The Air Force’s cadre of space war planners has always liked to dream big. Take the current issue of Air & Space Power Journal, for instance. In it, fifteen USAF officers muse about how best to apply (and extend) the American military’s superiority above the skies. Maj. Mark Steves foresees a fleet of airships, operating at the atmosphere’s edge, keeping watch and relaying communications around the globe. Les Doggerel, a civilian at Air Force Space Command, looks forward to an array of cheap, “plug and play” satellites that can be launched at a moment’s notice.
But perhaps the most ambitious plan comes from ICBM combat crew commander Capt. Joseph T. Page II, who calls for launching cyberattacks on enemy satellites — and then capturing the orbiters, or tossing them into the atmosphere, if the need arises.
Military planners have long considered space to be the “ultimate high ground.” And to defend that high ground, Air Force doctrine calls for two main strategies defensive counterspace (protecting our satellites) and offensive counterspace (knocking out the other guys’).
Capt. Page isn’t too impressed with playing defense. “It will not increase the balance in our favor but only ‘hold the line’ against enemy attacks,’” he writes.
But offensive counterspace has proved tricky, with the specter of shards of broken satellites strewn in space, or crashing down to Earth. Page’s suggestion: hijack an enemy orbiter’s attitude control system — which runs everything from propulsion to communications and replace it with a “parasitic attitude control system,” or PACS.
The idea of covertly supplanting a satellites ACS is technologically feasible and may become a desired, mature capability when conflict arises in space. [It] involves controlling an enemy satellite by supplanting its original ACS and negating the satellites mission with the PACS. [It] can control a satellite in numerous ways
Depleting the satellites primary fuel until the satellite is drifting (denial/disruption). Once a satellite runs out of maneuvering fuel to counter drifting, it is considered dead.
Stressing and straining the satellite bus until body-part separation occurs from changes in angular-momentum spin rates (destruction). Assuming the satellite is three-axis stabilized, enough rotational velocity would put tremendous stress on the solar panels/deployed antennae. Application of enough stress and strain will separate the appendages, depending upon the rate of spin applied to the satellite bus.
Realigning… antennae for friendly-force intelligence collection by moving the directional antennas footprint away from hostile ground-station coverage areas and towards space-based signals-intelligence satellites or simply aiming the antennae into deep space, away from Earth (deception/denial)…
Pushing the satellite into transfer orbit for atmospheric reentry or physical capture (destruction/denial/degradation/disruption). Deliberate movement of the satellite out of its expected orbital plane would allow the PACS controller full, positive control over the satellites designated path. Physical capture by friendly spacecraft and crews becomes possible by bringing the satellite down to an acceptable orbital altitude. If the plan calls for its physical destruction, lowering the satellites altitude and speed can allow atmospheric friction to heat up and structurally weaken or burn up the satellite bus and payload. (emphasis mine)
Now, to be clear, this is just one Captain’s concept not some official Air Force program. And other writers in the current Journal take much more sober views of the limits of U.S. space power. Retired Lt. Col. Mel Tomme calls B.S. on the idea of launching little, “tactical” satellites into low-earth orbit. Space and Missile Systems Center commander Lt. Gen. Michael Hamel says that the military’s space capabilities have badly eroded, and that it’s time to get “back to basics.“
But Page sees efforts underway now that could eventually lead to his “parasitic” space-weapon: prototype orbital tugboats, that would move satellites from one orbit to the next; small space ships designed for “proximity operations” near another satellite. Both are, in effect, physically correcting a satellite’s flight. Maybe software could do a better job Hey, a Captain can dream, can’t he?
UPDATE 4:17 PM: Via Gyre, here’s a bozo Captain arguing for an orbital constellation of death.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
If we look at how Russia and China will view our attempt at control of orbital space it would seem to be in our best interest to fund some serious study of alternatives. I can easily see a technical race to control and or, at least, protect the gear that each country has in space. How would inspections be accomplished if a treaty was proposed? We better get cracking on this. Not much time left to deal with it. It just appears to be way off in the future. If China and Russia decide to join in space defense we probably would not be able to compete.
If one says that nothing will ever happpen and therefore we don’t need these extravegent designs for space weaponry, then you really don’t need those designs. America doesn’t realize when it comes to space, we make it to be what we want. No other country is going to come in an tell us how to run the place (any time in the first half of this century at least).
For that matter, there are many classified programs dealing with anti-satelite technologies. Probably on the order of secrecy as with the F-117 or B-2 programs. Believe me if you like…
Yes, by all means lets get ANOTHER military rivalry going. Lockheed Martin really needs the money, and there’s sure to be oodles of “clever” think tank papers to look forward to. And after all, our resources are inexhaustible, right?
You could at least copy and paste my name correctly.
Sorry for the confusion, Capt. Doggrell, my comments were aimed at the second article posted at the bottom of your piece — the one in “The Space Review” by Christopher Stone. Indeed, I thought your piece on sat control was quite interesting, precisely because it seems that pieces of the technology required are emerging.
Foreign entanglements, against which George Washington warned, are especially inadvisable in space relations. We should not be on the International Space Station with covertly hostile Russia and Japan, and now China. Even if Colonel Bearden is wrong in stating that the Challenger explosion was a covert KGB hit via cold molding, as General Daniel Graham allegedly attempted to warn us, or if the Japanese Yakuza are not waging weather warfare against us, only exclusive U.S. predominance of air and space will do.
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