gambit
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Readers,* Reconnaissance Satellites - I think you can look at the Ziyuan and Yaogan series of satellites that have EO, CCD and SAR sensors as possibilities here. They could also be talking about the FY series, which is actually expected to be a constellation of Earth Observation satellites. I think it's important that in the 18th Committee on Earth Observation Satellites plenary and workshop in 2004, they announced they would launch over 100 Earth Observation satellites. I don't know enough about this to comment on which specific satellites I think will be used for scanning ships, but the blog did mention that China has used FY-2 series of satellites to track movement of targets. Another possibility is launching many short duration, micro-Earth Observation satellites in times of conflict. It mentioned that China can launch a 100 kg satellite on 12 hours notice. In peace mission 05. They launched an experimental satellite on August 2nd for detection/science experiment work. This operated for 27 days and returned to earth on August 29th after the conclusion of the exercise.
Please take this speculation with some serious salt...
Space Based Radar
The above example is just one of the many publicly available sources that contains reasonable details on the power requirements and antenna size of any long duration, meanings years, of space based radar systems, which of course would begs the question of what is the timespan of these speculative 'short duration micro satellites". But it is not speculative to reason that utility is proportionate to size and utility in this case mean time and power. So the smaller a 'micro satellite' that supposedly contains a radar, the smaller its antenna and therefore the less useful it will be, in terms of duration and detection capability. These 'micro satellites' could be in low orbit altitude and vulnerable to US ship based SM-3, as when we shot down US-193...A Bi-static GEO Space Radar would include a constellation of 3-4 GEO transmitters equipped with an L-band radar for airborne warning and control missions which would require a 100 m dish that would weigh 30,000 lbs and require 20+ kw of power. A Joint STARS-like radar in geosynchronous orbit would function in the S-band and would require a 25 m dish which would weigh 6,000 lbs and require 2 kw+ of power. The MEO receivers would include a constellation of 24-36 receivers at an altitude of 1600 km. For AWACS-like missions, the MEO satellites would require a 35 x 35 m array weighing 10,000 lbs. A Joint-STARS-like mission would require a 10 x 10 m receive array that would weigh 4,000 lbs.
USA-193 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So until we know the true operational orbit of these speculative 'micro satellites' the default position should be that the radar intelligence gap problem remain unsolved by China....an SM-3 missile to destroy the satellite, at an altitude of 130 nautical miles (240 km),...
This ASBM system remains speculative, no matter how many times the original report is rehashed by different people, including US military leaders. The US DoD does not deny the technical feasibility but the generals and admirals are obliged to give the nation their 'worst case' scenarios. This is about regional access denial and the US military is not idle in creating means to maintain our access in time of war. Already in the subsystem level analysis, there are CURRENT defense mechanisms that WILL either render this speculative Chinese ASBM system useless or make it financially difficult for China to pursue. For example, over-the-horizon radar systems can be destroyed by B-2 bombers in concert with ship launched cruise missiles, creating a radar intelligence gap for this ASBM system. Would China launch several ASBMs against these smaller ships, thereby depleting stocks that could turn a favorable tide for China in a naval conflict against US? How would China defend these large OTH radar stations against sub launched cruise missiles?