial and military communications infrastructure.

From the KurzweilAI interview with author William Scott:
Are there any other recent technical, military, political, and other developments that tie in with the book or that were predicted in the book?

The Iranian political situation today is playing out largely as we anticipated. Technologies for “operationally responsive space” — smallsats and quick-response launchers — are evolving quickly. Autonomous on-orbit servicing of satellites is being demonstrated now by the Orbital Express spacecraft, a feature that plays more dramatically in our sequel, Space Wars II (now being written by the same coauthors). The Chinese ASAT test has awakened Congress and American citizens to the potential threats facing our space infrastructure, but I don’t think our political leaders fully appreciate what impacts those threats could have on the U.S. national security posture and citizens’ activities.


The vehicle on the bottom is the rumored Blackstar spaceplane

The Blackstar spaceplane features prominently in the world war III story


XB-70 at takeoff, an XB-70 derivative the SR3 was thought to be the mothership for the blackstar spaceplane