China Space Attack: Unstoppable
China has shown it can destroy a satellite in orbit. What could the U.S. do to stop Beijing, if it decided to attack an American orbiter next? Short answer: nothing.It takes about 20 minutes to fire a ballistic missile into space, and have its “kill vehicle” strike a satellite at hypersonic speed — over 15,000 miles per hour — in low-earth orbit. That’s far too quick for anything in the American arsenal to respond, in time. There’s “no possibility of shielding” a relatively-fragile satellite against such a strike. “And it is impractical [for a satellite] to carry enough fuel to maneuver away even if you had specific and timely warning of an attack,” Center for Defense Information analyst Theresea Hitchens notes.
Meh. Welcome to 1985, Chicoms. The year when –presumably with REO Speedwagon cranked– we sent an F-15 soaring to the edge of space to kill a target sat.
While I’m sure this will get the gears turning at places like the Space Warfare Center and RAND, there’s simple solutions here, methinks. I’m not sure how long it takes to plug a burn into one of our keyholes to dodge one of these red rockets, but surely we could do it in under 20 minutes? Hitchens says we don’t have the fuel for such a move, maybe she’s right. But seeing that hitting an orbital vehicle from the ground is the rough equivalent of tossing a pebble into a coke bottle from end zone to endzone in the Superdome, I’m not so sure that this isn’t something a simple delta-v maneuver couldn’t cure. Suppose the simplest solution would be to spend a little extra on rocket fuel and send our new birds into orbits with perigees that are out of range of the Chinese arsenal.
Oh and if this piece of junk ever works, I guess we could work it into the calculus of defensive counterspace as well.
No doubt, bullnav.
Although I have faith in our pilots to be able to hit targets without GPS guided PGMs.
I guess it isn’t time to stop producing LGBs just yet.
They’re useful for some tasks where JDAMs aren’t, anyway, so they’ll be around for a while I think. For example, they can be more accurate, and they can be guided by people on the ground with a laser designator. Plus I think it can be easier to hit a moving target with one.
The Airborne Laser is a long run project that will payoff but this shorterm immediate range I think it is just a novelty or tech builder/developer.
I think the satelite refueling system and more so the mini satelite protector system is the answers (the later tested and succesfull). A mini sat on overwatch could either menuever to push the asset out of way or to directley make a run on the inbound or use other type decoy/IR/EW move. I guess despite the LLL critisism of waste of money “cold war relec” the DARPA boys actually was on time with thier intel.
Also remember all the critisism of the useless waste of money “MISTY” stealth satelite program was. Rockfellar accidentally leaking its existance and our loyal dems doing all to cut funding for this wastefull “cold war relic”.
I would like to say get ready for the Repubs to call the pansies out but they have no balls or heart. If they did a war that by all accounts historically compared has been a unbelievable sucess wouldn’t be polling in the tank and openly called a failure. F*ckin p*ssies.
Hold on, too much hyperbole here.
First of all, this test uses a kill vehicle atop an MRBM. As such, there’s only a small window of sky the missile can hit. Satellites have to pass over this small window of sky in order to be engaged. As a result, the Chinese could take out one or maybe two satellites before their ground launch facilities were destroyed by us. Losing two GPS satellites would degrade the system, but not my a huge amount.
Finally, there are other methods to defeat this kind of threat.
I suppose it might have been nice if after 1985 we actually produced more F-15 launched ASATs. Heck, with the performance of the F-22, the ASAT wouldn’t even need to go as far….
Huge difference, folks, between hitting a satellite up at 500 miles and hitting a GPS satellite at half geosynch.
From thespacereview link:
Yes, certainly. We could just go out and find some us some pulsars, figure out how to move a rotating neutron star (which is what a pulsar is) and drag it into Earth orbit. It’s a snap!
Good grief.
BTW back in the early ’90s or so, I worked on a proposal to redo ASAT and make it ground-launched. I think that program also died a horrible death.
Re: ABL, it’s still coming along. I don’t know if it’s got the range, though. China’s a big country, and ABL’s range is given as being “hundreds of kilometers”.
As a result, the Chinese could take out one or maybe two satellites before their ground launch facilities were destroyed by us. Losing two GPS satellites would degrade the system, but not my a huge amount.
Finally, there are other methods to defeat this kind of threat.
Andy ยท January 19, 2007 09:08 AM
Andy is on top of this.
China may be able to shoot down one or two degrading our capability, but they can’t yet shoot down all of our satellites.
As for GPS, it would be a great feat indeed if China could knock out our entire GPS net.
I expect that you could probably code, load, and execute a delta-vee maneuver in less than twenty minutes. Unfortunately, you also have to spot the intercept attempt, verify it, communicate the warning to the satellite controllers, verify that, get authorization to dodge, and verify that, all in that same twenty-minute window. This, I am not at all sure is possible, even assuming that the interceptor has no ability to adjust to your dodging … :-(
I am a x-navy radioman. The navy has gone to satellites 100% and done away with code.
I had a chance to ask a rear admiral who was in charge of naval communications what would happen if a hot war started and the bad guys knocked out all our satellites. He told me that this had been discussed and they hopped that they would have enough satellites up there that they could not get them all.
The FCC has recently dropped code from the ham licenses and there will be no ready pool of code guys if things go wrong. (morse code that is)
Seems to me the biggest question is why would the Chinese want to attack our satellites and lose their biggest world market for their goods? Even an interruption could be fatal for their economy. Our soft power already has them in a stranglehold.
The big threat here strikes me as two fold. The first is directed at Lacrosse/Keyhole assets. These are enormously expensive, seemingly long term items. If we lose these well we lose a lot.
The second is to demostrate to us and I think to countries like India and other “regional powers” that the Chinese have something that can negate any of their space assets.
Once, a long time ago I wrote a science fiction story where the Chinese launched a satellite that “looped” around the moon and then settled into a retrograde geosynch orbit…then it released a cloud of UV sensitive “balls” that more or less did a number on the satcoms/etc in that orbit and then degraded….
Robert
Where did China get the missile guidance system to allow them to do this? Do I smell Slick Willie and Algore in this. You will smell them again if China ever hits anyone with a long range missile. Not bad, trade a few billion dollars worth of research for a few thousand in campaign contributions and then be a hero to the left wing instead of the traitor you are. Works for a dhimmi.
Scrapiron : Probably Russia. The Chinese manufacture improved versions of the SA-10 and other advanced Russian missiles. I don’t think they would have had a lot of trouble either adapting the most advanced Russian systems they’ve bought in the past, or getting ASAT plans from Russia, and building an ASAT system.
Don’t underestimate China’s capability to build military hardware just because they export cheap junk. If they can build SA-10s and SU-27s as well as, or better than, Russia.. they’re doing pretty well. Of course I very much doubt they would have anywhere near this capability without a lot of help from our ex-USSR chums.
… — –..– / .– . / -… . – - . .-. / … – .- .-. – / .–. .-. .- -.-. – .. -.-. .. -. –. –..– / …. ..- …. ..–..
Scrapiron is right – Bill Clinton and Loral helped the Chinese, look it up. They couldn’t get a successful launch until we helped them.
Yes, they can buy an SA-10. We didn’t need to help them, though, launch their own.
And, there is so much space crap up there, just throw a TV Sat at the friggin’ missile. It’s called sacrifice a lesser asset for one of higher importance. We can do this … whah-burgers with cries and a weepsie …
Hey, forget the F-22, just reactivate the Blackbird, she’s got the bomb bay area, send her up – keep your F-15s at home! :)
Heh …
GPS systems are very invunerable to this type of attack, they orbit much higher up.
The big birds/lacrosse/etc are worrisome.
Robert
How about bombing their launch facilities? Do they have “sleepers” in orbit?
>>>Where did China get the missile guidance system to allow them to do this? Do I smell Slick Willie and Algore in this. You will smell them again if China ever hits anyone with a long range missile. Not bad, trade a few billion dollars worth of research for a few thousand in campaign contributions and then be a hero to the left wing instead of the traitor you are. Works for a dhimmi.>>>
Was this before or after they reanimated Vince Foster to create a zombie master for the undead army theyve formed under the UN flag? Do yourself a favor and get an IQ test. If it’s below 100 (as I suspect), please remove yourself from the internet for the good of all mankind.
>>>And, there is so much space crap up there, just throw a TV Sat at the friggin’ missile. It’s called sacrifice a lesser asset for one of higher importance. We can do this … whah-burgers with cries and a weepsie …>>>
Tom Clancy scenarios aside. This nation couldnt intercept a rogue 747 with hours of lead time on 9/11. Do you really think they even know the protocol for getting a tv sat moved on 20 minutes notice? Let alone getting it there.