A Review of Hypothetical Military Spacecraft and Weapon Systems

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The Strategic Landscape of Orbital Conflict

Conflict in space represents not a complete rewriting of military doctrine, but its adaptation to a unique and unforgiving environment. The principles that have guided warfare on Earth for centuries find new expression in the orbital domain, shaped by physics, politics, and the ultimate purpose of any military action: to achieve objectives on the ground. Space warfare is a contest of minds as much as machines, where victory may depend on years of planning rather than moments of tactical brilliance.

Adapting Terrestrial Doctrine to Space

The classic principles of war, while originating from terrestrial conflict, provide a framework for understanding orbital combat. “Objective” in space requires immense clarity: is the goal to disable a single satellite or an entire capability, which may include ground stations and data links? “Mass” is not about concentrating ships in one location, but about synchronizing the effects of widely dispersed assets – satellites in different orbits, ground-based jammers, and cyber weapons – at a decisive moment.

Perhaps the most transformed principle is “Maneuver.” In space, this is not the agile dogfighting of popular fiction. It is the deliberate, energy-intensive process of changing an orbit to gain a positional advantage, a process that can take hours or even days and consumes vast amounts of finite propellant. Similarly, “Surprise” may not come from a hidden spacecraft, but from a weapon with an unknown effect or a covert mode of operation, making its use difficult to attribute.

The Geocentric Nature of Space Power

All military space operations are fundamentally tied to Earth. The concept of a “geocentric mindset” posits that what happens in orbit is only relevant in how it affects terrestrial events. Space is not an independent theater of war but a supporting flank for operations on land, at sea, and in the air. The command of space does not equate to the command of Earth; rather, it is about controlling the infrastructural capabilities – communications, navigation, and intelligence – that modern militaries depend on.

This perspective challenges the notion of space as the “ultimate high ground” from which a nation could dominate the planet. Instead, Earth orbit is more analogous to a cosmic coastline, a littoral zone from which terrestrial forces are supported and can be threatened. The value of any space asset, from a reconnaissance satellite to a combat vehicle, is measured by its ability to influence the political and military situation below.

Command, Control, and Political Will

The global nature of space assets presents unique command challenges. A single satellite in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) circles the globe every 90 minutes, passing over multiple theaters of operation. This necessitates a unified command structure that integrates space operations with air, ground, and naval plans, often in coordination with allied nations.

A critical factor is political will. The decision to initiate hostilities in space carries immense and potentially irreversible consequences. An attack on a satellite could have cascading effects on global economic, diplomatic, and information systems. This high threshold may lead leaders to hesitate, ceding the initiative to a more decisive adversary. This dynamic gives rise to a “space escalation ladder,” where actions can be taken covertly, such as through deniable cyberattacks or temporary jamming, providing leaders with more subtle rungs of escalation before committing to overt, destructive acts.

Space as a Gray Zone

The unique characteristics of space foster a “gray zone” of conflict, where hostile acts occur below the threshold of declared war. The vast distances and difficulty in observing small objects make definitive attribution of an attack challenging. Was a satellite failure caused by an enemy action, a debris strike, or a simple malfunction? This ambiguity allows nations to engage in deniable aggression.

This is compounded by the availability of non-destructive, reversible effects. A satellite’s sensors can be temporarily “dazzled” by a laser, or its communications can be jammed for the duration of a specific ground operation, without creating debris or permanent damage. Furthermore, military objectives can be cloaked behind civilian or commercial operations, such as using a satellite ostensibly designed for “servicing” to approach and disable an adversary’s asset. This creates a battlefield where conflict is measured not in firepower, but in strategy, finesse, and the control of unseen information flows.

The physics of orbital mechanics makes rapid redeployment of space assets nearly impossible. Unlike ships or aircraft, which can be moved to a new theater in days or hours, changing a satellite’s orbit is a slow, complex, and fuel-intensive process. Changing the inclination, or tilt, of an orbit is particularly costly, requiring massive expenditures of propellant. Consequently, a nation cannot simply shift its space forces to respond to a new crisis. The assets available for any immediate conflict are those already in the vicinity. This reality elevates pre-conflict positioning to arguably the most important aspect of space strategy. The “battle” may be won or lost years in advance through deliberate, long-term deployment strategies, making space warfare a slow, calculated contest of positioning and intelligence far more than one of rapid tactical engagement.

The Battlefield: Navigating the Space Environment

The operational theater of space is not a benign vacuum but a hostile environment governed by immutable physical laws and filled with both natural and man-made hazards. Every action, from simple movement to direct combat, is constrained by the physics of orbits, the dangers of radiation, and the persistent threat of orbital debris.

The Tyranny of Orbital Mechanics

All movement in space is dictated by a set of fundamental principles that are often counter-intuitive.

• Speed and Predictability: Objects in orbit move at incredible speeds, between 3 and 8 kilometers per second. However, their paths are highly predictable. An object’s speed is inextricably linked to its altitude; any attempt to speed up will cause it to climb to a higher, slower orbit, and slowing down will cause it to fall into a lower, faster orbit. This relationship makes interception and rendezvous complex. To catch up with a spacecraft ahead in the same orbit, a trailing vehicle must fire its engines to slow down, dropping into a lower orbit where its orbital period is shorter. After gaining on the target, it must fire its engines again to accelerate back up to the original altitude.
• Elliptical Paths: All orbits are ellipses, with the celestial body at one focus. Moving between these elliptical paths requires precisely timed engine burns. A single, brief application of thrust will change the orbit’s shape, but the spacecraft will always return to the point where the burn occurred. This means moving from one circular orbit to another requires at least two burns and can take hours or even days to complete.
• The In-Plane Constraint: The most significant restriction on movement is the orbital plane. A satellite is largely confined to the two-dimensional plane of its orbit. Changing this plane’s tilt, known as its inclination, is the most energy-intensive maneuver a spacecraft can perform. This effectively turns the three-dimensional void of space into a series of distinct “3D layers” for combat, severely limiting freedom of movement between them.

The Hostile Environment

Space itself is an active threat to any vehicle operating within it. The Sun continuously bombards the solar system with electromagnetic radiation and a stream of charged particles known as the solar wind. Massive solar flares can erupt without warning, releasing enough energy to damage or disable unshielded electronics on satellites hundreds of millions of kilometers away.

Earth’s own magnetic field traps these particles in the Van Allen radiation belts, creating regions of intense radiation that spacecraft in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), such as GPS satellites, must be hardened to withstand. Even in the relative safety of Low Earth Orbit (LEO), the tenuous upper atmosphere creates a persistent drag that slowly pulls satellites downward, requiring them to perform regular engine burns to maintain their altitude. The vacuum also means that heat cannot be dissipated through convection; it must be radiated away, posing a constant thermal management challenge.

The Debris Dilemma

The single greatest limiting factor on destructive space warfare is the problem of orbital debris. Any kinetic impact – whether from an anti-satellite weapon or an accidental collision – can shatter a satellite into thousands of fragments. Each piece of debris, from a tiny screw to a large panel, continues to travel at orbital velocities, turning it into a hypervelocity projectile capable of catastrophically damaging or destroying other spacecraft.

This creates the potential for a chain reaction known as the Kessler Syndrome. A single destructive event could create a debris cloud that then collides with other satellites, creating even more debris, which in turn destroys more satellites. Such a cascade could render entire orbital altitudes unusable for decades or even centuries, effectively making losers of all parties in a conflict. The 2007 Chinese anti-satellite missile test provided a stark demonstration of this danger, creating over 3,000 pieces of trackable debris, many of which remain a threat in orbit today.

This physical reality creates a powerful paradox: the battlefield actively resists its own use. Unlike on Earth, where a destroyed tank is merely a wreck, in space, a destroyed satellite becomes a persistent, indiscriminate threat to all, including the assets of the nation that created the debris. This acts as a powerful physical deterrent against the use of destructive kinetic weapons. It fundamentally shapes the technological and doctrinal development of space warfare, creating a strong strategic incentive to pursue non-kinetic, “soft-kill” weapons like jammers, microwave emitters, and cyberattacks that can achieve military objectives without polluting the orbital environment.

Instruments of War: Military Spacecraft

Military spacecraft are the platforms from which orbital warfare is conducted. Their roles extend from providing critical support to terrestrial forces to engaging in direct space-to-space combat. A functional classification of these hypothetical vehicles can be adapted from traditional air and naval typologies, redefined by the unique missions and constraints of the space environment.

Core Functions of Military Spacecraft

The primary purpose of most military spacecraft is to support and enhance conventional military operations. These core functions include:

• Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR): Satellites offer unparalleled situational awareness. Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) platforms provide high-resolution imagery for target identification and terrain analysis, while Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) platforms intercept and analyze adversary communications and radar emissions. Early warning satellites use infrared sensors to detect the heat plumes of missile launches, providing vital time to respond.
• Communications (Comms): Secure, global, over-the-horizon communications are enabled by constellations of satellites. These systems form the backbone of modern command and control, allowing forces to exchange data and orders in real time across vast distances.
• Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT): Services like the Global Positioning System (GPS) provide the precise data needed for troop navigation and for guiding precision munitions to their targets with high accuracy.
• Space Domain Awareness (SDA): A critical military-specific function, SDA involves tracking and monitoring all objects in orbit – from active satellites to tiny debris fragments – to detect threats, predict trajectories, and prevent collisions.
• Space Control: This broad category encompasses all actions taken to ensure friendly access to space while denying it to an adversary. It includes both defensive measures to protect assets and offensive actions to disrupt, degrade, or destroy enemy capabilities.

Conceptual Spacecraft Design

The design of a military spacecraft is a complex process of balancing competing requirements. Unlike commercial aircraft, which often follow a standard formula, military designs are driven by a range of “illities,” including lethality, survivability, supportability, and affordability. The conceptual design phase is paramount, as decisions made at this early stage can determine up to 80% of the vehicle’s total lifecycle cost. Designers must make difficult trade-offs between factors like mass (which dictates launch cost), power generation, thermal management, propulsion capability (which determines maneuverability), and defensive systems like armor and shielding.

Hypothetical Spacecraft Classification

Drawing from the functional roles of modern air and naval forces, a hypothetical classification system for military spacecraft can be established. This framework moves beyond simple analogies to define vehicle types by their primary mission in the orbital environment.

The Arsenal: Weapon Systems of Space Warfare

The weapons employed in a hypothetical space conflict would span a wide technological spectrum, from brute-force physical impactors to subtle, non-destructive electronic attacks. The choice of weapon would be dictated by the mission’s objective, the target’s nature, and the strategic tolerance for creating long-lasting orbital debris. These systems can be broadly grouped into three categories: kinetic, directed energy, and electronic warfare.

Kinetic Energy Weapons

Kinetic weapons do not rely on explosive warheads. Instead, they destroy targets through the sheer energy of a hypervelocity collision. Because objects in orbit travel at thousands of meters per second, even a small projectile can impact with devastating force, converting its kinetic energy into destructive shockwaves and heat.

• Direct-Ascent Anti-Satellite (DA-ASAT) Missiles: These are missiles launched from the ground or from an aircraft on a sub-orbital trajectory to intercept and destroy a satellite in LEO. They are a proven technology but are considered escalatory and environmentally irresponsible due to the massive debris fields they create.
• Co-orbital Weapons: These are spacecraft designed to maneuver into the same orbit as a target. Once in proximity, they can disable or destroy the target through various means, including direct impact, deploying a small explosive charge, or using a robotic arm to damage or grapple it. Such actions can be ambiguous, potentially disguised as a satellite inspection or servicing mission.
• Orbital Bombardment Systems: These are theoretical weapons for attacking targets on a planet’s surface from orbit. The “Rods from God” concept involves releasing telephone-pole-sized tungsten rods that would strike the ground at hypersonic speeds, delivering the impact energy of a tactical nuclear weapon without the fallout. A Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) involves placing a nuclear warhead into a partial orbit, allowing it to de-orbit and strike a target from an unpredictable direction, bypassing missile defense radars.
• Electromagnetic Launchers: Railguns and coilguns use powerful magnetic fields to accelerate solid projectiles to extreme velocities. While challenging for launching payloads from Earth due to atmospheric friction, they could serve as formidable primary weapons on large spacecraft, firing smaller projectiles much faster than conventional weapons.

Directed Energy Weapons (DEW)

Directed Energy Weapons damage targets by focusing intense energy, which travels at or near the speed of light. Their primary advantages are instantaneous engagement, high precision, and an effectively unlimited magazine, provided sufficient power is available.

• High-Energy Lasers (HEL): Lasers destroy targets by concentrating thermal energy on a small spot, melting or vaporizing the material. They can be used from the ground to temporarily “dazzle” or permanently damage a satellite’s sensitive optical sensors, or they can be mounted on spacecraft for offensive and defensive roles. Pulsed lasers can deliver a mechanical shock for deeper penetration, while continuous-wave lasers are better for sustained heating. Their effectiveness is limited by beam divergence over long distances and immense power requirements.
• Particle Beams: These weapons accelerate a stream of atoms or subatomic particles to near-light speed. Damage is caused by both the kinetic impact of the particles and the intense ionization they create within the target, which is particularly effective at disrupting or destroying electronics. Charged particle beams tend to spread out due to mutual repulsion and are deflected by magnetic fields, making Neutral Particle Beams (NPBs) a more practical choice for use in space.
• High-Power Microwaves (HPM): HPM weapons are designed not to physically destroy a target, but to disable it by generating a powerful electromagnetic field that overloads and burns out its internal electronics. While less precise than lasers, HPMs can affect a wider area, making them an effective counter to swarms of small satellites or drones. They can be deployed from both ground and space-based platforms.

Electronic and Cyberspace Warfare

This form of warfare focuses on achieving effects without physical destruction, making it ideal for the debris-conscious and ambiguous “gray zone” of orbital conflict.

• Jamming: This involves overpowering a satellite’s receiver with noise, preventing it from receiving legitimate signals. Uplink jamming targets the command signal from the ground to the satellite and requires immense power, while downlink jamming targets the signal from the satellite to a ground receiver and is easier to perform.
• Spoofing: A more subtle attack where an adversary sends false data to a satellite’s receiver, tricking it into accepting erroneous commands or information. For example, spoofing a GPS signal could cause a weapon to miss its target or a vehicle to navigate to the wrong location.
• Cyberattacks: The ground segment – including control stations, data processing centers, and communication networks – is often the most vulnerable part of any space system. Cyberattacks can be used to disrupt operations, corrupt or steal data, or in some cases, even gain control of a satellite itself.

Fortifying the Frontier: Defensive Systems and Countermeasures

In the hostile environment of space, defending high-value assets is as critical as developing offensive capabilities. Defensive measures range from passive physical protection and concealment to active systems designed to intercept and neutralize incoming threats. The goal is to ensure a spacecraft can survive long enough to complete its mission.

Armor and Shielding

Protecting a spacecraft requires defending against two primary threats: hypervelocity kinetic impacts from weapons or debris, and intense thermal energy from directed energy weapons.

• Composite Armor: Rather than a single thick plate, effective armor is a layered system. A typical configuration might feature an outer layer of carbon-based material to ablate and dissipate laser energy, a middle layer of hard ceramic to shatter incoming kinetic projectiles, and an inner layer of a dense material like tantalum or depleted uranium to absorb penetrating radiation.
• Whipple Shield: This is the primary defense against small, hypervelocity projectiles. Invented by Fred Whipple, it consists of a thin sacrificial “bumper” placed at a distance from the main spacecraft wall. Upon impact, the bumper shatters the projectile into a cloud of smaller, less-lethal fragments. This cloud spreads out, distributing the impact energy over a much larger area of the main wall, which is better able to withstand it. Advanced “Stuffed Whipple” shields add layers of high-strength fabric, such as Kevlar or Nextel, between the bumper and the wall to further break up and slow the debris cloud.
• Reactive Armor: Common on ground vehicles, reactive armor consists of explosive bricks that detonate outward to disrupt an incoming projectile. Its application in space is complex, as the outward explosion could create its own cloud of secondary projectiles and is less effective in a vacuum.

Stealth and Deception

Given that orbital paths are highly predictable, one of the most effective defenses is simply to avoid being seen or targeted. As the old adage goes, “the hand can’t hit what the eye can’t see”.

• Radar Cross-Section (RCS) Reduction: This involves shaping a satellite with faceted, angled surfaces that deflect radar waves away from the receiver, rather than back to it. This is combined with the use of radar-absorbent materials and paints that absorb electromagnetic energy, making the spacecraft appear much smaller on a radar screen.
• Thermal/Infrared Camouflage: Satellites are easily detected as hot spots against the cold background of space. Infrared camouflage is a critical stealth technology that uses specialized multi-layered materials to suppress the satellite’s thermal radiation in the specific infrared bands (MWIR and LWIR) that sensors monitor. Simultaneously, these materials must efficiently radiate excess heat in other, less-monitored wavelengths to prevent the spacecraft from overheating.
• Plasma Stealth: A more speculative concept involves generating a cloud of ionized gas, or plasma, around the spacecraft. This plasma cloud can absorb or deflect incoming radar waves, potentially offering a tunable, wideband defense against various radar frequencies.
• Deception: This includes deploying believable decoys to confuse an enemy’s sensors and targeting systems, forcing them to waste munitions on false targets. It also extends to military deception (MILDEC) operations, which use a variety of techniques to mislead an adversary about a satellite’s true location, capabilities, or intentions.

Active and Passive Defenses

Defensive strategies are divided into proactive passive measures and reactive active systems.

• Passive Defenses: These are features built into a spacecraft or its mission architecture to increase its inherent survivability. This includes hardening electronics against radiation and electromagnetic pulses, possessing enough on-board propellant for evasive maneuvers, and designing disaggregated constellations. In a disaggregated system, a mission is distributed across many smaller, cheaper satellites, making the overall capability resilient to the loss of any single asset.
• Active Defenses: These systems react to an incoming threat. They include point-defense systems, such as small, rapid-firing lasers or kinetic interceptors, designed to shoot down missiles or projectiles at close range. An active defense posture could also involve dedicated escort vessels (like the “Aegis-class”) flying in formation with a high-value asset, or conducting immediate reactive counterattacks against an enemy platform that poses a direct threat.

The Art of Orbital Combat

A hypothetical battle in space would be a complex interplay of physics, technology, and strategy, unfolding across vast distances at incredible speeds. The sequence of events, from initial detection to final engagement, would be governed by a series of unique challenges, including situational awareness, targeting windows, and the ever-present constraint of logistics.

Space Situational Awareness: The Prerequisite for All Action

Before any action can be taken, a commander must first know the state of the battlefield. Space Situational Awareness (SSA), or more broadly Space Domain Awareness (SDA), is the foundation of all orbital operations. It involves a global network of ground-based radars and optical telescopes, supplemented by space-based sensors, to detect, track, and identify every object in orbit. Radars are generally more effective for tracking objects in Low Earth Orbit, while optical telescopes are necessary for monitoring the more distant Geostationary Orbit.

A primary challenge is detecting “dim and small targets.” A small, stealthy, or maneuvering spacecraft can be incredibly difficult to distinguish from the background noise of space, which includes thousands of other satellites, countless pieces of debris, and distant stars. Successfully identifying a threat requires advanced algorithms, often driven by artificial intelligence, to perform three-dimensional convolutions of image sequences, learn motion features, and filter out false alarms.

Engagement Windows and Targeting

Combat in space is dictated by timing. Unlike in an atmosphere, where aircraft can loiter, spacecraft are in constant, predictable motion. An engagement is only possible when the orbits of the attacker and the target intersect or come within weapon range.

• Launch Windows: For a ground-based weapon like a DA-ASAT missile, there is a specific launch window – a period of time on a given day – when the launch site on the rotating Earth is perfectly aligned with the target’s orbital plane. Launching outside this window would require an orbital plane change, a maneuver far too costly for a simple interceptor.
• Orbital Engagement Windows: For space-to-space combat, the engagement window is the brief period when two orbits cross. Because of the immense velocities involved, these opportunities must be calculated hours or even days in advance. There is no turning around for a second pass; timing is everything.

The Logistical Tether: Propellant and Rearmament

The single greatest logistical constraint in space warfare is propellant. Every maneuver, from a minor course correction to a high-G evasive burn, consumes fuel, a finite resource that dictates the operational lifespan and tactical flexibility of a spacecraft. A warship designed for sustained maneuver would face a “tyranny of propellant,” requiring it to dedicate an enormous fraction of its mass to fuel tanks, which in turn increases launch costs.

The ability to conduct in-space servicing, refueling, and rearming would be a revolutionary capability. Analogous to a “hot pit” refueling of a fighter jet on an airfield, this would allow spacecraft to replenish their propellant and munitions in orbit, transforming them from disposable assets into persistent, reusable platforms. This would enable sustained high-tempo operations, mission life extension, and unprecedented tactical flexibility. However, it simply shifts the logistical burden to another link in the chain: a robust system of orbital tankers and supply depots would be required, along with the means to protect them.

The immense distances and light-speed nature of combat render direct human control impossible. Human reaction times are far too slow to respond to threats moving at kilometers per second or to dodge a laser beam. Communication delays between Earth and an orbiting spacecraft mean that by the time a command is received, the tactical situation has completely changed. Consequently, automation and artificial intelligence are not optional; they are a necessity. Combat will be conducted by highly automated or even fully autonomous systems that can process sensor data, identify threats, and execute defensive or offensive actions in fractions of a second. Human operators will transition from the role of “pilots” to that of “mission commanders,” setting the rules of engagement, defining strategic objectives, and overseeing the automated systems that fight the battle. This makes space warfare a conflict of algorithms, where the side with the superior AI for predictive battlespace awareness and autonomous decision-making holds a decisive advantage.

Summary

Hypothetical warfare in Earth’s orbit is a domain defined by significant constraints and paradoxes. It is a battlefield governed by the unforgiving and often counter-intuitive laws of orbital mechanics, where simple movement requires immense energy and careful planning. The very act of waging a destructive war risks a self-defeating outcome, as kinetic weapons pollute the environment with clouds of indestructible, high-velocity debris that threaten all who operate there.

This physical reality shapes the entire strategic and technological landscape, pushing development away from brute-force destruction and towards non-kinetic, effects-based weapons. Lasers, microwaves, and cyberattacks, which can disable a target without creating debris, become the preferred tools in a “gray zone” of deniable and reversible conflict. In this arena, stealth and deception are paramount, as the ability to hide or mislead is a powerful defense against predictable orbital threats.

The immense distances and light-speed delays of space combat make autonomous, AI-driven systems an absolute necessity, shifting the contest from one of human reflexes to one of algorithmic superiority. Ultimately is a strategic competition of long-term positioning, logistical endurance, and information dominance, where the most decisive moves may be made years before the first shot is ever fired.

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Dune

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Foundation

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Ender’s Game

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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1984

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Brave New World

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Fahrenheit 451

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The War of the Worlds

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Neuromancer

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The Martian

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Interstellar

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Arrival

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Edge of Tomorrow

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Ex Machina

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The Fifth Element

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Terminator 2: Judgment Day

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Minority Report

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Total Recall (1990)

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