If I slap you, chances are you can figure out who did it pretty quickly. An ICBM launch followed by a vaporized city 30 minutes later points pretty conclusively to the culprit.

If a disembodied hand comes out of nowhere and slaps you, you may have difficulty proving it was me that did it, especially if the hand vaporizes in the process.

Only a few countries both have nukes and have orbital launch capability, so it's going to be an extremely short list of suspects to start with.

Then there are all the other disadvantages of orbital nukes. They can only strike on their orbital path, and only when they're in the right point of the orbit, otherwise they're very expensive to re-target because it means changing orbits. Because of all those points they're actually a lot slower to target than ICMBs. If they're in a low orbit then the orbit will decay and they will come down in a few years whether you want them to or not. If they're in a high orbit the costs are even higher and they're even slower to target. Finally, they're vulnerable to detection if they're up for any length of time. They really are a terrible idea.

Spy satellites have had to tackle those issues for decades already (staying in orbit, retargeting, etc.). It's mostly solved problems, and the use case for such a thing would be more the "I want that factory in Iran to go away but it's OK if it takes six months" than immediate needs you'd use an ICBM for.

Plausible deniability goes a long way, even if it's not very plausible. Plenty of cases in the Cold War where everyone knew a side did something they shouldn't have but couldn't prove it.

Not much deniability for orbiting objects. Everything bigger than a golfball, and the launches to park them there, can be easily observed and cataloged by state actors. They might not know what every chunk of junk is for, but everyone knows who put it there. Even amateurs with small telescopes can play along for the larger chunks.

Eg: http://www.heavens-above.com/Satellites.aspx

Fake a failure and use stealth coatings. It has been tried with at least some success, and we wouldn't hear about the really successful ones... http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3077830/ns/technology_and_science-...

Sure you can do the chaff thing, but the backyard telescope guys--and any big guys with radar--will still see a new object and log it. A little math will pair its orbit with the launch.

I'm not talking about chaff, I'm talking about low reflectivity paint (to reduce spotting via visual observation) and stealth to prevent radar detection (ala F-117 or B2). Maybe you even mosey on up to a known piece of debris and attach to it.

Chaff's handy for making it look like the launcher had an issue, but you need something else for ongoing evasion.

Ah, good point. Given that's 80s tech they're probably way ahead of this even. You're right, the oops-we-lost-it gambit is more relevant than ever.

I'm curious how far it'd go with something as serious as a nuke, though. I don't want to imagine how high tensions would be after such an attack, if there isn't enough evidence to pin the blame on someone.

A spaced base assassination laser seems better, like one over North Korea.

>> A spaced base assassination laser seems better, like one over North Korea.

And you can use it to make popcorn.