America's Space Force is Preparing for a New Kind of War (msn.com) 66
A July combat training exercise involved a satellite dish-style antenna that "could fire enough electromagnetic energy to fry the satellite 22,000 miles away," reports the Washington Post. But "Instead, the salvo would be more covert — millisecond pulses of energy that would subtly disrupt the satellite's signals, which U.S. military forces were using to communicate in the Pacific Ocean."
The goal was to disguise the strike as a garbled connection that could be easily remedied by securing a loose cable or a simple reboot, leaving U.S. service members frustrated without raising their suspicions. [And using less power "would make it harder for the Blue Team to track where the interference was coming from."] This is how the next war could start: invisible shots fired in space on the electromagnetic spectrum that could render U.S. fighter jets and aircraft carriers deaf and blind, unable to communicate. In this case, the "aggressors" targeting the U.S. satellite were not from China or Russia, but rather an elite squadron of U.S. Space Force Guardians mimicking how potential adversaries would act in a conflict that begins in orbit... Involving more than 700 service members and spanning 50 million square miles and six time zones, the training exercise, called Resolute Space, was observed firsthand exclusively by The Washington Post.
The article describes leadership at the U.S. Space Force "still honing their mission while jousting with adversaries, such as China, that are moving quickly and conducting combat-like operations in orbit... While the Space Force continues to evolve, many defense analysts and some members of Congress fear the United States has already ceded its dominance in space to China and others." With a budget of just $40 billion, the relatively tiny Space Force makes up just about 4 percent of the Defense Department's budget and less than 1 percent of its personnel. It has more than 15,000 Guardians, which also includes several thousand civilians. By comparison, the Army has nearly 1 million soldiers. The Space Force has been squeezed under the department of the Air Force and struggled to distinguish itself from the other branches...
China, Russia and others have demonstrated that they can take out or interfere with the satellites operated by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies that provide the nation's missile warning and tracking, reconnaissance and communications. China in particular has moved rapidly to build an arsenal of space-based weapons... [R]ecently, several of China's satellites have engaged in what Space Force officials have called "dogfighting," jousting with U.S. satellites at high speeds and close ranges.
The article describes leadership at the U.S. Space Force "still honing their mission while jousting with adversaries, such as China, that are moving quickly and conducting combat-like operations in orbit... While the Space Force continues to evolve, many defense analysts and some members of Congress fear the United States has already ceded its dominance in space to China and others." With a budget of just $40 billion, the relatively tiny Space Force makes up just about 4 percent of the Defense Department's budget and less than 1 percent of its personnel. It has more than 15,000 Guardians, which also includes several thousand civilians. By comparison, the Army has nearly 1 million soldiers. The Space Force has been squeezed under the department of the Air Force and struggled to distinguish itself from the other branches...
China, Russia and others have demonstrated that they can take out or interfere with the satellites operated by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies that provide the nation's missile warning and tracking, reconnaissance and communications. China in particular has moved rapidly to build an arsenal of space-based weapons... [R]ecently, several of China's satellites have engaged in what Space Force officials have called "dogfighting," jousting with U.S. satellites at high speeds and close ranges.
Re: guardians (Score:2)
What about the Stargate?
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I vote for Astra Militarum,
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Seconded. Perhaps with some Astartes chapters?
We already have purity seals [risu.ua].
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Exit the Stargate
Initial perception quickens my heart rate
This dark place, planet Earth orbits one star
I come from a far, far away state of mind
Open up your third eye
Black helicopters in the sky
Sardaukar (Score:3)
I vote to call them the Sardaukar.
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I vote to call them the Sardaukar.
That would imply they're elite...
America's Space Farce .. (Score:2)
Could you make it a little less technical
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I don't even believe that statement.
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A satellite dish-style antenna that "could fire enough electromagnetic energy to fry the satellite 22,000 miles away"
I don't even believe that statement.
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
I seem to recall a space battle station with a parabolic dish that could emit around 6.20*10^32 watts.
Usually dish-style is used for receiving, the signal is collected in the dish, concentrated to the collector and read. Are they doing it opposite this way?
They work both ways.
See the photo [wikipedia.org].
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It's almost certainly disinformation designed to confuse "the enemy" (Russians, Chinese, and the US taxpayers), even the lost lamented dish at Arecibo, the most powerful radar ever constructed, couldn't have done that.
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I think they have simplified the concept to the point where there is no usable information left.
How about this guess instead: "A training exercise involved a satellite dish-style antenna that could transmit enough electromagnetic energy at the specific frequencies where the satellites are listening for extremely small signals, enough to fry the satellite receivers 22,000 miles away,"
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They made a microwave in the shape of a bowl and it's wireless, so if you call them up they can cook the dinner on your stove for you.
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Usually dish-style is used for receiving
Absolutely incorrect. In fact, more and more receiving antennas are "phased array" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array/ [wikipedia.org] which can also be used for transmitting, but you lose energy. Parabolic "dish" antennas contain and focus the EM energy at the target.
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Dishes [Re:Ahh Wut?] (Score:3)
Usually dish-style is used for receiving, the signal is collected in the dish, concentrated to the collector and read. Are they doing it opposite this way?
Dish antennas can be used for both transmitting and receiving. The reciprocity theorem says they work equally well in either direction.
Not anywhere near ready (Score:5, Interesting)
So the drones really only matter (Score:2)
The drones mostly do not take out even Russian planes. I get a notification in my YouTube feed when one of them does because it makes the news. The problem with the drones is that they make it basically impossible to do an occupation.
It should be noted that because of that if Russia ever does take Ukraine they will kill everyone there in a
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We will start with Canada
I can learn to build IEDs as good as any Iraqi.
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Today unless we're attacking Grenada or Bhutan it's unlikely that anyone would be able to establish complete air superiority. Air defense platforms which can nail even stealthed planes and missiles are no longer bleeding edge, even Asarallah (Houthis) seem to be able to build them. The only time even Russian planes feel safe attacking Ukrainian positions directly is after all the air defense platforms in the area have been destroyed, and Ukrainian planes won't venture within 150 kilometers of the front..
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Today unless we're attacking Grenada or Bhutan it's unlikely that anyone would be able to establish complete air superiority.
Or Iran? Israel, using American technology, didn't seem to have any trouble hitting targets in/around Tehran, including the air defense systems themselves.
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Iran's air defense system was disabled remotely, apparently Israel had bribed someone to connect some point of their military network to unsecured networks. You have to admit that Israel has some pretty good crackers, software is one of their few profitable industries. Not a mistake that Iran is likely to allow to happen again.
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Iran didn't learn that critical infrastructure needs to be secure from cyberattacks after Stuxnet? Given that past experience, if Iran of all nations hasn't figured out how to secure their air defenses, I expect there's a pretty wide range of nations which would be vulnerable, allowing a NATO-like power to establish air superiority.
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That would include all of the NATO militaries. It only takes one bribed/threatened/tricked/stupid low level flunky to run a cable from Point A to Point B somewhere in the system and you can be seriously screwed, as every ransomware exploit against supposedly "air gapped" SCADA networks has demonstrated.
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Perhaps. Bringing us back to the original point that I was challenging:
Today unless we're attacking Grenada or Bhutan it's unlikely that anyone would be able to establish complete air superiority.
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Well, the U.S. is developing a fantastic record blowing up unarmed Venezuelan fishing boats. So the U.S. can build on that capability to threaten other unarmed assets of foreign countries that cannot hit back.
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Drones don't need air superiority to operate, they rely on numbers to overwhelm. At a recent arms show there was a company offering cardboard drones. Cost in monetary and material terms is getting so low that the challenge becomes mass producing them fast enough to swarm the enemy. Low flying, disposable, and very difficult to stop.
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Yup, I saw Ukraine's booth at CES where they showing off even their social drones and it was impressive.
Too bad voted to feed them to the woodchipper instead of you know helping them and making a valuable future ally.
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For the first sentence I was about to be serious and make a serious response but thank you for not stopping and continuing the Kremlin talking points, like line for line. Want to talk about Azov too?
The Bandera memes are very 2022, nobody gives a shit now. That's seriously what we are still doing here? You guys really don't have anything worthwhile to say.
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They erected a half dozen statues to him just last year, one just a couple of blocks from a mass grave of people his followers murdered. Zelinsky visited a cemetery of Ukrainian Waffen SS, a group which carried out multiple atrocities, as part of the WWII anniversary. They're not even subtle about it.
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I don't care, I live the USA where Stone Mountain is still a place, no nation on Earth has a clean past. Also link me on the half dozen and waffen because you might be a liar.
What's your point, do you think Zelensky is a Nazi? Do you think Ukrainians are Nazis despite being one of the least antisemitic nations in Europe? What is your point?
You are dancing because you don't have other than the talking points you've been fed. Do you also think Russia was justified to invade?
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Most of Russia still worships Stalin who effectively enabled the Nazis to begin WW2 with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
I guess America will never be allied with them either.
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You don't know any actual Russians, do you? The claim that they "still worship Stalin" was BS the day after he was dead.
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I know many and I even speak russian fluently. And yes, many idiots do worhsip stalin. Many other idiots even worship hitler.
Hell, putler's favourite philosopher was a fascist and putler's justification for the invasion was an almost literal quote of hitler, as were many other things he stated. How does it feel to defend an actual fascist?
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I don't know many but I do know a Russophile who's a fluent speaker and knows some very well-connected people over there including a former Putin aide with whom he was photographed on one of his trips.
He assures me that while many are conflicted, a great many also fervently believe in "Glory to Stalin" and that Putin has put a lot of effort into sanitizing Stalin's reputation
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Buying Ukraine's expertise would be a bargain at any price.
Indeed. Which is why it is so excessively stupid not to support them a lot more, even if you completely ignore all other angles.
Agree. See Spiderweb. But they still need GPS (Score:2)
Spiderweb [bbc.co.uk]
This doesn't look that hard to pull off, he says eating toast, drinking tea, wasting time on Slashdot.
I bet it is still cheaper than a cruise missile.
Slava Ukraini! Teaching us all new and interesting ways to kill each other.
Even with drones you still have to find your target. Take out 31 GPS satellites and you reduce drone capability, and anything else that needs to get from a to b. I don't remember seeing that that in any movie and game scenarios.
Best we keep our map and compass and learn how to
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America's challenge in any peer conflict won't be satellites. It will be drones
Take away the satellites, and you effectively take away the drones. Don't kid yourself. The destruction of comms satellites will cripple nations, as we've largely gotten rid of backup terrestrial navigation aids like LORAN in the West, while both Russian and China kept legacy nav and com systems as backups, and are even expanding them. The first day of the war, satellites will be the very first thing to go, because you go after your enemies communications first.
Re: Not anywhere near ready (Score:2)
Without GPS you need to use more visual clues. Using even very primitive computers you can follow visual landmarks. Yes there would be an adjustment but it won't stop drones.
Number of eyes (Score:2)
Well, the space force should decide on how many eyes they want to have in their mechas.
Can be a mono eye, can be binocular, can be biblically accurate...
UK is certainly going with the third option.
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Depends what Unit number we are on and which Angel they used to build it.
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Was thinking on something more realistic, like an monoeyed robot with a heated axe, but i guess we're on the crazy enough timeline to have angels
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Sorry I heard mecha and number of eyes and my brain went to Evangelion.
SF budget $40 b, NASA budget $25 b. (Score:2)
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The budget of the US Space Farce (spelling deliberate) exceeded NASA's only 3 years after it was created.
2024 Pentagon budget - $841 billion
All NASA budgets since foundation, combined - $640 billion
This is why we can't have nice things.
The Pentagon number doesn't include the (unconstitutional) Black Budget, the alphabet soup of intel agencies (some of which have space budgets larger than NASA), or the plethora of mercenaries hired by the State Department.
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Is NASA doing anything useful?
Aren't they just trying to repeat what SpaceX has already done?
China/Russia reading this very interested (Score:2)
Immediately looking for bargain satellite dishes-
Iran and other terrorists reading this too (Score:2)
If it can fry a 22000 mile away satellite, what could it do to a 6 miles high flying plane?
The World Spins Round, While Man Unloads Them (Score:1)
What is America so afraid of? (Score:2)
Their only threat is Israel. And they haven't done anything to combat them.
EM-resistant satellites? (Score:2)