Military to launch long-debated satellite

This is an interesting unit: it could be used to track starting bush fires.

As soon as a fire reaches a certain level in a predefined zone it could warn the officials for that region and even guide an extinguishing plane to the spot.

The whole system is set up to react to tiny heat spots of a certain temperature, in a certain zone. The type of spot is giving info on the missile, it will not take long before the military finds a solution to have spotless missiles. So then we have again useless military sattelites, that can serve mankind. Way better than the GPS system, which is also military, designed to guide missiles, but do I hear anyone grumble?

Damn, I hope they don't know the heat profile of a still! Gotta get insulated roof and flue gas chiller installed!

On a more serious note, observing the possilbe uses that could let the USA 'Big Brother' clamp in, at first thought I would rather have this than phone taps and bush calling terrorist like a little girl calling witch in Salem. Lesser of two evils?

I wonder if this has anything to do with the concurrent anti-sat missle work by China?

Since our enemies are developing better missile technology (e.g North Korea), I think it is a necessary next step for us to develope antimissile techology. If this means putting missile spotting satellites in orbit, so be it. The only thing that worries me is, the more an antimissile depends on other systems to do it's job, the easier it will be to defeat it (e.g. antisatellite missiles). I hope these spotting satelites aren't planned as essencial componants for our future antimissile systems. If so, they're going to need to be stealth and armed.