PENTAGON WANTS MINI-​​KILLERS IN SPACE

A few weeks back, Defense Tech took a look at the Air Force’s emerg­ing plans for fight­ing in space. Well, “Arms Control Wonk” Jeffrey Lewis has uncov­ered what looks like a Pentagon wish list for orbital com­bat. At the top of the list: a slew of itty-​​bitty satel­lites. Their mis­sion: “Destruction of Enemy Spacecraft,” the Defense Department brief­ing says.
These killers would be loaded, ten at a time, into a reusable mil­i­tary orbiter. Once a tar­get had been hunted down, these “Microsat Kinetic Kill Payloads” (MKKPs) would inter­cept an enemy satel­lite — the brief­ing calls it a “hyper-​​velocity ‘tail chase.’” Then they would inspect the dam­age, after the MKKPs had done their worse.
The MKKP is part of a larger Pentagon project called the Experimental Satellite Series (XSS), Lewis explains.

Launched Jan. 29 [2003], the 28-​​kilogram XSS-​​10 suc­cess­fully demon­strated its abil­ity to move closely around another object to take images. The con­tract to build its suc­ces­sor, XSS-​​11, and its more spe­cific sen­sor pay­load already has been awarded.
Taking pic­tures is not much of a threat, but the Air Force sees these satel­lites as more than just shut­ter­bugs. The “sin­gle strongest rec­om­men­da­tion” of the Air Force’s 1999 Microsatellite Technology and Requirements Study was “the deploy­ment, as rapidly as pos­si­ble, of XSS-​​10-​​based satel­lites to inter­cept, image and, if needed, take action against a tar­get satel­lite,” accord­ing to an unclas­si­fied sum­mary pub­lished in 2000.

Other XSS projects, accord­ing to the Pentagon brief­ing, include a “blocker” microsat, which uses a “cir­cu­lar, gim­baled, opaque fan” to stop up enemy com­mu­ni­ca­tions in space, as well as a satel­lite “jam­mer.“
But my favorite has to be the “grab­ber” microsat — a machine straight out of James Bond, with a mechan­i­cal arm, meant for “dock­ing with and reori­en­ta­tion of enemy space­craft.” With this “grap­ple fea­ture,” the mini-​​ship will “attach itself to [an] enemy satel­lite, [and] benignly cause dis­ori­en­ta­tion.“
THERE’S MORE: Via Geek Press, here’s Air Force Space Command’s Trek-​​like new badge.

October 13th, 2004 | Space | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.