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2005-08-23 Home Front: WoT

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Posted by Captain America 2005-08-23 00:41|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Damnit guys, if nothing else can we at leat set up a moonbase alpha before Osama?

Posted by Mac Suirtain 2005-08-23 00:59|| 2005-08-23 00:59|| Front Page Top

#2 Exactly which "security" experts were these? Terrorists will have a hell of a time getting to a satellite, let alone many. There are multiple layers, spreading many miles deep, of satellites and sending "junk" into orbit is way beyond anything Al-qaeda can do, let alone target a set of satellites. Tracking them is a full time job, even for NORAD and don't tell me that Al-Qaeda is gonna infiltrate every satellite maker in the world to sprinkle "contaminates" on the circuit board. Jamming is nearly impossible to bring down the entire grid. Commercial stations are spread throughout the globe and military ones use the same frequency jumping that the military radios (SINGARS) do and it makes them nearly impossible to jam as well (since if you get something strong enough to jam almost every frequency band you ain't talking to anyone either and it is real easy for every piece of artillery and air asset to pinpoint your location within seconds and send you a going away present).

What a bunch of uneducated, moonbat, paranoia hype. But then, what else do we expect from Canada nowadays?

Posted by mmurray821 2005-08-23 03:51|| 2005-08-23 03:51|| Front Page Top

#3 lol i agree, whatever next - AQ plan to shift the earth outa its orbit

Posted by Shep 2005-08-23 03:59|| 2005-08-23 03:59|| Front Page Top

#4 If any jihadis want to be blasted into space, they've only gotta ask...

Posted by Jake-the-Peg 2005-08-23 05:52|| 2005-08-23 05:52|| Front Page Top

#5 Writer is totally ignorant of the way Satellites work. What ever kind of fear this guy is peddling is not going to work on people with even a basic clue. Jamming a civilian satellite will get you quickly caught. Trying to do it on milsats is a laugh it will also get you killed. Clueless BS.

Posted by Sock Puppet 0Ã¯Â¿Â½ Doom 2005-08-23 06:05|| 2005-08-23 06:05|| Front Page Top

#6 Boy, thanks guys! I wuz worried the Jihadis were gonna zoom up on Katushya rockets and slash dem sats with simitars. Mebbe they could hijack a Paki rocket and force a controller to ram a single satellite? Or were they gonna use one of their fleet of 40 nukes to EMP the birds?

All hard to imagine.

Posted by Bobby 2005-08-23 07:26|| 2005-08-23 07:26|| Front Page Top

#7 Iridium is still going?

Posted by Shipman 2005-08-23 07:50|| 2005-08-23 07:50|| Front Page Top

#8
All your satellites are belong to us!

Posted by Jihad Joe 2005-08-23 07:58|| 2005-08-23 07:58|| Front Page Top

#9 I read the whole article. I still want to know how AQ is going to take out satellites. Typical MSM drivel.

Posted by Spot">Spot 2005-08-23 08:30|| 2005-08-23 08:30|| Front Page Top

#10 A short Google on the author of this piece:

The finalists for the 2003 Writers' Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize are:
Dawn Rae Downton for "Hansel and Gretel"
Published in Grain

A restless teenage girl with dreams of leaving her family discovers something unexpected about trying to escape her past.

Dawn Rae Downton is an expatriate Newfoundlander who lives on Nova Scotia's South Shore. Her fiction has appeared in The Fiddlehead, the Wascana Review, Descant, Pagitica, TickleAce, and Grain. She also writes non-fiction, and her family memoir about Depression-era Newfoundland, Seldom, was judged one of the best books of 2002 by the editors of Amazon.ca. Her second memoir, Diamond, was published in 2003. She recently completed a novel set in occupied France during the Second World War, and is working on another set in Vietnam.

I love articles that start with the anonymous "Experts are warning..."

Posted by john">john 2005-08-23 09:12|| 2005-08-23 09:12|| Front Page Top

#11 Fiddlehead, huh? How apropos

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2005-08-23 09:23|| 2005-08-23 09:23|| Front Page Top

#12 She recently completed a novel set in occupied France during the Second World War, and is working on another set in Vietnam.

Both, no doubt, focusing on the brave resistance to American invaders.

Posted by Robert Crawford">Robert Crawford 2005-08-23 10:15|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2005-08-23 10:15|| Front Page Top

#13 "Stop looking at us! I said never look at us!"

Posted by BH 2005-08-23 10:18|| 2005-08-23 10:18|| Front Page Top

#14 well AQ wouldn't be able too use their satellite phones they love so much either.

Posted by Thraing Hupoluper1864 2005-08-23 11:07|| 2005-08-23 11:07|| Front Page Top

#15 CIA notes more chatter between flying carpet experts...

Posted by Robert Novak luvs Valerie Plame 2005-08-23 11:53|| 2005-08-23 11:53|| Front Page Top

#16 TH864---They have not thought that one through yet.

Posted by Alaska Paul">Alaska Paul 2005-08-23 11:59|| 2005-08-23 11:59|| Front Page Top

#17 The article is .... not well argued.

But the threat is real. Scenario: one supportive nation-state is willing to launch several payloads at once into geosynchronous orbits. The payloads explode to create a band of debris sufficiently dense to damage satellites in that orbit.

Milsats have maneuvering ability, but it is limited by the amount of fuel on the bird, which must last its entire orbital life.

Civilian sats have less, because of cost-benefit judgements made at design & launch time.

Now, I'm not saying it would be EASY or that an attempt would succeed. But you can bet that scenarios for attacks on our satellite constellations were developed by the Soviet Union and others and that our military takes the possiblity seriously.

Posted by lotp 2005-08-23 12:00|| 2005-08-23 12:00|| Front Page Top

#18 Just because they have the desire and knowledge doesn't mean they have the ability.

Posted by Deacon Blues">Deacon Blues 2005-08-23 12:00|| 2005-08-23 12:00|| Front Page Top

#19 But just because we have a sophisticated military doesn't mean that there aren't serious vulnerabilities.

There are. I know some of the people who work long hours and stay up late at night worrying about them.

Posted by lotp 2005-08-23 12:02|| 2005-08-23 12:02|| Front Page Top

#20 Just one other point: the scenario I sketched out deliberately depended on the support of a nation state.

Ah, you say, noone would be so suicidal as to attempt such a launch as it would call down a massive retaliation on them.

Well, maybe. But if they really thought they could succeed, such retaliation would be very difficult to pull off and the resulting chaos and economic damage in our country and the global economy would make it difficult to organize a counter strike. And in any case, the damage would have been done.

Nor could we easily replace the satellites currently in orbit after an attack. At least, we could not do so quickly. It takes a good long while to build and launch satellites. It's not the sort of thing you just double the assembly line for.

New, less vulnerable designs? Here's a true story from a program with which I have some familiarity. Mission critical bird is developed in a high priority push. Two are built at the cost of ... let's just say a whole lot of money.

Then, one is tested to destruction over several months before the 2nd one is launched.

But back to those nation states who might cooperate in such an attack. I'm thinking of three countries. One is an old enemy whose space capability hasn't entirely faded away. One is a rising competitor who is engaged in a massive military and technical buildup with a clear space component.

and the third is a country that is pushing missile and nuclear programs using imported technology. Their domestic expertise is less impressive, but their output of spittle and open ambition rivals pretty much anyone else on the globe.

Posted by lotp 2005-08-23 12:09|| 2005-08-23 12:09|| Front Page Top

#21 The payloads explode to create a band of debris sufficiently dense to damage satellites in that orbit.

If one were to assume that all of the satellites in question travelled through a path encompassed by a 1 mile by 1 mile box, it quickly becomes obvious that the amount of material required to fill this box would be enormous.

If one wished to fill this 1 mile box with steel fragments to the depth of 1 foot (assume only 10% of the space is filled and the density of steel is 490 lb/cubic foot), then one would need to put 683,000 tons of steel into orbit. It is the will of Allah!

Al Qaeda would love to be able to do this, but I don't think rocket science is their strong suit, unless the words "propelled grenade" are attached.

Posted by Dreadnought 2005-08-23 13:07|| 2005-08-23 13:07|| Front Page Top

#22 http://www.spacedaily.com/news/laser-00i.html

So the Govt is exploring such eventualities, but they are most concerned with radiation interference in Sat operation from earth based lasers.

I've read in other places the DoD has succeeded in shooting a low orbit satellite with a laser. But it required a laser mounted to a jumbo jet.

AQ doesn't seem to have those capabilities, they'd be better served attacking traditional targets like shipping yards. Or at best electronic attacks, but casting debris into space, seems highly unlikely to me.

The other option that lotp suggested was potentially viable is debated partly in this article:

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/05/03/orbit.debris/index.html

My dollar says this writer is exaggerating a threat long forgotten from the cold war.

The CNN article quotes a NASA official who casts doubt on the whole scenario, those doubts were mirrored by lotp and posters here as well.

EP

Posted by ElvisHasLeftTheBuilding 2005-08-23 13:57|| 2005-08-23 13:57|| Front Page Top

#23 How hard is it to send satellites their attitude adjustment commands? I remember reading some 20 years ago that some of them were vulnerable to tinkering by unauthorized "hobbyists." I assume that more recent ones have some kind of authentication, but I've no inside knowledge.

Posted by James">James 2005-08-23 14:13|| http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com]">[http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com] 2005-08-23 14:13|| Front Page Top

#24 Two different issues, Elvis.

The CNN article has to do with debris from a satellite kill in low earth orbit. That's where a lot of commercial comms satellites are, but note that many of the military satellites orbit at much greater heights.

Nor are space-based kinetic attacks out of the realm of consideration. For instance, consider the Brilliant Pebbles research program (started during the Strategic Defense Initiative and killed under Les Aspin, Clinton's SECDEF).

Brilliant Pebbles was oriented towards killing missiles during boost phase. However, reports at the time suggested that the work originally also considered orbit to orbit attacks. BP reportedly was constrained at the time (late 80s & early 90s) by the available computer hardware and software needed for detailed missile intercept, through variable atmospheric conditions, during the few seconds of boost phase with a sufficiently high probability of kill ratio.

Today we have much more advanced computational capability in lighter packages. Moreover, the orbit to orbit scenario for a suicidal satellite is a much simpler one than Brilliant Pebbles entailed. No atmospheric variability to worry about in space itself. And the orbital mechanics associated with inert kinetic material are well known. A lot less than 10% fill by volume of an orbit would be quite effective.

I'm not suggesting that al-Qaeda has access to a successful version of Brilliant Pebbles, or anything quite like it. I *am* suggesting that a lot of work has been done in the US, and probably in the former Soviet Union at a minimum, that could be applied towards satellite kills from in-orbit kinetic attacks.

Posted by lotp 2005-08-23 14:23|| 2005-08-23 14:23|| Front Page Top

#25 Command and control of the military constellations is heavily guarded. I can't speak for the commercial comms satellites, tho.

Posted by lotp 2005-08-23 14:23|| 2005-08-23 14:23|| Front Page Top

#26 of relevant interest is the work currently being done on Multiple Kill Vehicles. While this program is part of ballistic missile defense, consider the fact that ballistic missiles spend most of their trajectory in space.

Posted by lotp 2005-08-23 14:30|| 2005-08-23 14:30|| Front Page Top

#27 Damn it man, do something, I'm freakin'

Posted by Captain America 2005-08-23 14:32|| 2005-08-23 14:32|| Front Page Top

#28 I would agree that the steel fragment idea could (in theory) be done from Russia and China, but I don't think the kill/dollar spent ratio would be worth it. The amount of fragments is to high for our current launch techonology (mass drivers might work).
The point is, Al-Qaeda can not reach our satellites. A more feasible scenerio is a light plane packed with explosives exploding in a theme park. A low body count, high visable target is very much in Al-Qaeda's range of options.

Posted by mmurray821 2005-08-23 14:49|| 2005-08-23 14:49|| Front Page Top

#29 Captain America, the threat is being taken seriously within DOD. It's a highly classified realm, but this year's annual report to Congress on China's military power specifically notes Chinese work towards anti-satellite capabilities using a variety of techniques ranging from exploding a nuclear payload on a satellite in orbit to blinding low-orbit satellite sensors using earth-based lasers.

Posted by lotp 2005-08-23 14:57|| 2005-08-23 14:57|| Front Page Top

#30 Hahaha.... What a load of crap. I thought the meme was that hitting a bullet with a bullet is well nigh to impossible. Now, al qaida all of a sudden has the capability and resources to launch rogue hunter-killer sats from their hide outs under the sea in a magical place called atlantis, untouched by observation from the US. Sure. Have another hit.

Have you seen these losers fire automatic rifles? Use a SAM? Video tape their leader?Their overall technical knowledge is low; lower than Aum Shin Rikyo was, I believe. At least the Aum had the technical expertise to manufacture and sell LSD; I don't believe that al qaida affiliates could make anything bigger or more complex than a truck bomb, and a substantial percentage of the time they get that wrong and blow themselves up.

But seriously, this is the opposite of al qaida's strength--plausable denyability. Why would a state actor give that advantage away by having a traceable attack?

Moreover, allow me to point out (snark alert) that neither rifles, grenades, nor AT4s use satelites. This makes me want to ask the writer what they did for a living in 1980? Can people not really remember a day when cellphones weren't widely available? How about before computers? How in heavens did we get by?

Posted by Mark E. 2005-08-23 15:14|| 2005-08-23 15:14|| Front Page Top

#31 In May, 1998, mortally wounded by contamination on a printed circuit board, Galaxy IV failed as it sat in geostationary orbit over the middle of the Western hemisphere.

And it was a glorious day too. It was the day Muzak died!...temporarily.

Posted by PsychoHillbilly 2005-08-23 16:06|| 2005-08-23 16:06|| Front Page Top

#32 Agreed that al-Q isn't going to take down satellites by themselves. That's why I mentioned the extreme case of a nation state facilitating such an attack.

There are, as has been discussed here, other scenarios for anti-satellite actions. the following quote comes from an email I received recently regarding the possible use of ground-based lasers to blind certain surveillance and reconnaisance satellites. The author has extensive expertise in this field.

It takes pretty high power and long dwell to damage something by surface heat deposition, but even a moderate beam can destroy a focal plane array if the beam goes right down the telescope barrel--as it will if the camera is imaging the laser at the same time when the laser is pointed at the cameras. And that's not unlikely if there's a war going on.

In other words, people with significant expertise re: space assets and national security / defense see vulnerabilities and take the threat seriously.

The article that started this thread is not well argued. But before you totally reject out of hand the idea of nation state involvement in such an attack, look again at who is pushing antisatellite research and who is reported to be funnelling various military technologies through intermediaries to countries like Iran.

The mullahs are not noted for their calm consideration nor for their susceptibility to a Mutually Assured Deterrance strategy. They may not have antisatellite technology today, but don't discount the possibility that they could acquire it from others in the forseeable future.

Posted by lotp 2005-08-23 16:09|| 2005-08-23 16:09|| Front Page Top

#33 You folks have to differentiate Nation-State actions that can happen and Terrorists actions that can't. The Article addresses Terrorism.

The obvious and plain truth is Satellites are at risk for attacks by Nation-States. If country A or B attacks our Satellites the results would be a real war. A World War it's not just the US that is at risk.

Posted by Sock Puppet 0Â´ Doom 2005-08-23 16:21|| 2005-08-23 16:21|| Front Page Top

#34 The terror networks don't have the expertise to develop WMD, but we acknowledge the possibility that a nation state might transfer completed capabilities to terrorists for use against us.

A suicidal satellite payload is pretty hard to hide and would be, as I stated above, an extreme scenario.

The use of ground-based lasers to blind recon and surveillance capability is one potential tactic which might be deployed to handicap our ability to detect and counter a terror attack, a missile attack on Israel or a missile attack on our troops. It is not outside the realm of possibility that certain high energy laser technology might be packaged by a nation state and made available to terror networks.

Posted by lotp 2005-08-23 17:10|| 2005-08-23 17:10|| Front Page Top

#35 What's the response of a blinding attack on our peeking systems? Maybe the response should be made very clear.

Posted by Shipman 2005-08-23 18:10|| 2005-08-23 18:10|| Front Page Top

#36 The ability to blind satellites with a laser is WAY beyond Al-Qaeda. You need good tracking radar, tied to the laser beam to hold on target. Currently NORAD's almost full time job. The Russians can't do it and I seriously doubt China could. A rogue nuke launch for an EMP effect is the best terrorists can hope for.

Posted by mmurray821 2005-08-23 18:11|| 2005-08-23 18:11|| Front Page Top

#37 mmurray, it's theoretically possible that even our THEL system could inadvertently do the job, if it isn't deconflicted with satellite passes.

THEL isn't scheduled to be deployed for some years yet. But we have working models that have done quite nicely in realistic tests against a range of missiles and other threats.

Posted by anon on this 2005-08-23 18:14|| 2005-08-23 18:14|| Front Page Top

#38 You boys put that thing down RIGHT NOW!!

You could put somebody's eye out with it!!

-- Mom

Posted by Snaing Josing3877 2005-08-23 18:37|| 2005-08-23 18:37|| Front Page Top

23:54 Old Patriot
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