The most obvious example is America's magnificent nuclear-powered super aircraft carriers. As we have documented in our series earlier this month, they give the United States capabilities of flexible force projection around the world that no other nation can match, or has any prospect of matching for at least a decade, if not more. But the most obvious weakness, or Achilles heel, of U.S. carriers is the most obvious one of all: They are enormous. And if any hostile aircraft or submarine can get within sufficiently close range, they would be sitting ducks to be hit by supersonic cruise missiles or submarines.

The sobering rapid and impressive development of diesel submarines by nations from Russia and China to even U.S. allies like Germany and France reflects, therefore, not just the flexibility of these weapons systems, but their capabilities as counter-weapons that carry an increased capability, especially in large numbers, to overwhelm the anti-submarine warfare capabilities of U.S. carrier battle groups.

America's space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and command, communications and control military assets are likewise unmatched technological marvels that give the U.S. armed forces unrivaled tactical intelligence and precision-targeting capabilities that no other military force on Earth can hope to match in the foreseeable future.

But they too have an in-built weakness that would make many of them vulnerable to being destroyed or blinded by pre-emptive military action carried out by a significantly sized power with the capabilities to do it.

That weakness is the predictability of their basic orbit. No orbiting satellite, spacecraft or space platform can carry more than a very limited supply of fuel for orbiting adjustments or maneuvers to escape debris or hostile action. Their regular orbits can be easily calculated using knowledge that has been available for 400 years. Orbital paths are easily calculated thanks to Johannes Kepler's Second Law of Planetary Motion, published in 1609.

This is why the original 1980s fantasy of "Star Wars"-type space-based orbiting Battle Stations has remained a myth. Even if the United States, or any other nation, had the resources and technological expertise to build such cosmic leviathans, they would be sitting ducks for hostile attack as their location and future path would almost always be known and obvious. And like super-sized aircraft carriers, the bigger they are, the easier they would be to hit.

Sometimes, vulnerabilities come from expanding the size of a weapons platform and putting too many complex demands on it. This was the fate of the "next generation" ISR satellites the United States planned in its Future Intelligence Architecture program that was approved by the Clinton administration. This vastly ambitious program was finally scrapped after $4 billion was spent on it. But U.S. intelligence community insiders say this disaster was just the natural outcome of a long process under which more and more systems were being loaded on to ever-larger orbiting platforms.

Next: ICBM and BMD vulnerabilities

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