What if America's satellites were to be attacked? Military and commercial communications would grind to a hault; chaos would reign. Are our satellites susceptible?
By Noah Shachtman
Editor, DefenseTech.org
Even before he became George Bush's Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld was spooked about a "space Pearl Harbor" - a surprise attack on America's satellites. Now that he's headed for a likely second term at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld and his deputies are growing even more concerned about a hostile strike in orbit.
But increasing reliance has lead to increasing vulnerability. Knock out the right couple of satellites, and U.S. forces could be bordering on blind and mute. And, right now, satellites don't have the ability to ward off an attack. Not the military's orbiters. And certainly not the commercial satellites, which American troops have come to lean on so heavily. During the Iraq invasion, for example, private companies' orbiters carried 80 percent of U.S. forces' satellite communications.
Bringing some measure of protection to these satellites won't be easy. To begin with, nobody at the Pentagon - nobody anywhere, in fact - really has a firm grasp on what's actually out there in orbit. There are dozens of satellites, thousands of pieces of man-made debris, as well as an array of space rocks. But no one's quite sure of where, exactly, it all is.
Aviation Week quotes a "nightmare" that the country's top military space officer sometimes shares with his colleagues: "A phone call from the White House asking, 'What happened to our satellite? And what are you doing about it?' With few exceptions, today's response will be the same as a former Cincspace [Command-in-Chief of Space Operations] gave the Vice President several years ago: 'We don't know, and there's not much we can do."'
Everyone agrees that the first step to satellite defense is to get some sort of sense of what's happening in orbit. But setting up this "Space Situational Awareness" has been a job that's been bogged down in the bureaucratic muck. "There are now "99 organizations participating in 79 different meetings, conferences or forums, while using 91 separate SSA tools and systems -- [all] stovepiped and on their own course," Rear Adm. Thomas Zelibor, global operations director for U.S. Strategic Command, told Aviation Week.
But getting some eyes focused on the skies isn't the Pentagon's only concern. The Air Force is also increasingly interested in taking out other nations' satellites. Not just ones from enemy countries. But orbiters from neutral nations and private companies, that might happen to service those adversaries. Even weather satellites have been put on the potential target list.
Late last month, the Air Force officials declared their first anti-satellite weapon ready to go. The Counter Communications System (CounterCom) is a $75 million radio frequency-based system to disrupt communications satellites. The project is classified, so there aren't a whole lot of details floating around about the program. But ISR Journal says that CounterCom "is similar to other ground based electronic warfare gear and is based largely on commercially available components, according to [Air Force] Space Command officials." That makes the U.S. the first (and only) country on the planet to have developed so-called "counter-space" systems - weapons for attacking other orbiters. In Rumsfeld's "space Pearl Harbor" report, the once-and-future Defense Secretary worried about adversaries attacking U.S. satellite ground stations, jamming GPS signals, or even setting off a nuclear bomb in space. Rumsfeld also warned about enemies developing ground-based lasers, or anti-satellite spacecraft that might, one day, be able to take out American orbiters.
But these "alarmist judgment
[are] not based on the available evidence," Lewis argues in Arms Control Today. "Indeed, a fair reading of unclassified intelligence estimates and the Pentagon's own official statements suggest countries are not investing the time, money, and energy needed for such efforts."
Ground-based lasers are still more science fiction than science, Lewis says. Russia, the only country to test anti-satellites, last did so in 1982. And American satellites have, so far, shown themselves impervious to jamming.
The Defense Department is less than reassured, however. According to a recent presentation, the Pentagon has its sights on a set of miniature satellites with a single mission: "Destruction of Enemy Spacecraft."
These killers would be loaded, ten at a time, into a reusable military orbiter. Once a target had been hunted down, these "Microsat Kinetic Kill Payloads" (MKKPs) would intercept an enemy satellite -- the briefing calls it a "hyper-velocity 'tail chase.'" Then they would inspect the damage, after the MKKPs had done their worse.
