astropolitics.org Blog

Thought this one was worth posting. Looks like General Chilton might be coming around to a warfighter’s view of space. Not a bad thing to have happen to a former Shuttle astronaut now in charge of the nation’s Strategic Command. And Mike Vickers always knows what he is talking about.

The New Art of War By Walter Pincus

Washington Post, Monday, March 3, 2008; A15 If there were any doubts that the United States is preparing for war in space and cyberspace, testimony before the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee last week would have wiped them away. Read the rest of this entry »

Jim Oberg has another great take on “Sense, nonsense, and pretense about the destruction of USA 193” in The Space Review.

Jeremy Hsu of Imaginova penned an article for Space News: “Space Arms Race Heats up Overnight.” A few choice bits (my emphases):

“It was an unfortunate choice by the United States that seems to have been unnecessary. The fact is that satellites fall from space all the time and the risk of it was fairly minimal,” said Stephen Young, the senior analyst in Washington, D.C., for the Union of Concerned Scientist’s Global Security Program. “But the implications of the satellite shootdown could be very severe. We’re talking about a potential arms race in space.”

“It’s a step backward in terms of weaponization of space because whatever the U.S. government’s official stance is, the world perception is that this was an ASAT test,” said Phil Smith, assistant director for Research and Planning for the Secure World Foundation.

“This is obviously being hailed as a victory both politically, because the [U.S.] administration can claim there was no loss of life, and technically because it worked,” said Theresa Hitchens, Center for Defense Information director. “It helped the [U.S.] Navy demonstrate the capabilities of its missile defense system.”

“Since China did their ASAT [anti-satellite] test and got into political hot water, there’s been debate in China about whether to go forward,” Hitchens said. “This would seem to give PLA [People's Liberation Army] hardliners more ammunition for their argument, and also gives other nations the signal that it’s okay if you test this technology if it’s done safely.”

Another expert saw China’s internal debate differently, even as China asked for more information about the U.S. satellite shootdown.

“Their concern is not whether they should continue with their military space program,” said Everett Dolman, a professor of comparative military studies at Maxwell Air Force Base.

Dolman added that much of the international outcry over China’s test was over the large debris field left in orbit by the Chinese satellite’s destruction, and so the Chinese were likely discussing how to prevent such international condemnation in future tests. He sees the continuing weaponization of space as almost a certainty, particularly as the U.S. and China continue jockeying to maintain and increase their global power.

“If there is going to be a big conflict between the U.S. and China, it’s likely the first salvoes will be in space because the security needs of the U.S. and China are incompatible there,” Dolman said.

At least one expert saw the demonstration as a crucial step by the U.S. to ensure its military and political dominance if a space arms race becomes inevitable.

“This was in my view a very positive move by the U.S. for stability,” said Dolman. “The fact that you’re using a Navy ship and a fairly standard weapon to do this is really ratcheting up the technology curve.”

At least the eclipse was nice.

Morning has broken and we are not at war! The Navy successfuly shot down a malfunctioning spy satellite that could have posed a threat to terrestrial (read: living) interests and, astonishingly to the blame-America-first, kill-all-the-humans-but-leave-the-stars-alone crowd, the End of Days is not obviously at hand.

See Jeffrey Lewis’s, Leader of the Doomsday Pack, impassioned plea from yesterday (DON’T FREAKING DO IT!) as an appetizer, then peruse the hand-wringers’ laments: see, for example, “Shooting down satellite raises concerns about military space race” Detroit Free Press. Of course, the Chinese don’t like it, and we wouldn’t want anyone to be mad at us. The Times Online reported this juicy tidbit:

Confirmation that the Pentagon destroyed the spacecraft this morning triggered a fresh diplomatic row with Russia and China.

A Chinese state newspaper, the People’s Daily, criticised Washington for hypocrisy for rejecting a treaty to ban weapons in space proposed by Russia and China and then firing a missile at the spy satellite. Washington claims it had rejected the proposed treaty as unworkable, and said it instead favoured confidence-building efforts.

Let me see if I have this right. America demonstrates hypocrisy after rejecting a proposed ban on space weapons and then using a space weapon, but China is not hypocritical because it proposed and affirmed a ban on space weapons … and then used a space weapon. 

Kudos to The Baltimore Sun, “Take that, rogue satellite. China, you watching?”

I received this technical analysis (Forden analysis) by MIT’s Geoffrey E. Forden regarding the US Navy’s proposed shootdown of USA 193. Forden’s attempts at objectivity are laughable, but the commentary that accompanied his e-mail shows the ethical vacuity of his school of thought. Better to let some folks die than sully pristine outer space with the possibility of conflict …

You decide (bold is my emphasis):

From: Geoffrey E. Forden [mailto:forden@MIT.EDU]Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 10:18 PM Subject: report on the proposed shoot-down of USA 193Dear Friends and Colleagues:

Attached, please find a preliminary technical analysis of the proposed shoot-down of the errant spy satellite, USA 193. In it, I briefly outline the history of the satellite, as it is known in the open literature, and the technical obstacles to shooting it down together with my scenario of how it might be done. I end with a discussion of the space debris it will create (short lived) as well as the probability of striking the hydrazine tank. While I do briefly discuss the pros and cons of this decision, including an estimate of the number of casualties that might be expected if it is not shot down and the policy implications if it is, this is a primarily a technical analysis.

I have to say, however, that I am both troubled by the high probability of casualties (7%)-as compared with what is allowed in a controlled reentry-and the legitimacy shooting it down would give other ASAT programs, in particular China’s. To sum up my own conclusions as to the advisability of the shoot-down, I have to say that is not a “dumb idea” as many have called it but it is certainly the wrong policy. While it is impossible to calculate the probability of this test leading to an expansion of wars into space using kinetic kill weapons in the same way it is possible to calculate the expected casualties, I believe that chance to exist and to be greater than 7%. And if humanity is denied access to space, which is a definite possibility if the debris from such a war leads to a catastrophic chain reaction of collisins, then there will be considerably more deaths from the lack of benefits that space provides than this satellite can possibly kill when it crashes.

So unfortunately, the lesser of two evils-either letting the satellite fall to Earth or legitimizing kinetic kill ASATs-is to let it fall to Earth. In the future, however, we should work on not allowing this sort of situation to arise. In what was undoubtedly a multi-billion dollar satellite, it is criminal not to have some way of releasing toxic hydrazine in space even if the satellite was essentially dead.

Geoffrey Forden, Ph.D

Research Associate

MIT’s Program on Science, Technology, and Society

URL: http://mit.edu/stgs/