[Barnacle Bill]

Actually, hitting pinpoint targets from orbit is not that hard. Rumor has it that satellite recon photos can pick up a pack of cigarettes, but not tell you what brand it is. With today's tech, we can drop a guided ("smart") bomb down a vent shaft from several thousand feet. With smart weapons, a longer distance to fall just gives you more time to correct the course of the weapon in-flight. The problem today is that the weapon costs more than most targets, and that little problem of how much it costs to get the weapon into orbit in the first place. You spend half a million $ hauling a $100,000 per pop smart missile into orbit, then use it to bLast some tinhorn dictator's Red Army-surplus T-72 that's worth maybe $10,000 on the international arms market. Presumably, in the distant future the high tech weapons will be cheaper...