US Space Force Creates First Unit Dedicated To Targeting Adversary Satellites (space.com) 57
The United States Space Force has activated its first and only unit dedicated to targeting other nations' satellites and the ground stations that support them. Space.com reports: The 75th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron (ISRS) was activated on Aug. 11 at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado. This unit is part of Space Delta 7, an element of the U.S. Space Force tasked with providing intelligence on adversary space capabilities. It'll do things like analyze the capabilities of potential targets, locate and track these targets as well as participate in "target engagement," which presumably refers to destroying or disrupting adversary satellites, the ground stations that support them and transmissions sent between the two.
Master Sgt. Desiree Cabrera, 75th ISRS operations superintendent, said the new unit will revolutionize the targeting capabilities of not just the Space Force, but also the entire U.S. military: "Not only are we standing up the sole targeting squadron in the U.S. Space Force, we are changing the way targeting is done across the joint community when it comes to space and electromagnetic warfare." The 75th ISRS will also analyze adversary space capabilities including "counterspace force threats," according to the Space Force's statement. Counterspace forces refer to adversary systems aimed at preventing the U.S. from using its own satellites during a conflict.
Master Sgt. Desiree Cabrera, 75th ISRS operations superintendent, said the new unit will revolutionize the targeting capabilities of not just the Space Force, but also the entire U.S. military: "Not only are we standing up the sole targeting squadron in the U.S. Space Force, we are changing the way targeting is done across the joint community when it comes to space and electromagnetic warfare." The 75th ISRS will also analyze adversary space capabilities including "counterspace force threats," according to the Space Force's statement. Counterspace forces refer to adversary systems aimed at preventing the U.S. from using its own satellites during a conflict.
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Because the US is a high-tech army. They not only rely, they effin' DEPEND on having that available.
In a nutshell, if anyone BUT the US wanted to disable access to the orbit, it would make heaps of sense. At least if they wanted to wage war against the US.
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Exactly. If the US did enter a hot war with an adversary capable of taking out satellites, the US ones would be very attractive targets since the US military relies on them for a lot of intelligence and logistics, not to mention GPS guided weapons.
If someone starts shooting down US satellites, shooting down theirs in retaliation is going to be top priority. Kessler syndrome will do it eventually, but waiting gives the enemy an early advantage.
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If someone starts shooting down US satellites, shooting down theirs in retaliation is going to be top priority. Kessler syndrome will do it eventually, but waiting gives the enemy an early advantage
You have just described the nature of war. And? I am not sure what you think the role of the US Space Force but conducting war seems to be part of it.
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There is a treaty that bans the development of space based weapons. It was recognized by all signatories, including the US, that starting a new arms race in space was a very bad idea.
Perhaps we need one for anti-satellite weapons. And one about cleaning up the junk that is already up there. And not launching tens of thousands of short lives satellites with unproven claims about cleaning them up either.
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There is a treaty that bans the development of space based weapons
If you are referring to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, article IV:
. . . Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.
The moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvres on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.
1) Space based weapons specifically prohibits nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction. It does include anti-satellite weapons. 2) There is a general ban on military operations on "celestial bodies". I would argue that artificial satellites are generally not considered celestial bodies as it would appear to prevent operations on asteroids, planets, and their moons.
. It was recognized by all signatories, including the US, that starting a new arms race in space was a very bad idea.
And the Soviet Union, now Russia, has always abided by every treaty they h
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We need agreements that people will stick to. The US did not break the hypersonic missile agreement first. They did break the recent nuclear proliferation agreement AFTER several years of trying to convince Russia to stay on track and constantly making concessions not even remotely related to intermediate nuclear weapons. That was likely some Trump nonsense as a more rational President would not have allowed the US be the one to break the treaty. The US did not need either of those class of weapons to rema
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Hmm, one can shoot a satellite from *above* it, thus directing most of the fragments downwards, where they would reenter and burn up - this is what the USAF did in their fighter-launched ASAT missile tests, I believe. One can also try frying the satellite with EM energy without actually fragmenting it, think lasers, masers and other forms of directed energy emitters. I am sure people tasked with actually planning such warfare have come up with other approaches as well, so I would not call the idea a farce.
Orbital Kinematics (Score:5, Informative)
>> Hmm, one can shoot a satellite from *above* it, thus directing most of the fragments downwards
That is not how orbital kinematics work.
Re:What a joke (Score:5, Informative)
To make something go "down" in orbit, what you need to do is slow it down. Pushing it "down" only changes the orbit, and while this may actually deorbit something eventually due to increased drag at the perigee, you'd have to spend way less energy by just slowing that thing down, lowering its perigee that way and have it go down half an orbit later.
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Indeed, you want to slow the satellite down ideally. Even just pushing it into a different orbit might make it useless as well.
There have been a few suggestions. A laser used to ablate the surface of the satellite by vaporising some of it will slow it down slightly, but needs to be fired from the right direction. Realistically that means from another satellite. De-orbit will take a while with any reasonably sized pulse laser.
Another other option is to place gas in the path of the satellite to create artific
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You can be sure that any device designed to mess with the orbits of sats is of course only there to deal with rogue or damaged sats that cannot be dealt with any other way and that pose a threat to other objects in orbit.
Pinky swear!
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Ideally it would be a join international effort that made the technology available to everyone, so at least MAD is maintained. Prevent the arms race, even if you can't prevent the arms.
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And that's the thing, there is no MAD in space. No other nation, at least none that are potentially hostile to the US, is as dependent on a working satellite network as them. Not Russia, not Iran, not even China.
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I see where you're going with this. However, how do satellites get into their correct orbit in the first place? I assume they have thrusters which allow them to manoeuvre about a bit - could they be used to counter the deceleration a bit, such that they'd end up in the right orbit again at some point in the future?
Going further, I'd assume the counter to any "slow them down" weapon would be bigger thrusters to counter any of it in the first place. That sounds "easy", but it puts the cost of doing business i
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Satellites usually have some fuel for station keeping, yes. But since someone attacking a satellite with the intent of downing it generally isn't too interested in the satellites functionality, and pairing this with the fact that weight is a premium in space and your goal is generally to build your stuff as light as possible, the chance of a satellite still operating at least nominally well after an impact that is supposed to down it is fairly slim.
Also, you wouldn't need bigger thrusters, what you're proba
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you would send debris in all sort of direction.
Yes, but in a head-on collision, almost none of that debris would have an orbital trajectory. Almost all of it would rapidly deorbit.
Re:What a joke (Score:4, Interesting)
The targeting need not be kinetic.
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It needn't, but it is probably the most effective way to do it. That energy of the explosive (or whatever) you plan to use could much more easily be used to accelerate your projectile more. We're already talking about speeds measured in km/s, and since there is no drag and, at least once you're in orbit, also no ballistic drop, getting the relative speed between two bodies to relevant speeds that penetrate any kind of protection your sat may have (which is unlikely in the first place, any kind of protection
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Laser aimed at the communication antenna, or with enough precision you could hit it with a small kinetic weapon that didn't produce too much debris. It wouldn't de-orbit but it would render the satellite useless.
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Space is huge, but there are a few spots that are (comparably) small and very useful. Geosynchronous orbits are such a thing. A geosync orbit has to be above the equator and at a certain altitude, making that "belt" around the equator hotly contested. A dead sat sitting there is a waste of valuable real estate. So every sat that is supposed to go into geosync not only has some fuel for station keeping, they also have a small reserve to put them into a graveyard orbit [wikipedia.org].
In other words, these satellites usually
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first to shoot a sat was USA.
Bad precedent.
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But was it in under 7 parsecs?
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targeting satellites is not feasible without making an impassible layer of space junk, interdicting any future satellites.
Targeting military bases of other countries is not feasible without making an impassable layer of ground junk preventing the use of future bases.
This "Space Force" is a joke since before it even existed.
Do you think other countries are not planning to do the same thing to US satellites? Do you think it is a joke if the US loses all their satellites in the first stage of a war?
Kessler syndrome here we come... (Score:3, Interesting)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The balloon was in the atmosphere.
So that makes it a USAF responsibility, not USSF.
Our space guardians did not fail.
To "Other nations" (Score:3)
Any worthwhile military already has a unit already doing this. Doubly so against the USA, which controls the GPS satellites.
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Any worthwhile military already has a unit already doing this. Doubly so against the USA, which controls the GPS satellites.
Hence a lot of other nations have been building their own GPS networks, GLONASS (Russia) Galileo (EU), China is believed to be developing one. The networks are not as wide yet however.
The EU system is designed to run on the same frequencies as the GPS and GLOSNASS as well as it's on so if you want to jam Galileo, you'll have to jam your own systems.
Also I believe that most ASAT weapons are meant to blind/jam satellites rather than destroy them. It's easier to do as you don't need to get a projectile i
Oh thank god (Score:2, Interesting)
We definitely needed a dedicated government department with a dedicated unit to do something that the US Navy was already capable of and has done in the past. Trump was so right, where would we have been without his wisdom.
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How nice that the Biden administration seems to agree.
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Pork is a bi-partisan agenda.
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>"Pork is a bi-partisan agenda."
Nothing could be more true.
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How nice that the Biden administration seems to agree.
Inaction doesn't mean agreement. It means not worth the effort presently to reverse. The two parties agree on absolutely nothing (other than that whatever the other party does is bad) yet they don't both spend the entire term undoing what the other did. If they did they'd not be able to push their own agenda. US politics is dysfunctional but it's not THAT dysfunctional.
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Another branch of the armed forces was urgently needed in order to pad out the football league. If in any doubt about how important that is, watch "The Pink Panther Strikes Again": "The President: Call the FBI, the CIA and the Pentagon. Find out who won that game!".
Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines... add the Space Force and get twice as many fixtures!
Not to mention how well those guys throw the bomb.
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Another branch of the armed forces was urgently needed in order to pad out the football league.
You do know that the Space Force existed since the cold war but as part of the Air Force, right?
Not to mention how well those guys throw the bomb.
The point of the Space Force is they are not infantry. But please tell me which branch would put in charge maintaining and protecting the GPS system as well as countering the military capabilities of other countries' satellites? One reason is a branch now is that the scope of their mission and the required personnel has increased over the last few decades. This is no different than in any other organization where
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US Navy was already capable of and has done in the past.
When was the US Navy capable of tracking all existing satellites? When did the US Navy assess the defensive and offensive capabilities of other countries satellites? When did the US Navy develop defensive and offensive capabilities of US satellites?
Trump was so right, where would we have been without his wisdom.
The military has been asking for the Space Force to be a separate command long before Trump. This is just another example of him trying to take credit of something he did not originate. Frankly I do not think he understood that Space Force is not Space Marines.
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the U.S. Navy has been capable of shooting down satellites since the early aught's, therefore they have had the capability to track them (gotta track to shoot successfully) since at least then.
1) The Navy shot down a US satellite so I do not think they needed to track it as if it were an enemy satellite. 2) Was the operation a 100% Navy operation not needing any assistance from any other government agency? I would think that operation involved multiple agencies. 3) The operation of launching the missile fell on the Navy as it was best branch to handle it. The Air Force might have been able to do it but converting an existing ballistic missile on a Navy ship was probably logistically easier.
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When was the US Navy capable
Let me stop you there. The existence of Spaceforce has not change any capability of the US Armed forces. None. It just moved resources around. The US Airforce had 100% of the capabilities that Spaceforce has currently. And my post wasn't about a theoretical, the US Navy have taken down an orbiting satellite deemed a threat to people.
The military has been asking for the Space Force to be a separate command long before Trump.
Yeah because we all know that the military *loves* giving away control and toys to other departments diluting their access to equipment and giving up a portion of their budget.
I
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Let me stop you there. The existence of Spaceforce has not change any capability of the US Armed forces. None. It just moved resources around. The US Airforce had 100% of the capabilities that Spaceforce has currently. And my post wasn't about a theoretical, the US Navy have taken down an orbiting satellite deemed a threat to people.
Let me stop you right there. You said the US NAVY had this capability in the past. US NAVY. When I asked specifically when and if the US NAVY had this capability of tracking satellites, you are saying now it was the US military. You do understand the difference between US NAVY and US military right?
And my post wasn't about a theoretical, the US Navy have taken down an orbiting satellite deemed a threat to people.
Let me stop you right there. The ability to modify and launch a ballistic missile is not the same as the capability of tracking objects in space. In the case of the US Navy shooting down a satellite, it was a US
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We definitely needed a dedicated government department with a dedicated unit to do something that the US Navy was already capable of and has done in the past. Trump was so right, where would we have been without his wisdom.
Inter-branch squabbling in the United States Armed Forces goes back many decades or even longer. Rocket development. Nuke development. Aircraft development. To name a few notable squabbles.
I think the politicians like having those squabbles cuz it keeps any one branch from getting too strong.
Hitler followed that same logic with the Wehrmacht and SS and Luftwaffe and Kreigsmarine. Just sayin.
Heck, the US TV show "M*A*S*H" had more than a few (now) snarky (then "artfully worded") lines about Army-Navy-Intelli
Space Treaty of 1967 (Score:1)
https://www.armscontrol.org/fa... [armscontrol.org].
There weren't that many satellites in 1967. The cost to launch was exorbitant. What we have today with 3 global positioning system, thousands of communication sats, hundreds of reconaissance sats, and hundreds more of a classified nature would have been a pipe dream then.
Perhaps it's time the Nations got together to update the treaty to include satellites. Orbital debris (thanks, Russia and China) are a worse threat to our now-normal way of life than the destruction of a
Don't destroy satellites! (Score:3)
Destroying satellites could create a bunch of dangerous space debris in an area that's already got a ton of space junk. Instead, our weapons should merely push satellites away from the earth so that they continue their trajectory out of orbit.
USA USA USA (Score:2)
Arms race (Score:3)