Is America's Defense Department 'Rushing to Expand' Its Space War Capabilities? (japantimes.co.jp) 46
America's Defense Department "is rushing to expand its capacity to wage war in space," reports the New York Times, "convinced that rapid advances by China and Russia in space-based operations pose a growing threat to U.S. troops and other military assets on the ground and U.S. satellites in orbit."
[T]he Defense Department is looking to acquire a new generation of ground- and space-based tools that will allow it to defend its satellite network from attack and, if necessary, to disrupt or disable enemy spacecraft in orbit, Pentagon officials have said in a series of interviews, speeches and recent statements... [T]he move to enhance warfighting capacity in space is driven mostly by China's expanding fleet of military tools in space... [U.S. officials are] moving ahead with an effort they are calling "responsible counterspace campaigning," an intentionally ambiguous term that avoids directly confirming that the United States intends to put its own weapons in space. But it also is meant to reflect this commitment by the United States to pursue its interest in space without creating massive debris fields that would result if an explosive device or missile were used to blow up an enemy satellite. That is what happened in 2007, when China used a missile to blow up a satellite in orbit. The United States, China, India and Russia all have tested such missiles. But the United States vowed in 2022 not to do any such antisatellite tests again.
The United States has also long had ground-based systems that allow it to jam radio signals, disrupting the ability of an enemy to communicate with its satellites, and is taking steps to modernize these systems. But under its new approach, the Pentagon is moving to take on an even more ambitious task: broadly suppress enemy threats in orbit in a fashion similar to what the Navy does in the oceans and the Air Force in the skies.
The article notes a recent report drafted by a former Space Force colonel cited three ways to disable enemy satellite networks: cyberattacks, ground or space-based lasers, and high-powered microwaves. "John Shaw, a recently retired Space Force lieutenant general who helped run the Space Command, agreed that directed-energy devices based on the ground or in space would probably be a part of any future system. 'It does minimize debris; it works at the speed of light,' he said. 'Those are probably going to be the tools of choice to achieve our objective." The Pentagon is separately working to launch a new generation of military satellites that can maneuver, be refueled while in space or have robotic arms that could reach out and grab — and potentially disrupt — an enemy satellite. Another early focus is on protecting missile defense satellites. The Defense Department recently started to require that a new generation of these space-based monitoring systems have built-in tools to evade or respond to possible attack. "Resiliency feature to protect against directed energy attack mechanisms" is how one recent missile defense contract described it. Last month the Pentagon also awarded contracts to two companies — Rocket Lab and True Anomaly — to launch two spacecraft by late next year, one acting as a mock enemy and the other equipped with cameras, to pull up close and observe the threat. The intercept satellite will not have any weapons, but it has a cargo hold that could carry them.
The article notes that Space Force's chief of space operations has told Senate appropriators that about $2.4 billion of the $29.4 billion in Space Force's proposed 2025 budget was set aside for "space domain awareness." And it adds that the Pentagon "is working to coordinate its so-called counterspace efforts with major allies, including Britain, Canada and Australia, through a multinational operation called Operation Olympic Defender. France has been particularly aggressive, announcing its intent to build and launch by 2030 a satellite equipped with a high-powered laser." [W]hat is clear is that a certain threshold has now been passed: Space has effectively become part of the military fighting domain, current and former Pentagon officials said. "By no means do we want to see war extend into space," Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, deputy chief of space operations, said at a Mitchell Institute event this year. "But if it does, we have to be prepared to fight and win."
The United States has also long had ground-based systems that allow it to jam radio signals, disrupting the ability of an enemy to communicate with its satellites, and is taking steps to modernize these systems. But under its new approach, the Pentagon is moving to take on an even more ambitious task: broadly suppress enemy threats in orbit in a fashion similar to what the Navy does in the oceans and the Air Force in the skies.
The article notes a recent report drafted by a former Space Force colonel cited three ways to disable enemy satellite networks: cyberattacks, ground or space-based lasers, and high-powered microwaves. "John Shaw, a recently retired Space Force lieutenant general who helped run the Space Command, agreed that directed-energy devices based on the ground or in space would probably be a part of any future system. 'It does minimize debris; it works at the speed of light,' he said. 'Those are probably going to be the tools of choice to achieve our objective." The Pentagon is separately working to launch a new generation of military satellites that can maneuver, be refueled while in space or have robotic arms that could reach out and grab — and potentially disrupt — an enemy satellite. Another early focus is on protecting missile defense satellites. The Defense Department recently started to require that a new generation of these space-based monitoring systems have built-in tools to evade or respond to possible attack. "Resiliency feature to protect against directed energy attack mechanisms" is how one recent missile defense contract described it. Last month the Pentagon also awarded contracts to two companies — Rocket Lab and True Anomaly — to launch two spacecraft by late next year, one acting as a mock enemy and the other equipped with cameras, to pull up close and observe the threat. The intercept satellite will not have any weapons, but it has a cargo hold that could carry them.
The article notes that Space Force's chief of space operations has told Senate appropriators that about $2.4 billion of the $29.4 billion in Space Force's proposed 2025 budget was set aside for "space domain awareness." And it adds that the Pentagon "is working to coordinate its so-called counterspace efforts with major allies, including Britain, Canada and Australia, through a multinational operation called Operation Olympic Defender. France has been particularly aggressive, announcing its intent to build and launch by 2030 a satellite equipped with a high-powered laser." [W]hat is clear is that a certain threshold has now been passed: Space has effectively become part of the military fighting domain, current and former Pentagon officials said. "By no means do we want to see war extend into space," Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, deputy chief of space operations, said at a Mitchell Institute event this year. "But if it does, we have to be prepared to fight and win."
Space isn't a physcial battlefield (Score:5, Interesting)
Space is about information transmission and control. Satellites that can watch the field of battle, satellites that can relay data between elements of the military.
While we talk about 'rods from god' and such, there's little risk of a space-based weapons platform for striking ground targets... it takes too much energy and is too easily replaced by much less expensive terrestrial weaponry. Right now, the US has a massive advantage in this area that can only act as a force multiplier for it's existing massive more traditional military advantages.
If you're China and considering war with the US, you're not going to start without being able to disable those satellites first. All of them. Quickly. Even if it blinds you too, at least now in that particular area you're on a level playing field.
In the short term, even if you could do that it would be suicidal and the US military would flatten your country... but a decade from now, that might not be the case. It is smart to maintain the advantage.
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In the short term, even if you could do that it would be suicidal and the US military would flatten your country... but a decade from now, that might not be the case. It is smart to maintain the advantage.
The largest nuclear armed nations have held the power to flatten a planet several times over for decades now.
The only “advantage” anyone holds, is hoping everyone with access to launch codes remains sane.
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>The largest nuclear armed nations have held the power to flatten a planet several times over for decades now.
So far as the known public tallies go, the US and Russia each have 10x the operational ICBMs of China, the next most nuclear-armed state. Though honestly I'm not convinced Russia could successfully launch more than a dozen these days - everything there is run on grift and telling happy lies up the chain of command, and maintaining nukes is expensive to do properly. Russia is more or less a pawn
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and maintaining nukes is expensive to do properly.
Exactly. Plutonium needs a surprising amount of maintenance, and considering all their problems that you mentioned, assuming they can still launch them, they are more likely to be a "dirty bomb" than anything else.
Even EMP pulse weapons will likely end up backfiring if they use them. The military has hardened their equipment and if civilians get their lives disrupted that hard, there will be a clamor to turn Moscow into molten lava.
Re:Space isn't a physcial battlefield (Score:5, Interesting)
But I'm sure it'll be fine. It's not like the champion they have anointed is within a few points of winning the presidency. Or that there is a detailed plan to install that champion as dictator.
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Wait, is Pence going to be Trump's VP again?
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The former alleged president is entirely gormless; the Christian Nationalists will tell him what he thinks, and he'll parrot whatever they say because he thinks he's using them.
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The former alleged president is entirely gormless; the Christian Nationalists will tell him what he thinks, and he'll parrot whatever they say because he thinks he's using them.
And yet somehow the Christians can stomach that far easier than watching “Catholic” Democrat hypocrites fight endlessly for those abortion ‘rights’ they ad-whore so much.
No one is going to convince the former president to take up Satanism. And yet, we see plainly what infamous “Catholics” worship; the largest killer of humans on this planet. By far.
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In the short term, even if you could do that it would be suicidal and the US military would flatten your country... but a decade from now, that might not be the case. It is smart to maintain the advantage.
The largest nuclear armed nations have held the power to flatten a planet several times over for decades now.
The only “advantage” anyone holds, is hoping everyone with access to launch codes remains sane.
The key to preventing a nuclear war with mutual assured destruction is that all sides remain sane, i.e., invested in their own self-preservation. That's why rogues, like the North Korean state or other non-states, with nuclear weapons are so disruptive, because MAD holds no deterrence for them.
Perhaps the more important and effective MAD strategy is the economic and wealth equivalent. Many of the world's leaders, especially paramount leaders of certain countries, are super rich, and those assets would imm
Re: Space isn't a physcial battlefield (Score:1)
No, they do not, that has been a myth for a very long time and has been debunked by physics ever since. Right now the largest nuclear powers have the power to take out probably each other largest cities but not much beyond their centers. That is assuming they get to fire their entire arsenal without you know, getting hit back by both traditional and nuclear weaponry. In that sense âthe worldâ(TM) would be a different place but by no means a nuclear wasteland. If you somehow got all the nuclear wea
Re:Space isn't a physcial battlefield (Score:5, Interesting)
Space is about information transmission and control. Satellites that can watch the field of battle, satellites that can relay data between elements of the military.
While we talk about 'rods from god' and such, there's little risk of a space-based weapons platform for striking ground targets... it takes too much energy and is too easily replaced by much less expensive terrestrial weaponry. Right now, the US has a massive advantage in this area that can only act as a force multiplier for it's existing massive more traditional military advantages.
If you're China and considering war with the US, you're not going to start without being able to disable those satellites first. All of them. Quickly. Even if it blinds you too, at least now in that particular area you're on a level playing field.
In the short term, even if you could do that it would be suicidal and the US military would flatten your country... but a decade from now, that might not be the case. It is smart to maintain the advantage.
My best guess about any "war" in space is that it will be a little different than many expect. State actors with rocketry capability will act to take out satellites.
And that is actually quite easy. It's the "bag of sand" concept. Load a rocket up with sand (or ball bearings) launch into a retrograde orbit, and let 'em rip loose. Actors with a "burn the boats" mentality, and enough capability will be able to cause a lot of problems.
The concept of trying to turn LEO into a battlefield will ironically have the same results. Destroy a few enemy assets, and put an end to LEO for a few hundred years. Our first "war in Space will be the last for a while.
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China and the US aren't looking for a war because it would be suicide. Both have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, so neither mainland is getting invaded without it ending in nuclear winter.
Everyone, China and the US included, is looking at how space can be used in proxy wars like the one in Ukraine, or by state sponsored paramilitary groups in the Middle East. The Russians have been able to use Starlink, despite attempts to block them. GPS and the Russian GLONAS system are used by bother sides
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The war in Ukraine is not a proxy war. Just like the WW2 it is a war started by an autocrat with a pathological idee fixe.
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> The Russians have been able to use Starlink, despite attempts to block them.
I suspect Musk has done everything he can get away with to help that, just as he tried to do everything he could to stop Ukraine from doing it.
It's good to have an inside man, even if he's not able to act 100% freely.
The DOD does not rush (Score:1)
Anyone that has anything to do with the Defense Department knows the only thing do in a hurry is wait.
Innovation (Score:3)
Humans are heading towards being the first species to self-extinct. Let the alien archeologists figure that one out!
So the solution to this is well known (Score:5, Interesting)
In religion there's a concept called 4 to 14. It's the idea that if you can get to a kid while they're in that age bracket you can teach them just about anything and it sticks with them for life. If you Google the phrase you'll find tons of resources on it
But by no means is this concept limited to religion. At that age group I was taught that competition is the best thing for everything. That competition is what puts food on my plate and makes the economy function. It's ingrained in you. In high school I took a semester of economics that was required and it was basically 1950s style propaganda masquerading as an economics course.
So when you say that we need to cooperate instead of competing it's probably the most radical thing you could say to anyone in America because your entire upbringing runs contrary to that.
But there is no other solution. We have to stop fighting among ourselves for scraps and to see who can make the king or the CEO or the billionaire the happiest. It's either that or eventually we're going to all look like Soviet Russia.
Oh and bonus media literacy. Notice how I said Soviet Russia? That's because I know the old folks hanging around here will be emotionally triggered by that phrase. You get the exact same triggering when I discussed the downsides of competition in an economy. Basically you're a mess of preprogrammed responses and without a lot of critical thinking and media literacy you're not going to be able to untangle those.
Pointing this out to people does not endear you to them. And I don't really know a solution to that problem
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So we should all adopt communism in order to avoid becoming Soviet Russia, a communist state?
Re:So the solution to this is well known (Score:4, Interesting)
So we should all adopt communism
No. A Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded some time ago for a proof that cooperation yields better results than competition. So it's just in our own best interests. Sure competition has its place, but so does cooperation. Look at the success of the EU for instance in increasing the welfare of its citizens rather than competing for every single scrap.
The biggest problem with this idea is the difference in value systems. In the West the individual is more important than the collective. The opposite is true in e.g. Russia and China. How you can marry those two belief systems is a mystery to me...
The individual and the collective (Score:2)
The key here is that no one individual is inherently more valuable than the other because all human life is effectively of infinite value. This means whether you're a down on your luck drug addict or Elon musk, a guy who's a drug addict but has had a lot of luck, you're still the same in terms of actual value.
This is the only way for a free so
Re:So the solution to this is well known (Score:5, Informative)
Look at the UK during and after WW2.
During WW2 we had a unity government that introduced a lot of socialism, to get us through the war. There was a lot of cooperation, working towards common goals, supporting each other instead of clamouring to be on top.
After the war we had our greatest ever Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. He promised to continue the socialism that had worked so well, and people voted for it. About 20% of the entire economy was nationalized, including railways, the Bank of England, coal, civil aviation, electricity, steel, and gas. The Welfare State was greatly expanded and developed into the modern National Health Service (free healthcare). They also introduced sickness and out of work benefits, and the retirement pension. Benefits including paying people's rents to prevent them becoming homeless.
The government built over 1 million new homes, 80% of which were social housing (owned by the local government and rented out at attractive rates, although people with little money had their rents paid for them anyway). There were also generous grants (free money) for improving existing homes. There was massive strengthening of worker's rights too. I could go on, you get the picture. And all that despite the fact that the country was bankrupt due to the war.
As you may well be aware, the UK was not communist during that time. It turns out you can have socialism and a lot of good stuff without the communism part.
When I say you've been hardwired (Score:3)
I don't think I can reach you though. The programming is just too well done and too ingrained. I think the current generation of old fogies is a lost cause. They just don't have enough critical thinking education and media literacy education to get over what was st
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How about the way YOU react to things? You constantly spew bullshit verbatim from either Mein Kempf (when you go on your racist nationalist fueled anti-immigrant xenophobic rants) or Das Kapital (during your psychotic sozialistische-commie rage rants). Did Ernst Rohm kidnap you when you were aged 4 to 14? Cooperation is fine, we do that. The problem is when you force somebody to support someone else to sit on their ass jerking off and watching Netflix. Forced cooperation is an unstable state for a human to
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You can’t force someone to do something and call it “cooperation” .. forced cooperation is slavery. You know that, right?
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When everyone has equal leverage: So a government is needed to prevent monopoly power and cartels. But Reaganomics changed that: If one could successfully tilt the playing-field, then one should. The result, as the name winner-take-all suggests, is an economy designed to rob people of their leverage.
The USA never lost its imperialism-based mindset: That taking things from others was its own reward. So, the rise of corporate greed was seen as good: It also allowed the US to manipulate the world's econ
Re: Innovation (Score:2)
I Contend (Score:1)
A contractor with sufficient reserves of IDGAF could get Congress to allocate funding for a photon torpedo.
He could get the exact same results at Google, but only if he called it an AI Photon Torpedo.
Mr. President! (Score:2)
We must not allow a mine-shaft gap!
Reason why (Score:2)
Of course (Score:2)
The rush to space battlefield confirmed (Score:3)
...in a study from Pew Pew Pew Research.
We must always expand in to new terrorites (Score:2)
China's military space tools ? (Score:2)
What military tools would that be? The only people militarizing space up to now is the US with the X-37B.
I suspect this push to promote foreign wars is so as, post war, the US can default on its national debt. And B****R*** can make a bundle out of the reconstruction.
Jesus Christ I hope so (Score:3)
...or those people aren't doing their jobs.
Russia put weapons in space in the 1960s; ignoring/trusting the large number of space-capable states to "behave" should never - literally never - be the practice of any defense organization anywhere, ever.
Space militarization (Score:2)
I remember when it was forbidden to militarize space, now it is another race. It'll just be a matter of time before some country decides it can't keep up with the US in space and instead just swamps LEO with masses of debris in a crisis.