Times’ Shaky Spacewar Story

For most of the planet, it will seem like a shocker. But, really, the fact that the Air Force is look­ing for President Bush’s approval to put weapons in space is no rev­e­la­tion. The ser­vice has been shout­ing for orbit­ing arms for years.
The New York Times is report­ing today that the Air Force wants a new national-​​security direc­tive to “replace a 1996 Clinton admin­is­tra­tion pol­icy that empha­sized a more pacific use of space, includ­ing spy satel­lites’ sup­port for mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, arms con­trol and non­pro­lif­er­a­tion pacts.“
Well, of course that’s what the Air Force wants. Last year, an Air Force paper on “Counterspace Operations,” signed by chief of staff Gen. John Jumper, declared that the “free­dom to attack deny­ing space capa­bil­ity to the adver­sary” has become a “cru­cial first step in any mil­i­tary oper­a­tion.” In 2003, the ser­vice released a “Transformation Flight Plan,” com­plete with a space weapons wish list — from anti-​​satellite lasers to arms that could “strike ground tar­gets any­where in the world from space.“
It’s from this col­lec­tion that the Times’ Tim Weiner draws at least some of its exam­ples of weapons in orbit. And I’m afraid Weiner may have con­fused the Air Force’s equiv­a­lent of day dreams with full-​​blown, big-​​money Pentagon devel­op­ment efforts.

[An] Air Force space pro­gram, nick­named Rods From God, aims to hurl cylin­ders of tung­sten, tita­nium or ura­nium from the edge of space to destroy tar­gets on the ground, strik­ing at speeds of about 7,200 miles an hour with the force of a small nuclear weapon. Yes, “Rods from God” is men­tioned in the 2003 “Flight Plan.” But the idea was debunked so long ago that’s it’s hard to believe the ser­vice is actu­ally pur­su­ing the Rods in any seri­ous way. As Columbia University physics pro­fes­sor Richard Garwin noted, the Rods could only work if they orbited at low alti­tudes. And that means they “could only deliver one-​​ninth the destruc­tive energy per gram as a con­ven­tional bomb.”

[Another] pro­gram would bounce laser beams off mir­rors hung from space satel­lites or huge high-​​altitude blimps, redi­rect­ing the lethal rays down to tar­gets around the world.

This is a project Defense Tech has reported on sev­eral times, most recently in early May. It’s not as out­landish as “Rods from God.” But the laser-​​mirror effort is still in its infancy, with the most basic of exper­i­ments now get­ting started. This is a long way from a weapon, folks.

A [third] seeks to turn radio waves into weapons whose pow­ers could range “from tap on the shoul­der to toast.”

Obviously, the mil­i­tary is very inter­ested in high-​​powered microwaves — the Active Denial crowd con­trol sys­tem is the best exam­ple. But microwave weapons, based in space? That’s just wish­ful thinking.

The Air Force already has a poten­tial weapon in space. In April, the Air Force launched the XSS-​​11, an exper­i­men­tal microsatel­lite with the tech­ni­cal abil­ity to dis­rupt other nations’ mil­i­tary recon­nais­sance and com­mu­ni­ca­tions satellites.

This isn’t quite right, either. The 305-​​pound, nine foot-​​long XSS-​​11 is a demon­stra­tor to show how maneu­ver­able and autonomous future mini-​​satellites might be. Down the road, those capa­bil­i­ties would be great to have on an anti-​​satellite device, sure. But it’s a mis­take, I think, to call the XSS-​​11 itself a “weapon.” I’ll have more to say about the XSS-​​11 in next month’s Popular Mechanics.

A new Air Force strat­egy, Global Strike, calls for a mil­i­tary space plane car­ry­ing precision-​​guided weapons armed with a half-​​ton of muni­tions. General Lord told Congress last month that Global Strike would be “an incred­i­ble capa­bil­ity” to destroy com­mand cen­ters or mis­sile bases “any­where in the world.“
Pentagon doc­u­ments say the weapon, called the com­mon aero vehi­cle, could strike from halfway around the world in 45 min­utes. “This is the type of prompt Global Strike I have iden­ti­fied as a top pri­or­ity for our space and mis­sile force,” General Lord said.

Now this project — which we first looked at back in November 2003 — is legit, with a hefty $91 mil­lion invested into it over the last two years. But, by mak­ing so lit­tle dis­tinc­tion between this effort and more pie-​​in-​​the-​​sky plans, the Times does its read­ers a bit of a dis­ser­vice.
What’s more, the paper of record actu­ally ignores some of the Air Force’s actual, work­ing space weapons while spilling ink over the service’s least-​​likely schemes. In October, the Air Force deployed a radio-​​frequency jam­mer, meant to dis­rupt oppo­nents’ satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions. And, accord­ing to Air Force doc­u­ments, com­mer­cial space­craft, neu­tral coun­tries’ launch­ing pads even weather satel­lites are all on the poten­tial tar­get list. To me, that’s truly shock­ing.
THERE’S MORE: Winds of Change has an inter­est­ing post up about the media-​​military divide. And Winds sis­ter site Defense Industry Daily points out a new $19.5 con­tract for Boeing to start work­ing on “large struc­ture deploy­ment and con­trol from space.” Be sure to check out Armchair Generalist’s take on the Times story, too.

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May 18th, 2005 | Space | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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