BEIJING, China - China ruffled feathers at the Pentagon Sunday when it announced the successful deployment of the world's first Nano Satellite Swarm. "These millions of sub-gram satellites will provide China with unsurpassed ability to focus on land-based details, greatly enhancing farm production and land management. Disbanding and coalescing on command, the units can form up to become a telescope, a transmitter, whatever is required. The international community can be assured, however, that China has only domestic surveillance in mind for the Swarm," said the official Xinhua News Agency.

"This isn't another Sputnik," said Pentagon spokesman General Raymond Gallagher, "This is a team of millions of Sputniks, spreading out and forming up over whatever target its Sino-master directs it to. Are we concerned? You bet your combat boots we're concerned."

Despite concerns, however, no response to China's launch is expected soon. "We didn't see this one coming," explained Arthur Greening, a civilian contractor working with NASA, "We've got our own networked satellite projects on the table, of course, but nothing on this scale. We're not going to respond because we don't have a response. Yet."

"'Domestic surveillance' my eye," said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "They've got an eye in the sky and their going to use it for more efficient crop-rotations? I'll believe that when I believe Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction. Maybe not even then!"
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