I have to take issue with DT col­league John Noonan’s post at the Weekly Standard blog today on the story (rev­e­la­tion?) that the Russians are reluc­tantly work­ing on anti-​​satellite weapons to counter U.S. mis­sile defense ini­tia­tives and other per­ceived ills.

John says essen­tially “what’s the news here?” The Sovs had been work­ing on this tech­nol­ogy for decades and that “they’ve been there all along”…

Well, my thoughts on this are: prove it!

Though Noonan reminds us of the Soviet-​​era invest­ments in anti-​​sat weapons, my ques­tion is what have they been doing since then? I go back to the para­noid bomber boo­gie­man story that “oh no, the Russians are com­ing because they’re fly­ing Bear bombers (pro­peller dri­ven, hello!?) along the Alaska border”…

Can some­one please tell me how many flight hours on aver­age a Russian bomber crew gets per month — or per year? So, tell me, if they’re still fly­ing the same bombers for a few hours a year that they were dur­ing the Cold War (I know, I know — we’re still fly­ing the B-​​52, but it’s a very dif­fer­ent bomber in its guts than it was in 1960) then tell me how the Russians can pose any kind of threat to satel­lites in space?

It’s typ­i­cal of an Associated Press reporter who knows lit­tle about mil­i­tary tech­nol­ogy to excite his edi­tors with some unre­al­is­tic threats from an obscure for­mer space forces commander:

Russia already has some “basic, key ele­ments” of such weapons, he said with­out elaboration.

Popovkin, who pre­vi­ously was the chief of Russian mil­i­tary Space Forces, report­edly made the state­ment at a news con­fer­ence in response to a ques­tion about U.S. and Chinese tests of anti-​​satellite weapons. 

Huh? Basic key ele­ments? Like the Mir? Oh yeah, that went down in flames a few years ago…And didn’t we just shoot down a satel­lite with a mis­sile launched from a ship about a year ago? I’d say Popovkin in dreaming.

– Christian

The U.S. Navy mar­shaled its resources quickly to shoot down a bro­ken satel­lite recently, but there are no plans to stay ready for a repeat per­for­mance, a senior Navy offi­cial said Wednesday.

When the U.S. gov­ern­ment decided that the falling spy satel­lite posed a risk, mis­sile defense offi­cials assem­bled a take­down plan within weeks. It worked — last month, the Pentagon smacked the satel­lite out of the sky and demol­ished the bird’s hydrazine fuel tank, which the mil­i­tary offi­cials said could have sur­vived re-​​entry and spilled its poi­so­nous cargo.

Despite this suc­cess, the Missile Defense Agency ducked when asked whether it could spring into action faster for a repeat per­for­mance. It would depend on too many tech­ni­cal specifics to say, said Rear Adm. Alan “Brad” Hicks, Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense pro­gram man­ager, at a Navy League press conference.

He said there’s no fur­ther work on the con­cept because last month’s shoot­down was a one-​​time event, so there’s no active require­ment for the tech­nol­ogy to work against satel­lites on an ongo­ing basis.

“It is not a core mis­sion. It is not a capa­bil­ity out there for us to use,” Hicks said.

The U.S. Navy’s satel­lite shoot­down cost around $90 mil­lion, he said. That’s not includ­ing addi­tional costs for sen­sors, engi­neers and other sup­port that isn’t fac­tored into the ini­tial ball­park estimate.

– Rebecca Christie

The Pentagon just put out a release say­ing “debris analy­sis” indi­cated the SM III hit on that wayard spy satel­lite had done its job…

“…offi­cials are con­fi­dent the mis­sile inter­cept and destruc­tion of a non-​​functioning National Reconnaissance Office satel­lite, achieved the objec­tive of destroy­ing the hydrazine tank and reduc­ing, if not elim­i­nat­ing, the risk to peo­ple on Earth from the haz­ardous chemical. 

“By all accounts this was a suc­cess­ful mis­sion. From the debris analy­sis, we have a high degree of con­fi­dence the satellite’s fuel tank was destroyed and the hydrazine has been dis­si­pated,” said Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Now, that’s interesting…but…(queue up the con­spir­acy the­ory mon­tage here…) I’m won­der­ing A.) just how did they do a debris analy­sis when it either burned up in the atmos­phere or is still float­ing in sub­or­bital space, and B.) what exactly does “reduc­ing, if not elim­i­nat­ing, the risk to peo­ple on Earth from the haz­ardous chem­i­cal” mean? It’s either gone, or it’s not gone…Which is it?

(more…)

The lead story at Military​.com cov­ers the Navy’s shoot down of the errant spy satel­lite and by all indi­ca­tions, it appears the shot went off with­out a hitch. Here’s the AP video news coverage:

Noteworthy is the fact that the mis­sile didn’t have a war­head. Now whether it was about the hydrazine or the pos­si­ble com­pro­mise of spy tech is another mat­ter … and one that seems some­what moot now. In any case, a DT high five to the Pacific Fleet black­shoes who pulled this feat off.

– Ward

Tonopah redux?

As we reported here a few days back folks in Texas are see­ing UFOs and now the Air Force appears to be chang­ing it’s story a bit. The plot thick­ens. This from a report run­ning in Military.com’s head­lines right now:

Fighter jets were train­ing nearby the night dozens of Stephenville-​​area res­i­dents reported see­ing a UFO this month, Air Force Reserve offi­cials said Jan. 23, back­track­ing on ear­lier statements.

The announce­ment did lit­tle to sat­isfy res­i­dents of Texas dairy coun­try who swear that what they saw in the sky Jan. 8 was no air­plane. Some said it even bol­stered their claims, because sev­eral peo­ple reported see­ing at least two fighter jets chas­ing an object.

“This sup­ports our story that there was UFO activ­ity in that area,” said Kenneth Cherry, the Texas direc­tor of the Mutual UFO Network, which took more than 50 reports from locals at a meet­ing last week­end. “I find it curi­ous that it took them two weeks to ‘fess up. I think they’re feel­ing the heat from the publicity.”

Officials at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth ini­tially said none of their planes had been in the area, but on Wednesday they said 10 F-​​16s were there that day. The offi­cials said they were mis­taken and wanted to set the record straight “in the inter­est of pub­lic awareness.”

Public aware­ness, indeed. Something is rot­ten in Denmark … and Texas. Remember, this is the same orga­ni­za­tion that devel­oped the F-​​117 in the Nevada desert for years and years with­out any­body know­ing about it. Have the cit­i­zens of Texas been given an unin­ten­tional glimpse of a black program?

Read the entire report here.

(Image: Secret base at Tonopah, Nevada where the F-​​117 was developed.)

– Ward

Lt. Gen. Henry (Trey) Obering, U.S. Missile Defense Agency direc­tor, says the $85 mil­lion fund­ing cut to his plans for radar and inter­cep­tor instal­la­tions in Eastern Europe is “not as bad as it could have been.”

“I do believe that this is some­thing that we can live with,” Obering said dur­ing an inter­view with Aviation Week & Space Technology. The cut was recently approved by a House-​​Senate con­fer­ence com­mit­tee on Fiscal 2008 appro­pri­a­tions.

The reduc­tion could result in at least a six-​​month delay in plans to estab­lish a site for inter­cep­tors in Poland and a sophis­ti­cated track­ing and tar­get­ing radar in the Czech Republic.

Obering wants the inter­cep­tors in place by 2013 and the radar oper­at­ing by 2011 to counter bal­lis­tic mis­sile attacks from Iran that threaten the Middle East and most of Europe. Despite Russian oppo­si­tion to the plans — the Russian gov­ern­ment says the sys­tem poses a threat to its secu­rity in the region — the U.S. is mov­ing for­ward. Obering main­tains that the Russian radar in Gabala, Azerbaijan, will not pro­vide the mid­course dis­crim­i­na­tion nec­es­sary to tar­get mis­siles from Iran.

Russia pro­posed the Gabala radar as an alter­na­tive to the sen­sor planned for the Czech Republic. MDA plans to relo­cate a mid­course track­ing radar from the Pacific region to the site in the Czech Republic.

Obering spoke with AW&ST from Kiev dur­ing one of a series of vis­its to explore oppor­tu­ni­ties to expand indus­try coop­er­a­tion between the U.S. and Ukraine, which pro­vided hefty tech­ni­cal exper­tise for the Soviet bal­lis­tic mis­sile fleet.

Already, coop­er­a­tion exists with Boeing on the Sea Launch pro­gram and other efforts are under way with Lockheed Martin. The Ukraine is also thought to have con­ducted devel­op­ment work for the coun­ter­mea­sures incor­po­rated into Soviet and now Russian inter­con­ti­nen­tal bal­lis­tic missiles.

Read the rest of this story and see oth­ers from our Aviation Week part­ners at Military​.com.

– Christian