Space Wars

Michael J. Coumatos, former US Space Command Director in charge of war games and a former National Security Agency advisor, and William B. Scott, editor-in-chief of "Aviation Week & Space Technology" and a nine-year Air Force veteran, collaborate with William J. Birnes, host of the History Channel's "UFO Hunters", to imagine how the first six hours of World War III might play out. The authors take the reader deep inside the top secret facility that houses America's Strategic Command in Omaha, where US military commanders are playing a nuclear war game. They don't know that the war they are gaming has already begun - in space. Financed by Iran, a rogue Russian scientist destroys military surveillance and communications satellites with an intense particle beam. Soon the United States will be completely blind, allowing the Iranians to launch a nuclear-tipped Sahab 4 missile into the soft underbelly of Europe. It's a race against time. Chock full of the actual technologies and strategies the United States will have to use to protect their near-space assets, "Space Wars" describes a near-future nuclear threat that puts us all in the terrorists' nuclear sights. In a more quiet time, "Space Wars" would be an exciting work of fiction. But the United States is at war, and the most frightening thing about Space Wars is that it's all too real.