Testifying before Congress earlier this year, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper echoed the concerns held by many senior government officials about the growing threat to U.S. satellites, saying that China and Russia are both “developing capabilities to deny access in a conflict,” such as those that might erupt over China’s military activities in the South China Sea or Russia’s in Ukraine. China in particular, Clapper said, has demonstrated “the need to interfere with, damage and destroy” U.S. satellites, referring to a series of Chinese anti-satellite missile tests that began in 2007.
The weapon of the future, lasers, can be used to temporarily disable or permanently damage a satellite’s components, particularly its delicate sensors, and radio or microwaves can jam or abscond with transmissions to or from ground controllers. Lasers comprise only part of the arsenal of space.
Fearing Soviet nuclear weapons launched from orbit, the U.S. began testing anti-satellite weaponry in the late 1950s. The US even tested nuclear bombs in space before orbital weapons of mass destruction were banned through the United Nations’ Outer Space Treaty of 1967. After the ban, space-based surveillance became a crucial component of the Cold War, with satellites serving as one part of elaborate early-warning systems on alert for the deployment or launch of ground-based nuclear weapons. Throughout most of the Cold War, the Soviet Union tested space mines with a Kamikaze type spacecraft that could seek and destroy U.S. spy satellites by destroying them with shrapnel. In the 1980s, the militarization of space peaked with the Reagan administration’s multibillion-dollar Star Wars Initiative which developled near-earth orbital countermeasures against Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. And in 1985, the U.S. Air Force staged a clear demonstration of its formidable capabilities, when an F-15 fighter jet launched a missile that took out a failing U.S. satellite in low-Earth orbit. And the space-based arms race commenced.
Low- and high-Earth orbits have become the center of scientific and commercial activity with satellites from more than 60 different nations. I have written about how a new internet is being established 62 miles about the earth. However, what is primarily going on in near-earth orbit is not about peaceful development. Despite their largely peaceful purposes, each and every satellite is at risk of being
Space junk is the greatest threat to American military satellites. The quickest way to destroy a satellite is to simply launch something which will block the path of the orbiting satellite. Even the impact of an object is small and low-tech as a marble can disable or entirely destroy a billion-dollar satellite. And if a nation uses such a “kinetic” method to destroy an adversary’s satellite, it can easily create even more dangerous debris, potentially cascading into a chain reaction that transforms Earth orbit into a demolition derby.
The U.S.military became resigned, decades ago, that its lower orbit satellites were vulnerable.
In 2013, after the Chinese took down their own weather satellite, the US declassified details of its secret Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP), a planned set of four satellites capable of monitoring the Earth’s high orbits and even rendezvousing with other satellites to inspect them up-close. The first two GSSAP spacecraft launched into orbit in July 201. At one time, this was a black program. It is now very much out in the open.Russia has been developing its own ability to approach, inspect and potentially sabotage or destroy satellites in orbit. The take-away is that both side have the capacity to take out each other’s satellites.
The US national security co massive funding 2015 funding for the Pentagon’s Space Security and Defense Program go toward development of offensive space control and active defense strategies and capabilities.
An offensive war in space that would target satellites would be comparable to a massive EMP attack. Further, our ground forces small in number would be in severe danger. US defense forces depend on over-the-horizon radar to locate and destroy the enemy. Without satellites, the US miitary would need to draft millions of American to compensate for the loss of this technology.
The final chapter has not been written as of yet. This is a new battleground and the results are predictably catastrophic, but unpredictable about where this ultimately heading.
