Myth #7: The missile attack marks the inauguration of a substantially new operational "space weapon".

The modified Aegis/SM-3 system that destroyed USA 193 doesn't seem to make a very effective anti-satellite weapon if you want to attack really important targets. Only by stretching its speed, software, and range beyond original design specifications was it able to reach barely above the atmosphere to hit a satellite within weeks of terminal reentry. Getting higher—reaching altitudes where potential targets orbit, up where the US test in 1985 occurred, or the Chinese test last year, or the Soviet tests throughout most of the Cold War—may not even be physically possible. Higher altitudes need stronger rockets and means much longer launch-to-impact coasting durations, requiring more warhead power supplies. Precision tracking with radars on several ships loses accuracy by the fourth power of increasing range, because the pulse weakens on the way out and on the way back, so a target twice as far away is only one-sixteenth as observable. Other countries' critical warning and command/control satellites are far, far beyond such a system's reach.

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Oberg, James. "Sense, Nonsense, and Pretense about the Destruction of USA 193." The Space Review. March 4, 2008.