You don't need to repeat your words.
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New Anti-satellite Weapons?
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You don't need to repeat your words.
no_name
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I know that, but some nuts could turn what is otherwise a conventional war into a full-blown nuclear one.
---------- Post added at 01:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:02 PM ----------
I know that too. I also don't like hegemonic tones.
I really doubt that a chinese spy sat have a revisit period or less than 2 days.( I may be wrong as well,due to the utter secrecy of chinese military)
the only key to get chinese suffocate during war time is,choking of their sea trade where majority of their oil shipments comes in.
If US destroys satellites in the low-earth orbits, chinese has the capability to re-launch another for the time being. they are known for mass producing(though crappy quality)
But the new generation spy satellites are coming with as many defensive aids( from LWR,RWR,missile warning,.....).If a sat has more fuel onboard,it can easily manuever by boosting to newer orbits,But highly doubt surviving a salvo of incoming A-sat missiles.
In a technological war,I hihgly doubt chinese gaining superiority over the yankees.$750 billion US debts will get them no where
At the end of the day and before war horns blowing out,international politics plays a major factor.US is known for switching sides and it can easily make a deal with russians during a war with china.
In the end...... China?
I really doubt that a chinese spy sat have a revisit period or less than 2 days.( I may be wrong as well,due to the utter secrecy of chinese military)
the only key to get chinese suffocate during war time is,choking of their sea trade where majority of their oil shipments comes in.
If US destroys satellites in the low-earth orbits, chinese has the capability to re-launch another for the time being. they are known for mass producing(though crappy quality)
But the new generation spy satellites are coming with as many defensive aids( from LWR,RWR,missile warning,.....).If a sat has more fuel onboard,it can easily manuever by boosting to newer orbits,But highly doubt surviving a salvo of incoming A-sat missiles.
In a technological war,I hihgly doubt chinese gaining superiority over the yankees.$750 billion US debts will get them no where
At the end of the day and before war horns blowing out,international politics plays a major factor.US is known for switching sides and it can easily make a deal with russians during a war with china.
In the end...... China?
Wow, nice strategic analysis! It really explained why Indians are Indians.
I really doubt that a chinese spy sat have a revisit period or less than 2 days.( I may be wrong as well,due to the utter secrecy of chinese military)
the only key to get chinese suffocate during war time is,choking of their sea trade where majority of their oil shipments comes in.
If US destroys satellites in the low-earth orbits, chinese has the capability to re-launch another for the time being. they are known for mass producing(though crappy quality)
But the new generation spy satellites are coming with as many defensive aids( from LWR,RWR,missile warning,.....).If a sat has more fuel onboard,it can easily manuever by boosting to newer orbits,But highly doubt surviving a salvo of incoming A-sat missiles.
In a technological war,I hihgly doubt chinese gaining superiority over the yankees.$750 billion US debts will get them no where
At the end of the day and before war horns blowing out,international politics plays a major factor.US is known for switching sides and it can easily make a deal with russians during a war with china.
In the end...... China?
The very basis of asymmetrical weaponry, which China has focused on since the '60s, so to neutralize a technologically superior enemy's advantages in a defensive war. I don't think China will win a technological war vs. the U.S. in many, many decades, but it doesn't need to. China has been behind the world for so many years, yet nobody ever dared to attack China, why? Because of asymmetrical weapons like ICBMs+nukes.
ASAT weapon is in the same category. Like ICBMs+nukes, they won't really help you invade another country, at least not the U.S., but they CAN stunt an invasion force's capabilities and/or determination, both of which are required to win a war.
Also, all countries switch sides as needed. Russia may very well side with China, for example. In the end tho, neither the U.S. nor China will go to war, because the only victor that can emerge from such a war is Russia.
below_freezing
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the US won't go nuclear over satellites.
they have early warning radars in alaska, they know exactly what is coming.
anti-satellite will not just stunt the US's determination, it will severely cripple their actual capabilities. it is a way to militarily defeat the US in a defensive war.
they have early warning radars in alaska, they know exactly what is coming.
anti-satellite will not just stunt the US's determination, it will severely cripple their actual capabilities. it is a way to militarily defeat the US in a defensive war.
Thomas
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Here is an interesting article posted back in 2008 on a possible U.S. China space war. Draw your own conclusions from it.
How China Loses the Coming Space War (Pt. 1)
How China Loses the Coming Space War (Pt. 1) | Danger Room | Wired.com
A year ago to the day, China knocked a weather satellite out of orbit, and threw the international community into panic. Some figured the satellite-killer test was the harbinger of a future war in space the kind of conflict that could cripple a tech-dependent United States military. Geoffrey Forden, PhD an MIT research associate and a former UN weapons inspector and strategic weapons analyst at the Congressional Budget Office examines the possibilities of an all-out Chinese assault on American satellites. This is part one. Click for parts two and three.
High above Asia, as the bars and clubs of Beijing begin to fill up at the end of another work day, a US early warning satellite spots the tell-tale plume of a missile streaking out of the wastes of Western China. Warning bells sound all through the Pentagon. Tensions have been running high between China and the United States, as the two countries struggle to resolve the latest installment of the Taiwanese crisis. And China has had a run of unprecedented activity in space: the past two days have seen China launch four large missions into deep space, three within the last six hours.. Fortunately, a high-resolution American spy satellite will be over that second launch site within minutes, giving the US a unique ability to determine what is going on. But even though tasking orders are given to photograph the suspected launch site, none are returned. The satellite, code-named Crystal 3, no longer responds to commands. Within minutes, US Space Command reports that four NAVSTAR/GPS satellitesused to guide American drones and precision bombshave stopped broadcasting. Chinas space war against the United States has started.
For years, the American armed forces have worried about an attack on US satellites; this could be how it begins. The United States military has become increasingly dependent on space. It uses photo-reconnaissance satellites to observe potential adversaries, GPS satellites to guide munitions with pin-point accuracy, communications satellites to handle the flow of information into and out of a theater of operations, and early warning satellites to detect and track enemy missile launches to name just a few of the better known applications. Because of this increasing dependence, many analysts have worried that the US is most vulnerable to asymmetric attacks against its space assets; in their view US satellites are sitting ducks without any sort of defense and their destruction would cripple the US military. Chinas test of a sophisticated anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon a year ago, Friday 11 January 2007, when it shot down its own obsolete weather satellite has only increased these concerns. But is this true? Could a countryeven a powerful country like China that has demonstrated a very sophisticated, if nascent, ability to shoot down satellites at all altitudesinflict anything close to a knock-out blow against the US in space? And if it was anything less than a knock-out, how seriously would it affect US war fighting capabilities?
The answers to these questions should influence how the US responds to the threats Chinas ASAT represents. There is at least one way to answer these questions: war-gaming a massive Chinese attack on US satellites, where China is only limited by the laws of physics and the known properties of their ASAT, and see how much damage could be done. Such an exercise also reveals what the US could do, and what it could not do, to minimize the consequences. The results of my calculations are reported here. They assume that China launches a massive attack and that everything works exactly as planned: every ASAT launches, the US does not respond until after the attacks are launched even though it will have overwhelming evidence ahead of time, and every ASAT hits its target. Thus, this is a worst case scenario for the United States. In the end, well show, the US would still has sufficient space assets to fight a major conventional war with China, even after such an attack. Americas military capabilities would be reduced, for a few hours at a time. But they would not be crippled. Back in 2001, a commission lead by Donald Rumsfeld warned of a "space Pearl Harbor," a single strike that could cripple Americas satellite network. It turns out, there is no such thing.
Lets start with what we know about Chinas ASAT capabilities today. And we know quite a bit. Because there are few, if any, secrets in space. Amateurs around the world track most, if not all, of the classified US military satellites from their backyards, posting their positions on the internet. NORAD,is capable of tracking objects as small as four inches across. In fact, NORADs measurements of the debris caused by Chinas January 2007 test were posted on the web. In the case of the Chinese test, the orbital tracks of that debris can be used to reveal the capabilities and limitations of Chinas ASAT weapon by reconstructing the collision much like forensic scientists reconstruct a crime scene. By backtracking the debris to the point where they all converge, we can determine the two most important aspects of the Chinese ASAT: how China destroyed that satellite, and just how capable its satellite-killer really is.
The interception was almost head on at a combined speed of almost 18,000 miles per hour. The pieces of debris wound up with the greatest speedsmuch higher than the original satellite. This means that China accomplished the most sophisticated of space maneuvers: a hit-to-kill interception, the equivalent of hitting a bullet with a bullet. This is equivalent to what the US is trying to develop in its national missile defense system and is much more sophisticated than the ASAT the Soviet Union was working in the 1980s: little more than a space mine that slowly snuck up on its target and detonated near by.
We also know that the ASAT was highly maneuverable. Yes, the target satellites orbit was known well ahead of the interception. However, that does not mean that the satellites position was known well enough that the ASAT did not need to steer itself to hit the target. In fact, it is very likely that the interceptor needed to maneuver at high speeds, perhaps as much as six times the acceleration of gravity, to hit its target.
The orbital speed of the target satellite, which is determined by its altitude, also provides us with significant insight into the interceptors capability. The closing speed of the interception, which is a combination of the target satellites orbital speed and the speed of the interceptor, determines how much time is available to make final adjustments. For instance, just one second before the collision on January 11th, the interceptor and target were five miles apart. During that one second, the interceptor had to make any final adjustments to its trajectory to hit a target smaller than six feet across. Any decrease in the closing speed makes the attack that much easier. Since orbital speeds decrease with increasing altitudes, the Chinese interceptor would find it considerably easier to hit a target in higher orbit.
Finally, the interceptor needed to track its target, so that it could determine where it should move to place itself in front of the obsolete weather satellite; we have a good sense of how that was done, too. The most likely method it employed to track the oncoming satellite was an on-board telescope using visible light. Locking onto a target this way as opposed to focusing on the infrared light emitted by the heat of the target, the way the US missile defense interceptor does imposes significant limitations on the system. In particular, until it develops a far-infrared capability, which is probably decades away, its ASAT will be forced to attack satellites while they are in bright sunlight. Indeed, even though the site from which the interceptor was launched was cloaked in darkness, the target satellite was high enough to be brightly illuminated by the sun. Until China does develop better sensors, this imposes a very severe constraint on how and when it could attack other satellites: it must wait to attack low Earth orbit satellites when they are in bright sunshine. Attacks against satellites in significantly higher orbits, such as GPS or geostationary satellites, are less constrained by this requirement since they are almost always in direct sunlight.
China has informally stated a number of times that it will never do this again. But after having paid a very high price for testing the system once, both in resources and in political capital, it seems unlikely that they would abandon it altogether. Fortunately for China, it can continue to develop the systemincluding its on board tracking, guidance, and control systemsin the guise of a missile defense system. Such interceptions could be arranged at similar, or even greater, closing speeds as the January 2007 test. Only now, China could arrange to have both the target and the interceptor collide when they are both in downward portions of their trajectories, much like the US does during its missile defense tests. That way, they can test their system again without creating orbital debris that might harm their own and other nations satellites.
How China Loses the Coming Space War (Pt. 1)
How China Loses the Coming Space War (Pt. 1) | Danger Room | Wired.com
A year ago to the day, China knocked a weather satellite out of orbit, and threw the international community into panic. Some figured the satellite-killer test was the harbinger of a future war in space the kind of conflict that could cripple a tech-dependent United States military. Geoffrey Forden, PhD an MIT research associate and a former UN weapons inspector and strategic weapons analyst at the Congressional Budget Office examines the possibilities of an all-out Chinese assault on American satellites. This is part one. Click for parts two and three.
High above Asia, as the bars and clubs of Beijing begin to fill up at the end of another work day, a US early warning satellite spots the tell-tale plume of a missile streaking out of the wastes of Western China. Warning bells sound all through the Pentagon. Tensions have been running high between China and the United States, as the two countries struggle to resolve the latest installment of the Taiwanese crisis. And China has had a run of unprecedented activity in space: the past two days have seen China launch four large missions into deep space, three within the last six hours.. Fortunately, a high-resolution American spy satellite will be over that second launch site within minutes, giving the US a unique ability to determine what is going on. But even though tasking orders are given to photograph the suspected launch site, none are returned. The satellite, code-named Crystal 3, no longer responds to commands. Within minutes, US Space Command reports that four NAVSTAR/GPS satellitesused to guide American drones and precision bombshave stopped broadcasting. Chinas space war against the United States has started.
For years, the American armed forces have worried about an attack on US satellites; this could be how it begins. The United States military has become increasingly dependent on space. It uses photo-reconnaissance satellites to observe potential adversaries, GPS satellites to guide munitions with pin-point accuracy, communications satellites to handle the flow of information into and out of a theater of operations, and early warning satellites to detect and track enemy missile launches to name just a few of the better known applications. Because of this increasing dependence, many analysts have worried that the US is most vulnerable to asymmetric attacks against its space assets; in their view US satellites are sitting ducks without any sort of defense and their destruction would cripple the US military. Chinas test of a sophisticated anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon a year ago, Friday 11 January 2007, when it shot down its own obsolete weather satellite has only increased these concerns. But is this true? Could a countryeven a powerful country like China that has demonstrated a very sophisticated, if nascent, ability to shoot down satellites at all altitudesinflict anything close to a knock-out blow against the US in space? And if it was anything less than a knock-out, how seriously would it affect US war fighting capabilities?
The answers to these questions should influence how the US responds to the threats Chinas ASAT represents. There is at least one way to answer these questions: war-gaming a massive Chinese attack on US satellites, where China is only limited by the laws of physics and the known properties of their ASAT, and see how much damage could be done. Such an exercise also reveals what the US could do, and what it could not do, to minimize the consequences. The results of my calculations are reported here. They assume that China launches a massive attack and that everything works exactly as planned: every ASAT launches, the US does not respond until after the attacks are launched even though it will have overwhelming evidence ahead of time, and every ASAT hits its target. Thus, this is a worst case scenario for the United States. In the end, well show, the US would still has sufficient space assets to fight a major conventional war with China, even after such an attack. Americas military capabilities would be reduced, for a few hours at a time. But they would not be crippled. Back in 2001, a commission lead by Donald Rumsfeld warned of a "space Pearl Harbor," a single strike that could cripple Americas satellite network. It turns out, there is no such thing.
Lets start with what we know about Chinas ASAT capabilities today. And we know quite a bit. Because there are few, if any, secrets in space. Amateurs around the world track most, if not all, of the classified US military satellites from their backyards, posting their positions on the internet. NORAD,is capable of tracking objects as small as four inches across. In fact, NORADs measurements of the debris caused by Chinas January 2007 test were posted on the web. In the case of the Chinese test, the orbital tracks of that debris can be used to reveal the capabilities and limitations of Chinas ASAT weapon by reconstructing the collision much like forensic scientists reconstruct a crime scene. By backtracking the debris to the point where they all converge, we can determine the two most important aspects of the Chinese ASAT: how China destroyed that satellite, and just how capable its satellite-killer really is.
The interception was almost head on at a combined speed of almost 18,000 miles per hour. The pieces of debris wound up with the greatest speedsmuch higher than the original satellite. This means that China accomplished the most sophisticated of space maneuvers: a hit-to-kill interception, the equivalent of hitting a bullet with a bullet. This is equivalent to what the US is trying to develop in its national missile defense system and is much more sophisticated than the ASAT the Soviet Union was working in the 1980s: little more than a space mine that slowly snuck up on its target and detonated near by.
We also know that the ASAT was highly maneuverable. Yes, the target satellites orbit was known well ahead of the interception. However, that does not mean that the satellites position was known well enough that the ASAT did not need to steer itself to hit the target. In fact, it is very likely that the interceptor needed to maneuver at high speeds, perhaps as much as six times the acceleration of gravity, to hit its target.
The orbital speed of the target satellite, which is determined by its altitude, also provides us with significant insight into the interceptors capability. The closing speed of the interception, which is a combination of the target satellites orbital speed and the speed of the interceptor, determines how much time is available to make final adjustments. For instance, just one second before the collision on January 11th, the interceptor and target were five miles apart. During that one second, the interceptor had to make any final adjustments to its trajectory to hit a target smaller than six feet across. Any decrease in the closing speed makes the attack that much easier. Since orbital speeds decrease with increasing altitudes, the Chinese interceptor would find it considerably easier to hit a target in higher orbit.
Finally, the interceptor needed to track its target, so that it could determine where it should move to place itself in front of the obsolete weather satellite; we have a good sense of how that was done, too. The most likely method it employed to track the oncoming satellite was an on-board telescope using visible light. Locking onto a target this way as opposed to focusing on the infrared light emitted by the heat of the target, the way the US missile defense interceptor does imposes significant limitations on the system. In particular, until it develops a far-infrared capability, which is probably decades away, its ASAT will be forced to attack satellites while they are in bright sunlight. Indeed, even though the site from which the interceptor was launched was cloaked in darkness, the target satellite was high enough to be brightly illuminated by the sun. Until China does develop better sensors, this imposes a very severe constraint on how and when it could attack other satellites: it must wait to attack low Earth orbit satellites when they are in bright sunshine. Attacks against satellites in significantly higher orbits, such as GPS or geostationary satellites, are less constrained by this requirement since they are almost always in direct sunlight.
China has informally stated a number of times that it will never do this again. But after having paid a very high price for testing the system once, both in resources and in political capital, it seems unlikely that they would abandon it altogether. Fortunately for China, it can continue to develop the systemincluding its on board tracking, guidance, and control systemsin the guise of a missile defense system. Such interceptions could be arranged at similar, or even greater, closing speeds as the January 2007 test. Only now, China could arrange to have both the target and the interceptor collide when they are both in downward portions of their trajectories, much like the US does during its missile defense tests. That way, they can test their system again without creating orbital debris that might harm their own and other nations satellites.
Thomas
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How China Loses the Coming Space War (Pt. 2)
How China Loses the Coming Space War (Pt. 2) | Danger Room | Wired.com
This is part two of MIT researcher Geoffrey Fordens look at the possibilities of an all-out Chinese assault on American satellites.
If China and the US are going to come into armed conflict with each other in the next several decades, it will almost certainly be over the status of Taiwan. China has, for instance, indicated that it would be willing to use force if Taiwan took steps to formalize its independence from the main land or otherwise prevent its eventual reunification under the rule of the Peoples Republic. In such a scenario, it is entirely likely China could consider trying to negate or drastically reduce the US ability to use space at a tactical level.
But China could not launch the massive attack required to have anything like a significant effect on US ability to utilize space without months of careful planning and pre-positioning of special, ASAT carrying missiles around the country. It would also have to utilize its satellite launch facilities to attack any US assets in deep space: the GPS navigation satellites and communications satellites in geostationary orbit. Most importantly, it would have to time the attack so as to hit as many US satellites as simultaneously as possible. And, despite all that movement, Beijing would somehow have to keep the whole thing secret. Failure to do so would undoubtedly result in the US attacking the large, fixed facilities China needs to wage this kind of war before the full blow had been struck. Even if the United States failed to do so, China would undoubtedly plan for that contingency.
Based on the orbits of US military satellites determined by the worldwide network of amateur observers, there appears to be a large number of low Earth orbit military satellites over China several times each week. To hit them, China would have to preposition its ASAT-tipped missiles and their mobile launchers in remote areas of China, one position for each satellite. (If reports of low reliabilities for these missiles are correct, two or more missiles might be assigned to each satellite.) Furthermore, these positions are really only suitable for a particular day. If Chinas political and military planners have any uncertainty at all about which day to launch their space war, they would need to pre-position additional launchers around the country. Thus, attacking nine low Earth orbit satellites could require as many as 36 mobile launchersenough for two interceptors fired at each satellite with a contingency day if plans changemoved to remote areas of China; areas determined more by the satellite orbits than Chinas network of road. (As will be discussed below, nine is about the maximum they could reasonably expect to hit on the first day of the space war.)
Xslc_launch_pads
At the same time that China would be trying to covertly move its mobile missile launchers around the country, it would also have to assemble a fleet of large rockets ones normally used for launching satellites.
The more large rockets China uses for this task, the more deep-space satellites it can destroy. At present, however, China only has the facilities for assembling and launching a total for four such rockets nearly simultaneously. Two would have to be assembled out in the open where they could be observed by US spy satellites and two could be assembled inside a vertical assembly building during the 18 days it takes to stack and fuel the Long March rockets stages while preparing to launch. [See right.]
Even the two assembled indoors would need to arrive by train and eventually would have to be moved, one after the other, to the launch pad. Each of these rockets, usually reserved for launching satellites into geostationary orbits, could carry three to four interceptors and their special orbital maneuver motors to attack either US navigation satellites, at about 12,000 miles altitude, or communications satellites at about 22,000 miles.
Four days prior to the attack, China would launch the first of its
Long March rockets carrying deep-space attack ASATs; the same launch pad would have to be used for the second rocket stacked inside the vertical assembly building. As the technicians renovated that pad, the first rockets payload would circle the Earth in a parking orbit at about 200 miles altitude waiting to be joined by the other deep-space
ASATs. This would appear to be a tell-tale sign of an impending strike. But China could explain the delay to the international community by claiming that the third stage, intended to take the payload it its final altitude, had failed to fire and that they were working on it. Roughly six hours before the first the attack on the
USs low Earth orbit military satellites, the other three Long March rockets would have to be fired since it takes roughly that long to get their payloads up to their targets orbits. Delays or failures to launch any of these rockets would strand their interceptors on the launch pad and subject them to possible retaliatory bombing by the US.
If all goes as planned, China would have launched between 12 and 16
ASATs, each capable of destroying a strategically important deep-space satellite. However, the United States military has many, many more deep space satellites. There are, as of December 2007, 32 functioning GPS
navigation satellites even though the original design calls for only
24. [See above, left] In addition, the US has 23 military communications satellites, six early warning satellites that observe missile launches, and six surveillance satellitesmost of which detect and monitor electronic transmissions of potential adversaries but one, apparently capable of photo-reconnaissancein geostationary orbit.
These satellites are reinforced by a private network of 90 commercial communications satellites, owned and operated by US corporations, that presumably could be used to replace destroyed military communications satellites. (Eighty-four percent of the space communications to military forces in the Iraqi theater of operations during Operation
Iraqi Freedom used commercial satellites.) On top of that, there are
75 civilian and the 64 military/civilian communications satellites in low Earth orbit although they do not have the same transmission capacity as the geostationary satellites. The United States may be the country most dependent on space for its military activities. But it is also the least vulnerable, because of the tremendous redundancy of its space assets.
Of course, China does not have to destroy all these satellites to seriously hamper US military efforts in the Taiwan Straits. It would only have to destroy those satellites that have a direct line of sight to the conflict: this includes eight military and 22 US civilian communications satellites in geostationary orbits. Nevertheless, China would have to choose between attempts to destroy the satellites that guide US precision guided bombs and those satellites which relay the orders to drop those bombs. It simply cannot launch enough ASATs to destroy both systems.
But does China have enough to wipe out even a single set of American satellites? Lets examine the possibilities:
Attacking Navigation Satellites
You need a launch pad to attack a target in deep space, like an American GPS satellite. China has just three of these pads. This really restricts Chinas offensive capabilities in space. Assuming that China devotes all its deep-space
ASATs on GPS satellites, it could destroy at most 16 satellites. At the current time, with 32 functioning navigation satellites, that would still leave 16 satellites still working. Over a period of years, the debris from those collisions would represent a significant threat to more than those satellites immediately attacked. They would pass, time and time again, through the belts of debris that resulted from the interceptions. However, it would probably take longer than the military conflict China initiated with these attacks before additional satellites were destroyed by subsequent collisions.
Usually, there are about nine GPS satellites over China at any given time. If China somehow managed to destroy all of these, it could eliminate Americas use of precision-guided munitionsfor a few hours, until the orbits of other GPS satellites take them over the Taiwan
Straits. Quite quickly, the constellations other 23 satellites would fill in the gap due to their normal orbital movement. Even if it destroyed 16 satellites, China could still only interrupt GPS over the
Straits for about eight hours. During the other 16 hours there would be the four or more satellites present over the target area for bombing runs, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flights, and ship tracking. This pattern of eight hours off followed by 16 hours when GPS could be used would be repeated every day until new satellites are launched. This outage would certainly cause difficulties; GPS not only guides American precision bombs it helps pilot UAV spy planes, and monitor ships. US
casualties might increase , with air crews forced to fly missions during daylight hours and conduct some of the "dull, dirty, and dangerous" missions now flown by robotic planes. Its a situation no
American commander would want to face. But it would not be a catastrophic one. And it would not eliminate precision weaponry, UAVs, or any other American activity that depends on GPS.
Keep in mind, this is the worst of the worst-case scenarios. It is highly unlikely that China could remove all the satellites over the conflict area at the same time. After all, attacking 16 satellites, all in different orbits with ASATs launched on just four different rockets involves some fairly complex orbital maneuvers. A much more likely scenario is that, at best, China could destroy four GPS
satellites in the initial wave followed roughly seven hours later by four more, a third wave at roughly 45 minutes after that, and the final wave two hours later. Thus, the GPS attack is spread over ten hours and never eliminates all the satellites visible over the area of conflict at the same time. This Chinese attack on US navigation satellites would not eliminate or even significantly degrade the USs ability use precision-guided munitions..
Attacking Communications Satellites
While it is possible for China to eliminate the eight US military communications satellites in geostationary orbits that can broadcast to the Taiwan Straits,
Beijing does not have enough the lauch capacity for as many ASATs as it would take to eliminate all 22 civilian communications satellites that could also be used. However, not all of these satellites have equal capacities for transmitting information; it might be possible for
China to destroy enough of that capacity to limit the US military.
During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, US armed forces sent and received a tremendous amount of information via satellite. This included video conferencing between the Pentagon and the commanders in the field, satellite photographs downloaded to operations planners, orders directing jets where to drop their bombs, and soldiers emailing their families back home. At its peak, all of this added up to about three billion bits per second, a tremendous amount of information.
Bandwidth was and continues to be a premium on the battlfield, particularly at the tactical level. And the appetite for information is only increasing. But the total amount of information transmitted over satellites is certain to increase by the next time we go to war;
perhaps it could triple or even quadruple to twelve billion bits per second in the next ten years.
Assuming that the eight military communications satellites are destroyed first, that leaves at most eight ASATs to destroy the eight most capable civilian communications satellites. If these eight are removed, then there is still a total capacity of over 14 billion bits per second in US owned and operated civilian communications satellites. Thus, there should be enough transmission capacity for our military even if the demand for satellite communications increases by a factor of four. And the US military is used to using civilian satellites, as the 2003 invasion of Iraq showed. The vast majority
(84%) of all military communications into and out of the theater of operations went through civilian satellites.
Attacking Early Warning Satellites
The United States has five satellites in geostationary orbit that detect missile launches using the heat released from their exhaust plumes. These satellites are primarily used to alert US nuclear forces to massive nuclear attacks on the homeland. However, in recent years, they have played an increasing role in conventional conflicts, such as both Gulf Wars, by cueing tactical missile defenses like the Patriot missile defense systems that gained fame in their engagements with Saddams SCUD
missiles. Because of this new use, China might find it useful to attack them with ASATs. Since there are only five of them, China could destroy the entire constellation but at the cost of diverting some of the few available deep-space ASATs from other targets. Of course,
China would not have to attack all five but could limit its attack to the three that simultaneously view the Taiwan Straits area.
If China did decide to destroy these early warning satellites, it would greatly reduce the area covered by US missile defenses in Taiwan against SCUD and longer range missiles. This is because the area covered by a theater missile defense system is highly dependent on the warning time it has; the greater the warning time, the more effective the missile defense systems radar is. Thus a Patriot battery, which might ordinarily cover the capital of Taiwan, could be reduced to just defending the military base it was stationed at. Some analysts believe that China would gain a tremendous propaganda coup by having a single missile make it through US defenses and thus might consider this use of its deep-space ASATs highly worthwhile even if it could not increase the probability of destroying military targets. On the other hand,
China would run a tremendous risk of the US believing it was under a more general nuclear attack if China did destroy these early warning satellites.
Throughout the history of the Cold War, the US has had a policy of only launching a retaliatory nuclear strike if an incoming attack is detected by both early warning satellites and radars. Without the space leg of the early warning system, the odds of the US
misinterpreting some missile launch that it detected with radar as a nuclear attack would be greatly increased even if the US did not view the satellite destruction as a sufficiently threatening attack all by themselves. Such a misinterpretation is not without precedent. In
1995, Russias early warning radars viewed a NASA sounding rocket launch off the coast of Norway and flagged it as a possible Trident missile launch. Many analysts believe that Russia was able to not respond only because it had a constellation of functioning early warning satellites. Any Chinese attacks on US early warning satellites would risk both intentional and mistaken escalation of the conflict into a nuclear war without a clear military goal.
Attacking Low Altitude Satellites
China would launch its first attack against a US electronic intelligence satellite in low
Earth orbit minutes before the first wave of deep space ASATs hit their targets. The same type of ASAT used to target the deep-space satellites could also be launched on short range missiles from
Transporter-Erector-Launchers (TELs). These are 22-wheeled vehicles that look very similar to tanker trucks. Theyre more sophisticated than the mobile launchers that Saddam used during the first Gulf War to launch SCUDs toward Israel and Saudi Arabia but would be no easier to find and destroy.
The exact order of attacks will depend upon the specific day and hour chosen but a typical attack might involve a first launch against a
Lacrosse signals intelligence satellite followed within seconds by another, this time against a Keyhole 11 high-resolution spy satellite.
Moments later, three ASATs would be launched against small groups of three NOSS satellites that the Navy uses to locate an adversarys ships at sea. These travel around the Earth in closely spaced groups of either two or three satellites and triangulate on the radio signals emitted by warships. During a span of about twenty minutes, China could attack and destroy a total of nine US military satellites in the scenario considered here. Inevitably, however, there would eventually be a lull in satellite crossings because of the random clumpings of satellites along their orbits.
If the United States does nothing to protect itself, such as change the orbits of its lower altitude satellites, China could continue to shoot down military satellites as they come over the horizon using pre-positioned ASATs. It is highly unlikely, however, that the United
Sates would simply roll over while these attacks took place. Even today, with no formal satellite defenses, we could be fairly effective at stopping the destruction of our satellites.
Nevertheless, the loss of those satellites that were destroyed would be significant. It would increase the revisit times between spy satellites, which might not matter so much for reconnaissance satellites in a tactical setting. The loss of a significant fraction of the Navys enemy ship surveillance system, however, might be more important in battles around the Taiwan Straits. Without timely determination of enemy locations, the US would have to increase the number of aircraft devoted to scouting and subsequently
decrease the number of combat missions as these planes are diverted
How China Loses the Coming Space War (Pt. 2) | Danger Room | Wired.com
This is part two of MIT researcher Geoffrey Fordens look at the possibilities of an all-out Chinese assault on American satellites.
If China and the US are going to come into armed conflict with each other in the next several decades, it will almost certainly be over the status of Taiwan. China has, for instance, indicated that it would be willing to use force if Taiwan took steps to formalize its independence from the main land or otherwise prevent its eventual reunification under the rule of the Peoples Republic. In such a scenario, it is entirely likely China could consider trying to negate or drastically reduce the US ability to use space at a tactical level.
But China could not launch the massive attack required to have anything like a significant effect on US ability to utilize space without months of careful planning and pre-positioning of special, ASAT carrying missiles around the country. It would also have to utilize its satellite launch facilities to attack any US assets in deep space: the GPS navigation satellites and communications satellites in geostationary orbit. Most importantly, it would have to time the attack so as to hit as many US satellites as simultaneously as possible. And, despite all that movement, Beijing would somehow have to keep the whole thing secret. Failure to do so would undoubtedly result in the US attacking the large, fixed facilities China needs to wage this kind of war before the full blow had been struck. Even if the United States failed to do so, China would undoubtedly plan for that contingency.
Based on the orbits of US military satellites determined by the worldwide network of amateur observers, there appears to be a large number of low Earth orbit military satellites over China several times each week. To hit them, China would have to preposition its ASAT-tipped missiles and their mobile launchers in remote areas of China, one position for each satellite. (If reports of low reliabilities for these missiles are correct, two or more missiles might be assigned to each satellite.) Furthermore, these positions are really only suitable for a particular day. If Chinas political and military planners have any uncertainty at all about which day to launch their space war, they would need to pre-position additional launchers around the country. Thus, attacking nine low Earth orbit satellites could require as many as 36 mobile launchersenough for two interceptors fired at each satellite with a contingency day if plans changemoved to remote areas of China; areas determined more by the satellite orbits than Chinas network of road. (As will be discussed below, nine is about the maximum they could reasonably expect to hit on the first day of the space war.)
Xslc_launch_pads
At the same time that China would be trying to covertly move its mobile missile launchers around the country, it would also have to assemble a fleet of large rockets ones normally used for launching satellites.
The more large rockets China uses for this task, the more deep-space satellites it can destroy. At present, however, China only has the facilities for assembling and launching a total for four such rockets nearly simultaneously. Two would have to be assembled out in the open where they could be observed by US spy satellites and two could be assembled inside a vertical assembly building during the 18 days it takes to stack and fuel the Long March rockets stages while preparing to launch. [See right.]
Even the two assembled indoors would need to arrive by train and eventually would have to be moved, one after the other, to the launch pad. Each of these rockets, usually reserved for launching satellites into geostationary orbits, could carry three to four interceptors and their special orbital maneuver motors to attack either US navigation satellites, at about 12,000 miles altitude, or communications satellites at about 22,000 miles.
Four days prior to the attack, China would launch the first of its
Long March rockets carrying deep-space attack ASATs; the same launch pad would have to be used for the second rocket stacked inside the vertical assembly building. As the technicians renovated that pad, the first rockets payload would circle the Earth in a parking orbit at about 200 miles altitude waiting to be joined by the other deep-space
ASATs. This would appear to be a tell-tale sign of an impending strike. But China could explain the delay to the international community by claiming that the third stage, intended to take the payload it its final altitude, had failed to fire and that they were working on it. Roughly six hours before the first the attack on the
USs low Earth orbit military satellites, the other three Long March rockets would have to be fired since it takes roughly that long to get their payloads up to their targets orbits. Delays or failures to launch any of these rockets would strand their interceptors on the launch pad and subject them to possible retaliatory bombing by the US.
If all goes as planned, China would have launched between 12 and 16
ASATs, each capable of destroying a strategically important deep-space satellite. However, the United States military has many, many more deep space satellites. There are, as of December 2007, 32 functioning GPS
navigation satellites even though the original design calls for only
24. [See above, left] In addition, the US has 23 military communications satellites, six early warning satellites that observe missile launches, and six surveillance satellitesmost of which detect and monitor electronic transmissions of potential adversaries but one, apparently capable of photo-reconnaissancein geostationary orbit.
These satellites are reinforced by a private network of 90 commercial communications satellites, owned and operated by US corporations, that presumably could be used to replace destroyed military communications satellites. (Eighty-four percent of the space communications to military forces in the Iraqi theater of operations during Operation
Iraqi Freedom used commercial satellites.) On top of that, there are
75 civilian and the 64 military/civilian communications satellites in low Earth orbit although they do not have the same transmission capacity as the geostationary satellites. The United States may be the country most dependent on space for its military activities. But it is also the least vulnerable, because of the tremendous redundancy of its space assets.
Of course, China does not have to destroy all these satellites to seriously hamper US military efforts in the Taiwan Straits. It would only have to destroy those satellites that have a direct line of sight to the conflict: this includes eight military and 22 US civilian communications satellites in geostationary orbits. Nevertheless, China would have to choose between attempts to destroy the satellites that guide US precision guided bombs and those satellites which relay the orders to drop those bombs. It simply cannot launch enough ASATs to destroy both systems.
But does China have enough to wipe out even a single set of American satellites? Lets examine the possibilities:
Attacking Navigation Satellites
You need a launch pad to attack a target in deep space, like an American GPS satellite. China has just three of these pads. This really restricts Chinas offensive capabilities in space. Assuming that China devotes all its deep-space
ASATs on GPS satellites, it could destroy at most 16 satellites. At the current time, with 32 functioning navigation satellites, that would still leave 16 satellites still working. Over a period of years, the debris from those collisions would represent a significant threat to more than those satellites immediately attacked. They would pass, time and time again, through the belts of debris that resulted from the interceptions. However, it would probably take longer than the military conflict China initiated with these attacks before additional satellites were destroyed by subsequent collisions.
Usually, there are about nine GPS satellites over China at any given time. If China somehow managed to destroy all of these, it could eliminate Americas use of precision-guided munitionsfor a few hours, until the orbits of other GPS satellites take them over the Taiwan
Straits. Quite quickly, the constellations other 23 satellites would fill in the gap due to their normal orbital movement. Even if it destroyed 16 satellites, China could still only interrupt GPS over the
Straits for about eight hours. During the other 16 hours there would be the four or more satellites present over the target area for bombing runs, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flights, and ship tracking. This pattern of eight hours off followed by 16 hours when GPS could be used would be repeated every day until new satellites are launched. This outage would certainly cause difficulties; GPS not only guides American precision bombs it helps pilot UAV spy planes, and monitor ships. US
casualties might increase , with air crews forced to fly missions during daylight hours and conduct some of the "dull, dirty, and dangerous" missions now flown by robotic planes. Its a situation no
American commander would want to face. But it would not be a catastrophic one. And it would not eliminate precision weaponry, UAVs, or any other American activity that depends on GPS.
Keep in mind, this is the worst of the worst-case scenarios. It is highly unlikely that China could remove all the satellites over the conflict area at the same time. After all, attacking 16 satellites, all in different orbits with ASATs launched on just four different rockets involves some fairly complex orbital maneuvers. A much more likely scenario is that, at best, China could destroy four GPS
satellites in the initial wave followed roughly seven hours later by four more, a third wave at roughly 45 minutes after that, and the final wave two hours later. Thus, the GPS attack is spread over ten hours and never eliminates all the satellites visible over the area of conflict at the same time. This Chinese attack on US navigation satellites would not eliminate or even significantly degrade the USs ability use precision-guided munitions..
Attacking Communications Satellites
While it is possible for China to eliminate the eight US military communications satellites in geostationary orbits that can broadcast to the Taiwan Straits,
Beijing does not have enough the lauch capacity for as many ASATs as it would take to eliminate all 22 civilian communications satellites that could also be used. However, not all of these satellites have equal capacities for transmitting information; it might be possible for
China to destroy enough of that capacity to limit the US military.
During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, US armed forces sent and received a tremendous amount of information via satellite. This included video conferencing between the Pentagon and the commanders in the field, satellite photographs downloaded to operations planners, orders directing jets where to drop their bombs, and soldiers emailing their families back home. At its peak, all of this added up to about three billion bits per second, a tremendous amount of information.
Bandwidth was and continues to be a premium on the battlfield, particularly at the tactical level. And the appetite for information is only increasing. But the total amount of information transmitted over satellites is certain to increase by the next time we go to war;
perhaps it could triple or even quadruple to twelve billion bits per second in the next ten years.
Assuming that the eight military communications satellites are destroyed first, that leaves at most eight ASATs to destroy the eight most capable civilian communications satellites. If these eight are removed, then there is still a total capacity of over 14 billion bits per second in US owned and operated civilian communications satellites. Thus, there should be enough transmission capacity for our military even if the demand for satellite communications increases by a factor of four. And the US military is used to using civilian satellites, as the 2003 invasion of Iraq showed. The vast majority
(84%) of all military communications into and out of the theater of operations went through civilian satellites.
Attacking Early Warning Satellites
The United States has five satellites in geostationary orbit that detect missile launches using the heat released from their exhaust plumes. These satellites are primarily used to alert US nuclear forces to massive nuclear attacks on the homeland. However, in recent years, they have played an increasing role in conventional conflicts, such as both Gulf Wars, by cueing tactical missile defenses like the Patriot missile defense systems that gained fame in their engagements with Saddams SCUD
missiles. Because of this new use, China might find it useful to attack them with ASATs. Since there are only five of them, China could destroy the entire constellation but at the cost of diverting some of the few available deep-space ASATs from other targets. Of course,
China would not have to attack all five but could limit its attack to the three that simultaneously view the Taiwan Straits area.
If China did decide to destroy these early warning satellites, it would greatly reduce the area covered by US missile defenses in Taiwan against SCUD and longer range missiles. This is because the area covered by a theater missile defense system is highly dependent on the warning time it has; the greater the warning time, the more effective the missile defense systems radar is. Thus a Patriot battery, which might ordinarily cover the capital of Taiwan, could be reduced to just defending the military base it was stationed at. Some analysts believe that China would gain a tremendous propaganda coup by having a single missile make it through US defenses and thus might consider this use of its deep-space ASATs highly worthwhile even if it could not increase the probability of destroying military targets. On the other hand,
China would run a tremendous risk of the US believing it was under a more general nuclear attack if China did destroy these early warning satellites.
Throughout the history of the Cold War, the US has had a policy of only launching a retaliatory nuclear strike if an incoming attack is detected by both early warning satellites and radars. Without the space leg of the early warning system, the odds of the US
misinterpreting some missile launch that it detected with radar as a nuclear attack would be greatly increased even if the US did not view the satellite destruction as a sufficiently threatening attack all by themselves. Such a misinterpretation is not without precedent. In
1995, Russias early warning radars viewed a NASA sounding rocket launch off the coast of Norway and flagged it as a possible Trident missile launch. Many analysts believe that Russia was able to not respond only because it had a constellation of functioning early warning satellites. Any Chinese attacks on US early warning satellites would risk both intentional and mistaken escalation of the conflict into a nuclear war without a clear military goal.
Attacking Low Altitude Satellites
China would launch its first attack against a US electronic intelligence satellite in low
Earth orbit minutes before the first wave of deep space ASATs hit their targets. The same type of ASAT used to target the deep-space satellites could also be launched on short range missiles from
Transporter-Erector-Launchers (TELs). These are 22-wheeled vehicles that look very similar to tanker trucks. Theyre more sophisticated than the mobile launchers that Saddam used during the first Gulf War to launch SCUDs toward Israel and Saudi Arabia but would be no easier to find and destroy.
The exact order of attacks will depend upon the specific day and hour chosen but a typical attack might involve a first launch against a
Lacrosse signals intelligence satellite followed within seconds by another, this time against a Keyhole 11 high-resolution spy satellite.
Moments later, three ASATs would be launched against small groups of three NOSS satellites that the Navy uses to locate an adversarys ships at sea. These travel around the Earth in closely spaced groups of either two or three satellites and triangulate on the radio signals emitted by warships. During a span of about twenty minutes, China could attack and destroy a total of nine US military satellites in the scenario considered here. Inevitably, however, there would eventually be a lull in satellite crossings because of the random clumpings of satellites along their orbits.
If the United States does nothing to protect itself, such as change the orbits of its lower altitude satellites, China could continue to shoot down military satellites as they come over the horizon using pre-positioned ASATs. It is highly unlikely, however, that the United
Sates would simply roll over while these attacks took place. Even today, with no formal satellite defenses, we could be fairly effective at stopping the destruction of our satellites.
Nevertheless, the loss of those satellites that were destroyed would be significant. It would increase the revisit times between spy satellites, which might not matter so much for reconnaissance satellites in a tactical setting. The loss of a significant fraction of the Navys enemy ship surveillance system, however, might be more important in battles around the Taiwan Straits. Without timely determination of enemy locations, the US would have to increase the number of aircraft devoted to scouting and subsequently
decrease the number of combat missions as these planes are diverted
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How China Loses the Coming Space War (Pt. 3)
How China Loses the Coming Space War (Pt. 3) | Danger Room | Wired.com
This is part three of MIT researcher Geoffrey Fordens look at the possibilities of an all-out Chinese assault on American satellites. Click for parts one and two.
If China was to attack the strategically important deep-space satellites it would give the United States at least an indication of the impending attack two or more weeks prior to launch as it assembled its Long March rockets on their launch pads. There could be few other reasons for China to assemble so many rockets at its satellite launch centers for near-simultaneous launches. The US could, if it wished to initiate hostilities, destroy the rockets before they were launched using either stealth bombers or cruise missiles. Alternatively, it could wait and use its National Missile Defense interceptorswhich have an inherent ASAT capabilityto shoot down the first group of deep space ASATs as they wait for D-day in their parking orbit.
Once on their final trajectory, however, there is little or nothing the US could do to prevent them from striking their targets. It would be impossible, for instance, to move the targeted satellites out of the way in the final moments before the collision. The Chinese ASATs are known to be capable of very high speed maneuvers and trying to move a GPS or communications satellite to avoid a collision would require such dramatic changes in velocity as to shear off their solar cell panels and antennas. Having protector satellites in orbit near strategically important targets would also be counter productive. If such protectors raced out and destroyed an approaching ASAT they would simply create a shotgun blast of debris that would continue to circle the Earth and would every twelve (if attacking a GPS satellite) or 24 hours (for a communications satellite as the target) have another chance of colliding with its target. Time, in this case, is very much on the side of the attacker.
Since China doesnt have enough deep-space ASATs to stop communications or even prevent GPS being used during most hours of the day Beijing might not even attempt to attack those targets. Which means the United States wouldnt have much of warning, to prepare for the onslaught. In that case, it is almost certain that China could destroy a number of surveillance and signals intelligence satellites in low Earth orbit before the US could take action.
If we assume that the US chain of command takes an hour, due to bureaucratic inertia, to react, China could destroy a total of nine such satellites before the US responds in the specific case examined here. This includes two out of the three functioning Keyhole high resolution photo-reconnaissance satellites, one of the three Lacrosse signals intelligence satellites in orbit, and six of the 15 NOSS satellites that the Navy uses to locate enemy ships at sea. This represents billions of dollars lost and, more important, a large fraction of the US space assets in low Earth orbit that could have been used in the subsequent conflict.
At that point, however, the United States could effectively stop Chinas attack simply by changing the remaining satellites orbital speeds by as little as 200 mph (they are typically moving at over 16,500 mph). This very small change will have a large effect in the position of the satellite the next time it crosses over China; effectively putting the satellite out of range of the pre-positioned ASAT launcher. This is not an excessive change in speed and, unless the satellite is very close to the end of its operational life, is well within the capability of its onboard fuel supply. Furthermore, it does not have to change its speed very rapidly the way a deep-space satellite would have to in order to avoid collision in its final moments. Instead, this relatively small velocity change has tens of minutes or even hours to change the position of the satellite before the next time it crosses over China. During this time, it is steadily moving away from its original position so that it could be hundreds of miles from where China thought it was going to be.
While it is possible that the pre-positioned ASAT missiles could still reach their target even after it had changed, they would not know where, exactly, to aim the missile. Instead, they would have to perform a radar search for the satellite in an ever expanding volume of space. This volume quickly becomes too large for even the most powerful of mobile radars. In fact, it would take a fairly large
(perhaps 50 feet in diameter) to detect the satellite during its next pass and China does not have a lot of those radars. So most, if not all, of the satellites remaining after the first hour would be safe for the next 24. During that time, the United States could try to destroy all of Chinas fixed radars that are capable of tracking the satellites in their new orbits. (In other words, it does not matter how many additional ASATs China has to shoot at low Earth orbit satellites; a very different circumstance than the deep-space ASATs.)
This might, however, prove difficult; especially those facilities in the center of China that are out of reach of Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Currently, only B-2 bombers could reach those sites with any chance of success and timing might prove difficult if they need to transit other countries during night time. A Global Strike capability, such as a conventionally armed Trident missile, might ease this task. Of course, even if all the radars are destroyed, China could still use optical telescopes to determine the new positions of the satellites but these methods are too slow to be used for aiming the ASAT missiles. And even then, China would have to spend days repositioning its mobile ASAT
launchers, a task that would probably take several days and would extend the time the US could use for hunting down and destroying
Chinese assets.
The short-term military consequences of an all attack by China on US
space assets are limited, at most. Even under the worst-case scenario,
China could only reduce the use of precision-guided munitions or satellite communications into and out of the theater of operations.
They would not be stopped. China could destroy a large fraction of strategic intelligence gathering capabilities; but not all of it. With a greater than normal expenditure of fuel, the remaining US spy satellites could continue to survive their crosses over China and photograph Chinese troop movements, harbors, and strategic forces but, of course, at a reduced rate. The war would, however, quickly move into a tactical phase where the US gathers most of its operational photographs using airplanes, instead of satellites. US ships and unmanned vehicles might, theoretically, have difficulty coordinating, during certain hours of the day. Most of the time, they would be free to function normally. Chinas space strike would fail to achieve its war aims even if the United States failed to respond in any way other than moving its low Earth orbit satellites.
When it warned of a space Pearl Harbor, the Rumsfeld space commission was afraid that a lesser power could launch a surprise attack that would wipe out key US strategic assets and render the US impotent.
This is what Japan tried, but failed, to do at the start of World War
II. And much like Japans failure to destroy the US carrier fleet, a
Chinese attack on US satellites would fail to cripple our military,
Chinas strategic goal in launching a space war.
But if the short term military consequences to the United States are not that bad, the long term consequences to all space-faring nations would be devastating. The destruction of the nine satellites hit during the first hour of the attack considered here could put over
18,900 new pieces of debris over four inches in diameter into the most populated belt of satellites in low Earth orbit. Even more debris would be put into geostationary orbit if China launched an attack against communications satellites. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the debris from each satellite would continue to clump
together, much as the debris from last years test. However, over the next year or sowell after the terrestrial war with China had been resolvedthe debris fields would fan out and eventually strike another satellite.
These debris fields could easily cause a run-away chain of collisions that renders space unusable for thousands of years, and for everyone. Not only is this a quickly growing and important sector of the worlds economy (sales of GPS receivers alone reportedly exceeds $20 billion annually), but space is also used for humanitarian missions such as forecasting floods in Bangladesh or droughts in Africa. We cannot allow space to be forever barred to our use for what turns out to be a very minor military advantage. If the military utility of attacks in space are so minor; if the active defense of space assets is impractical, counterproductive, and unnecessary; and if the danger resulting from the consequent debris affects all space-faring nations for thousands of years to come, it is clear that diplomacy is in every countrys interest.
The first step the United States should take is a simple declaration that we guarantee the continued flow of information to any country whose satellite is destroyed by an ASAT. We could do this using either our military or civilian-owned satellites. After all, if the space assets of the United States are not vulnerable to attacks because of the inherent redundancy, the same cannot be said of Chinas other potential regional competitors such as Australia, India, or Japan.
Each of these countries has only a handful of satellites that could be quickly destroyed if China chooses to attack them. This declaration would effectively eliminate any military advantage that a country might get from attacking its neighbors limited fleet of satellites. After that, we should adopt the code of conduct that is being developed by the Stimson Center that establishes rules of the road for responsible space-faring nations. Finally, we should work toward a treaty banning the future testing of these most dangerous of anti-satellite weapons: the so-called
"kinetic kill interceptors" that create such large amounts of debris. Itd be a first step towards containing the worst effects on war in space.
How China Loses the Coming Space War (Pt. 3) | Danger Room | Wired.com
This is part three of MIT researcher Geoffrey Fordens look at the possibilities of an all-out Chinese assault on American satellites. Click for parts one and two.
If China was to attack the strategically important deep-space satellites it would give the United States at least an indication of the impending attack two or more weeks prior to launch as it assembled its Long March rockets on their launch pads. There could be few other reasons for China to assemble so many rockets at its satellite launch centers for near-simultaneous launches. The US could, if it wished to initiate hostilities, destroy the rockets before they were launched using either stealth bombers or cruise missiles. Alternatively, it could wait and use its National Missile Defense interceptorswhich have an inherent ASAT capabilityto shoot down the first group of deep space ASATs as they wait for D-day in their parking orbit.
Once on their final trajectory, however, there is little or nothing the US could do to prevent them from striking their targets. It would be impossible, for instance, to move the targeted satellites out of the way in the final moments before the collision. The Chinese ASATs are known to be capable of very high speed maneuvers and trying to move a GPS or communications satellite to avoid a collision would require such dramatic changes in velocity as to shear off their solar cell panels and antennas. Having protector satellites in orbit near strategically important targets would also be counter productive. If such protectors raced out and destroyed an approaching ASAT they would simply create a shotgun blast of debris that would continue to circle the Earth and would every twelve (if attacking a GPS satellite) or 24 hours (for a communications satellite as the target) have another chance of colliding with its target. Time, in this case, is very much on the side of the attacker.
Since China doesnt have enough deep-space ASATs to stop communications or even prevent GPS being used during most hours of the day Beijing might not even attempt to attack those targets. Which means the United States wouldnt have much of warning, to prepare for the onslaught. In that case, it is almost certain that China could destroy a number of surveillance and signals intelligence satellites in low Earth orbit before the US could take action.
If we assume that the US chain of command takes an hour, due to bureaucratic inertia, to react, China could destroy a total of nine such satellites before the US responds in the specific case examined here. This includes two out of the three functioning Keyhole high resolution photo-reconnaissance satellites, one of the three Lacrosse signals intelligence satellites in orbit, and six of the 15 NOSS satellites that the Navy uses to locate enemy ships at sea. This represents billions of dollars lost and, more important, a large fraction of the US space assets in low Earth orbit that could have been used in the subsequent conflict.
At that point, however, the United States could effectively stop Chinas attack simply by changing the remaining satellites orbital speeds by as little as 200 mph (they are typically moving at over 16,500 mph). This very small change will have a large effect in the position of the satellite the next time it crosses over China; effectively putting the satellite out of range of the pre-positioned ASAT launcher. This is not an excessive change in speed and, unless the satellite is very close to the end of its operational life, is well within the capability of its onboard fuel supply. Furthermore, it does not have to change its speed very rapidly the way a deep-space satellite would have to in order to avoid collision in its final moments. Instead, this relatively small velocity change has tens of minutes or even hours to change the position of the satellite before the next time it crosses over China. During this time, it is steadily moving away from its original position so that it could be hundreds of miles from where China thought it was going to be.
While it is possible that the pre-positioned ASAT missiles could still reach their target even after it had changed, they would not know where, exactly, to aim the missile. Instead, they would have to perform a radar search for the satellite in an ever expanding volume of space. This volume quickly becomes too large for even the most powerful of mobile radars. In fact, it would take a fairly large
(perhaps 50 feet in diameter) to detect the satellite during its next pass and China does not have a lot of those radars. So most, if not all, of the satellites remaining after the first hour would be safe for the next 24. During that time, the United States could try to destroy all of Chinas fixed radars that are capable of tracking the satellites in their new orbits. (In other words, it does not matter how many additional ASATs China has to shoot at low Earth orbit satellites; a very different circumstance than the deep-space ASATs.)
This might, however, prove difficult; especially those facilities in the center of China that are out of reach of Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Currently, only B-2 bombers could reach those sites with any chance of success and timing might prove difficult if they need to transit other countries during night time. A Global Strike capability, such as a conventionally armed Trident missile, might ease this task. Of course, even if all the radars are destroyed, China could still use optical telescopes to determine the new positions of the satellites but these methods are too slow to be used for aiming the ASAT missiles. And even then, China would have to spend days repositioning its mobile ASAT
launchers, a task that would probably take several days and would extend the time the US could use for hunting down and destroying
Chinese assets.
The short-term military consequences of an all attack by China on US
space assets are limited, at most. Even under the worst-case scenario,
China could only reduce the use of precision-guided munitions or satellite communications into and out of the theater of operations.
They would not be stopped. China could destroy a large fraction of strategic intelligence gathering capabilities; but not all of it. With a greater than normal expenditure of fuel, the remaining US spy satellites could continue to survive their crosses over China and photograph Chinese troop movements, harbors, and strategic forces but, of course, at a reduced rate. The war would, however, quickly move into a tactical phase where the US gathers most of its operational photographs using airplanes, instead of satellites. US ships and unmanned vehicles might, theoretically, have difficulty coordinating, during certain hours of the day. Most of the time, they would be free to function normally. Chinas space strike would fail to achieve its war aims even if the United States failed to respond in any way other than moving its low Earth orbit satellites.
When it warned of a space Pearl Harbor, the Rumsfeld space commission was afraid that a lesser power could launch a surprise attack that would wipe out key US strategic assets and render the US impotent.
This is what Japan tried, but failed, to do at the start of World War
II. And much like Japans failure to destroy the US carrier fleet, a
Chinese attack on US satellites would fail to cripple our military,
Chinas strategic goal in launching a space war.
But if the short term military consequences to the United States are not that bad, the long term consequences to all space-faring nations would be devastating. The destruction of the nine satellites hit during the first hour of the attack considered here could put over
18,900 new pieces of debris over four inches in diameter into the most populated belt of satellites in low Earth orbit. Even more debris would be put into geostationary orbit if China launched an attack against communications satellites. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the debris from each satellite would continue to clump
together, much as the debris from last years test. However, over the next year or sowell after the terrestrial war with China had been resolvedthe debris fields would fan out and eventually strike another satellite.
These debris fields could easily cause a run-away chain of collisions that renders space unusable for thousands of years, and for everyone. Not only is this a quickly growing and important sector of the worlds economy (sales of GPS receivers alone reportedly exceeds $20 billion annually), but space is also used for humanitarian missions such as forecasting floods in Bangladesh or droughts in Africa. We cannot allow space to be forever barred to our use for what turns out to be a very minor military advantage. If the military utility of attacks in space are so minor; if the active defense of space assets is impractical, counterproductive, and unnecessary; and if the danger resulting from the consequent debris affects all space-faring nations for thousands of years to come, it is clear that diplomacy is in every countrys interest.
The first step the United States should take is a simple declaration that we guarantee the continued flow of information to any country whose satellite is destroyed by an ASAT. We could do this using either our military or civilian-owned satellites. After all, if the space assets of the United States are not vulnerable to attacks because of the inherent redundancy, the same cannot be said of Chinas other potential regional competitors such as Australia, India, or Japan.
Each of these countries has only a handful of satellites that could be quickly destroyed if China chooses to attack them. This declaration would effectively eliminate any military advantage that a country might get from attacking its neighbors limited fleet of satellites. After that, we should adopt the code of conduct that is being developed by the Stimson Center that establishes rules of the road for responsible space-faring nations. Finally, we should work toward a treaty banning the future testing of these most dangerous of anti-satellite weapons: the so-called
"kinetic kill interceptors" that create such large amounts of debris. Itd be a first step towards containing the worst effects on war in space.
gubbi
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I did look around on the interweb for an account of this encounter. Either I did not find one or there doesn't exist any repors of such a claim or all this is just bravado.
So the question to Gambit and Thomas and other professionals, did this incident in question really happen? I read somewhere that hindering with a country's satellite equals to an open declaration of conflict, correct me if I am wrong. Is that true, or are satellites in a different category?
So the question to Gambit and Thomas and other professionals, did this incident in question really happen? I read somewhere that hindering with a country's satellite equals to an open declaration of conflict, correct me if I am wrong. Is that true, or are satellites in a different category?
Thomas
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I can't find it as well. supposedly it was reported in aviation weekly. but there is no trace of it on their site.
And I would assume any country would view an attack on their satellites. As an act of war.
gubbi
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So the op is just malarkey then!
Geez we are wasting time on something which hasnt happened at all, don't trust the Chinese media's article!
btw, excellent article you posted Thomas.
gambit
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Keywords:
- FY-1C
- Fengyun
For example...
2007 Chinese anti-satellite missile test - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
China''s Asat Test Will Intensify U.S.-Chinese Faceoff in Space | AVIATION WEEK
China's current anti-satellite capability is still in the testing stages and the program is far behind the US. I highly suspect the FY-1C shoot was for sensor-guidance and it was an excellent shoot. Still...The fact that China does not have a ship borne equivalent of the latest SM-3 evolution mean China's ASAT capability is limited to launch points inside China's borders.
The failed FY-1C was tracked and its stable orbit, which was higher than the American US-193 shoot down with its decaying orbit, afforded China ample time -- months -- to prepare for the shoot. But if the US and China is in an armed conflict and satellites are targeted, China will be at a gross disadvantage. When a US satellite passed beyond China's horizon, the US could simply send a command for the satellite to change its orbit altitude. This uncertainty will not give China enough time to recalculate a new interception point when the satellite returned to China's radar horizon. The only solution is to have a highly autonomous interceptor supported by continuous ground tracking, the SM-3 kind and this China does not have. Also, China failed three times before FY-1C was finally destroyed. The details of those three failures are unknown so we should exercise caution in speculating which technology failed per failure. It is not moot in wanting to know the details of those failures as they would give everyone valuable insights on China's technology level.
Currently, sovereign airspace pretty much ended at around 100,000 ft altitude. Space is agreed upon to be like the seas, open to all countries. The FY-1C shoot was environmentally irresponsible. The USAF Space Command estimated the 2000+ debris pieces would be in orbit for at least one hundred years for all the major large pieces to decay and burned upon reentry.
http://www.wsichina.org/cs5_2.pdf
China wanted, some said needed, to make a statement regardless of consequences.
The US-193 shoot down was technically more challenging, not in terms of target size as FY-1C and US-193 are similar in dimension minus solar arrays, but in time compression. US-193 was in a decaying orbit and the US have only a window of ten seconds per day over ten days until the satellite reenter atmosphere.
gambit
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Got it now...If that is the case, then by all means we should doubt another one of China's fantasy weapons unless otherwise proven. But of course, the argument will be that since China is so secretive, we are supposed to assume everything the PRC government said is true. What I posted should be good primer info for interested readers anyway.
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