THE ORBITAL SPECTATOR: Satellites and Seriousness
Codevilla, Angelo M.
EACTIONS TO CHINA'S JANUARY 11 TEST of a direct ascent anti-satellite weapon have not been commensurate with the prospect that the U.S. military will have to fight the next war without assurance...
...Angelo M. Codevillaisaprofessorofinternationalrelations at Boston University and a fellow at the ClaremontInstitute.A N G E L OM .C O D E V I L L A Becauseorbitallocationsare predictable,wehavemadeafew ofoursatellitesmoredifficultto detectthroughstealthtechnology...
...While defending satellites is more challenging than destroying them, the technology for doing it is very much in hand...
...did ASAT in the 1980s by launching "direct ascent" rockets from F-15 fighters...
...But their relationship with one another is entirely predictable...
...That means that any time anyone launches any satellite into orbit, he can put a bomb on it and program it to end up right next to any other satellite...
...Hence defense must be active: Somethinghastoshootdownwhateverisshotatthem...
...Let there be no doubt: For the U.S...
...Only a short generation ago (when yours truly was in uniform), all naval officers and some enlisted men weretrainedtofixships'positionsbythesunandstars, andtoplotcourseswithparallelrulersandsliderules...
...Theymakethedifferencebetweenbeingabletooperate and not being able to operate...
...First,itisimpossibletodefinewhatananti-satelliteweaponis,becausesomanythingscandestroysatellites...
...That is why anyone who cares for the lives of Americans in uniform, never mind their sucT H EO R B I T A LS P E C T A T O R 5 4 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R A P R I L 2 0 0 7 SatellitesandSeriousness by Angelo M. Codevilla R A P R I L 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 5 5 cess,hasnochoicebuttocarealotaboutoursatellites...
...Nowadays, their instruments, fed by satellite data, allow them to hit their targets by shooting just a few rounds or missiles...
...Sure, because China among others has its own network of orbital eyes and ears, which its military would rather not lose, there is every reason for the U.S...
...Armed Forces, satellites are not just nice to have...
...In short, it was and is beyond dispute that the SBL is the gold standard of weaponsforcontrollingouterspace.Simply,thereisno alternativetotheSBLforsafeguardingU.S.satellites...
...Rightlybutinsufficiently,theWallStreetJournal and the right reacted to China's reminder of the reality of ASAT weapons by insisting that America get its own...
...Take one example...
...But today's forces are not as numerous as yesterday's and don't have as much ammunition as yesterday's...
...Indeed, THEL's biggest part, the laser's vacuum exhaust, is there to simulate theouter space conditions for which it was designed and inwhichitworksbest.Originallydesignedintheearly 1980s and perfected in the 1990s, this device was intended to shoot down ballistic missiles just as they are rising out of the atmosphere...
...The pieces have existed for some two decades, and a working system that embodies them (though configured for a different purpose) exists at White Sands provingground,NewMexico.ItiscalledTheaterHigh Energy Laser (THEL), being reworked and renamed SKYGUARD for deployment in Israel to shoot down Katyusharockets.Thelasershinesmegawattsofinfrared light through a rapidly re-targetable beam director.It'squiteasight.Whatyouwouldnotknow,unless youasked,isthatthisground-baseddeviceisreallyan adaptation of a much simpler one originally designed for use in orbital space...
...It is worth noting, however, that SBLs would also give any country that possessed them the option of allowing or disallowing any country'slaunchofanygivenobjectintospace...
...Take away GPS, and they are up the proverbialcreek...
...The second,ofcourse,isthatevenifatreatycouldbewritten intelligently and detection of violations were certain, the U.S...
...Nowadays, they do these essential tasks ever so much better with the help of Global Positioning satellites...
...Because orbital locations are predictable, we have made a few of our satellites moredifficulttodetectthroughstealthtechnology.But wecannomoremaketheminvisiblethanwecanmake tanks out of them...
...TheNewYorkTimesandthelefttookChina'stest as another occasion to call on the U.S...
...Any of the dozen space-faring nations canprepareco-orbitalattackswithoutbeingdetected...
...The technology for the job was first proved in 1960, almost a half century ago, when the U.S...
...But there was never any argument about what a megawatt-class laser firing from space, through space, would do to a satellite target, or to the terminal guidance system of anything aiming for a satellite...
...But they are easy to build...
...establishment is as allergic as ever to the challenge posed by Fred Ikle's 1961 Foreign Affairs article, "After Detection, What...
...It is impossible to overstate our military's dependence on satellites, or how little technology is required to destroythem.Acquiringourownanti-satelliteweapons, whilegoodinitself,candopreciselynothingtoprotect our own satellites...
...performed the first orbital rendezvous...
...Take away the satellites, and their weapons and tactics make no sense...
...THEORETICALLY,THEREARETWOWAYSofdoingthis...
...Its historic answer has been, "Sign another treaty...
...But because America is more dependent on satellites than any other country, any enemy is sure to gain far more from destroying our satellites than we are from destroying his...
...Directascent,"meaningsendingabomb-tippedmissile to meet a satellite at some point in its orbit, requires a little more precision...
...Any claimant to seriousnesswhomightopposebuildingSBLsforsatellite defense had better come up with a good alternative.Quick...
...Were we to follow the left'sadvice,thenexttimeAmericawenttowarwitha space-faring nation our Armed Forces would find themselves without the service of the satellites on whichtheyhavecometorely...
...Inthepast,suchdefenseofsatellitesaswehavehad has been wholly passive: Because satellites are inherently fragile, we have toughened their skins a bit, securedtheirelectroniclinks,andinsomecasesprovided things analogous to circuit breakers to guard against weak ground-based lasers...
...Fortunately,wedonothavetoinventsuchthings...
...Hence it is possible to know precisely which satellites will be in any sector of space at any given time...
...That was a wastefully hard way to do a simple job...
...So the first reality is that anyone who wants one can have an ASAT while calling it something else...
...That is why any serious enemy will attack our satellites, and why any serious American mustwanttodefendthem...
...Enforcing "keep out zones" around things that belong to us is not a problem in international law...
...to lead the way to a treaty banning all anti-satellite weapons...
...military will have to fight the next war without assurance that its satellites will work...
...AnyotherpossibleusesofSBLsnotwithstanding, the fact remains that active defense of satellites is a touchstone of military seriousness...
...That so-called "co-orbital ASAT"wasastapleoftheSovietarsenalandcontinues in the Russian...
...Nor do they just make the difference between victory and defeat...
...Such a treatywouldbeanarcoticthatwouldrenderusinsensibletotworealities...
...Then there are ground-based lasers,whichcanplacejustenoughenergyonsatellites passing overhead to overload their sensitive instruments...
...The U.S...
...Even Saddam Husseinhadone...
...to shut them down in case of war...
...Once upon a time, before satellite datamadeeverythingaccurate,manymoreplanesand tanks would have had to shoot much more than that...
...Our foreign policy and defense establishment's failure to take seriously the defense of our satellites is yet more evidence of its unseriousness...
...Arguments about how effective the SBL would be against missiles revolved around how tough, how resistant, the missiles might or might not be...
...Knowing how much power our SBLs generate,itbecomesstraightforwardtocalculatehow large a sector of space any one of them could control, and to program into each what object it may be in charge of guarding at any given time...
...Buttheywouldnotknowwhattodowiththeoldtools, if they had them...
...But not much...
...Satellites are widely separated in certain orbital planes...
...Such weapons have to wait until the earth'srotation and the satellites' orbit, and clear weather, coincide...
...Only after politics thwartedusingitforthispurposedidtheSpaceBased Laser(SBL)addthecomplexitiesthatmadeitintothe THEL,abletooperateontheground.Hencereconfiguring a version of THEL for use in space is not a technicalchallenge...
...Almost the same goes for ground and air forces...
...But providing each satellite with an armed escort (or endowing each with the capacity to shootatwhatevercomestooclose)isimpractical.The sole practical way of enforcing "keep out zones" around satellites analogous to the safety zones that warships secure for themselves is to place the equivalent of guard stations into the several orbital planes that our satellites occupy, in sufficient numbers and withsufficientrange,tocontrolaccesstothesatellites inthoseorbits...
Vol. 40 • April 2007 • No. 3
