Noah Shachtman's Blog

So Beijing has finally owned up to blasting one of their satellites out of orbit — althogh a foreign ministry spokesperson says that “the test is not targeted at any country and will not threaten any country.”

But space-tracker Sven Grahn, over on the FPSPACE list, is wondering why the Chinese bothered to hit the sat in the first place. After all, he notes, Beijing didn’t have to destroy its orbiter, in order to prove its satellite-killer worked.

The Chinese could have put up a a target satellite with a miss-distance indicator and then launched the ground-based interceptor to fly really close without destroying the target. But who would have noticed? US intelligence perhaps – but what could the US have said? “A Chinese missile came very close to a Chinese satellite!” So what would the general public say? They could say: “just another unsubstantiated accusation from the Pentagon!” The Chinese would not want to announce such a test. To prove that it was effective they would have had to release test data. They also want to keep up appearances that they only want to use space for peaceful purposes.

So, the Chinese decide to really hit a satellite and create a huge cloud of debris. The U.S. detects the intercept and releases the [debris information], provid[ing] the general public with hard evidence that the test really occurred. This raised the credibility of the U.S. And the Chinese are happy because the message they wanted to send to the world has gotten out – loud and clear.

This sort of subterfuge is one of several reasons why Joe Buff thinks that the anti-satellite (ASAT) test wasn’t just some rogue operation — it was authorized from the top. President Hu Jintao “is head of state, commander in chief, and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party all rolled into one,” Buff reminds us. “The People’s Liberation Army makes sure that the CCP stays in total control of the nation. The General Political Department of the PLA [People's Liberation Army] has commissars everywhere who make sure the armed forces stay absolutely loyal to the Party. So no way was Mr. Hu clueless on any front in this ASAT brouhaha.”

This isn’t China’s only space controversy, long-time satellite-watcher Peter Brown notes in a fascinating piece for the Washington Times. “The loss of another Chinese satellite in early November is causing headaches as well, something that China would prefer to keep quiet.”

This involved a spanking new Chinese communications satellite, the largest ever built to date by China. Known as Sinosat-2, it was launched on October 29 and weighed more than 5 tons. In a matter of days, however, any celebrating ended rather abruptly. Sinosat-2 suffered a complete failure and soon was hurtling back into the earth’s atmosphere…

Despite initial reports that Sinosat-2 was experiencing problems, Chinese space officials elected to remain silent for two weeks or more — until late November — until accounts of this Chinese satellite in distress began appearing in the Asian press…

Why was China reluctant to admit that Sinosat-2 was in serious trouble? First, this satellite represented China’s first flight of its new Dongfanghong or DFH-4 spacecraft bus. Second, Sinosat-2 was the first of a new generation of jamming-resistant satellites created by China after satellite broadcasts were jammed in 2002. These incidents were characterized by the Chinese government as deliberate acts of sabotage carried out by the outlawed Falun Gong involving a satellite known as Sinosat-1.

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I spoke with John Pike, the long-time military space observer and director of GlobalSecurity.org, shortly after the news broke that the Chinese had destroyed a satellite, more than 500 miles above the Earth. He wondered how much “adult supervision” there had been of the sat-killer test. Perhaps this was a small group of China star warriors looking to teach the U.S. a lesson, he mused — not a big, strategic move from the chiefs in Beijing.

Now, there have been lots of theories about why China decided now to conduct their anti-satellite test. Maybe it was a way to scare the Bush administration back to the negotiating table. Maybe it was done to compete with India’s recent ballistic missile test. Maybe it was a designed to show the U.S. how costly an intervention on Taiwain’s side would be. (The CIA is “especially concerned,” because “the Chinese have become so adept at camouflage,” according to Aviation Week.)

Today’s analysis in the New York Times, however, seems to lend credence to Pike’s guess. “Bush administration officials said that they had been unable to get even the most basic diplomatic response from China,” the paper says. Those American officials “were uncertain whether China’s top leaders, including President Hu Jintao, were fully aware of the test or the reaction it would engender.”

The American officials presume that Mr. Hu was generally aware of the missile testing program, but speculate that he may not have known the timing of the test. China’s continuing silence would appear to suggest, at a minimum, that Mr. Hu did not anticipate a strong international reaction, either because he had not fully prepared for the possibility that the test would succeed, or because he did not foresee that American intelligence on it would be shared with allies, or leaked.

In an interview late Friday, Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush’s national security adviser, raised the possibility that China’s leaders might not have fully known what their military was doing.

“The question on something like this is, at what level in the Chinese government are people witting, and have they approved?” Mr. Hadley asked.

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* Beijing’s Next-Gen Sat Strike
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* Why Did China Smack the Sat?
* China Sat-Killer Not Yet Weapons Grade?

Last week, I described China’s satellite strike as “next-gen,” and America’s ability to fend off such an attack however somewhere around zero. After all, there’s never been a direct ground-to-space satellite smack; and the Air Force itself says such defenses are improbable, at best.

But veteran space analyst Jim Oberg says the anti-satellite test was a little easier than it looked. And there may be some defenses, after all. Because there’s a big difference between a “satellite-killing demonstration and the needs of a real weapon — one that would be a genuine threat to other countries’ satellites,” he notes.

Now it’s important to keep in mind that the Chinese carefully timed the launch of their kinetic kill vehicle so that it would intercept the known position and orbit of the satellite it was aiming for—intercepting a target in an arbitrary orbit is a much more difficult proposition…

The missile’s kill mechanism is that of a bullet: It crashes head-on into a target moving at 28 000 km/hr, adding its own speed to the total impact velocity…

The Chinese targeted a low-orbiting, obsolete, weather satellite, where the kinetic kill energy was very great. However, the really strategic satellites fly much higher — the [GPS] navigation network is 20 000 km up… [T]he orbital velocities [there] are so much lower that the impact energy would be only about a tenth as high as in last week’s test.

Distance introduces a second burden: terminal navigation. When a target satellite is close to the Earth, ground radars can track it and relay final course corrections, both to the rocket during its ascent and to the kill vehicle, once it has been deployed on its hoped-for collision course. Radar operates at an inverse fourth power law, which means that for the Chinese system to aim many times farther than low Earth orbit—as it would have to do to track objects geosynchronously—the demands on a ground-based radar would be simply impossible…

Nor are space targets helpless victims to such kinetic kill attacks, especially at higher altitudes… [A] target satellite can take steps to interfere with the attacker obtaining a workable targeting solution, and the farther from Earth the attack occurs, the more the odds favor the target.

Objects can hide in space, to a greater or lesser degree, by lowering their radar reflectivity or optical brightness along the attacker’s expected line of approach. This makes terminal navigation and guidance more difficult. That effect can be augmented with decoys, which can either be deployed when an attack is detected or can be sent, as a matter of routine, to fly in formation with the high-value target. A decoy doesn’t have to be a throwaway subsatellite, it could be an inflatable spar a few tens of meters long with a pseudo-target at the end to attract the on-rushing kinetic kill vehicle away from the real spacecraft. Such a decoy could be deployed in a matter of minutes, and even re-stowed afterwards for future re-use.

Even the simple suspicion that a target may have such a capability would discourage a potential attacker. And the realization that a target might also be able to detect and characterize even a failed attack would be an additional deterrent. There would be no way for the attacking country to get away with attempted mayhem.

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* China Tests Satellite Killer?
* China Space Attack: Unstoppable
* Beijing’s Next-Gen Sat Strike
* Satellite Killer’s Big Impact
* Why Did China Smack the Sat?
* Who Ordered the Satellite Strike?

(Big ups: Stefan Landsberger, for his awesome collection of Chinese propaganda posters)

So why did China blow up one of their satellites last week? The Times offers up a few possible explanations:

Having a weapon that can disable or destroy satellites is considered a component of China’s unofficial doctrine of asymmetrical warfare. China’s army strategists have written that the military intends to use relatively inexpensive but highly disruptive technologies to impede the better-equipped and better-trained American forces in the event of an armed conflict — over Taiwan, for example…

Some analysts suggested that one possible motivation was to prod the Bush administration to negotiate a treaty to ban space weapons. Russia and China have advocated such a treaty, but President Bush rejected those calls when he authorized a policy that seeks to preserve “freedom of action” in space. Chinese officials have warned that an arms race could ensue if Washington did not change course.

Now, Beijing officials aren’t even admitting they destroyed the orbiter, yet. But the China Matters blog uncovers a post by a self-proclaimed Chinese soldier, who seems to reinforce the scare-’em-into-cutting-a-deal motive:

This overweening country [the USA] began to regard space as its own back yard. The national space policy it announced in 2006 nonchalantly regarded space as its private property. At the same time, when China at the United Nations proposed a special international organization to resolve the actual problems of a space arms race that were being faced, the United States, acting as a country far in the lead in space, vehemently opposed, saying that there was no arms race in space…

We hope… [this] will smack the American carnivores back to reason. History shows us that if you don’t hit Americans, they aren’t willing to sit down at the negotiation table.

This was actually the fourth time the Chinese tried to destroy a satellite, GlobalSecurity.org notes. And as “reckless, self-defeating and stupid” as the test was, adds Arms Control Wonk Jeffrey Lewis, the test was legal, because there’s “currently no prohibition on destructive ASAT [anti-satellite] testing. There should be.”

UPDATE 01/21/07: Last week’s test has given a “shiver of hope” to the “nation’s star warriors, frustrated that their plans to arm the heavens went nowhere for two decades despite more than $100 billion in blue-sky research,” Bill Broad says in a tart opinion piece.

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There’s been immediate fallout — both physical and political — from China’s satellite killer test.

Debris from the orbital collision has already been spotted, the M-T Milcom blog notes. “As of this writing NORAD has officially cataloged 32 objects… that now pollute a vital area of space (sun-synchronous polar orbit).” The picture to the right is of a few of ‘em.

“There are over 125 satellites that operate in this portion of space,” the M-T blog observes. Those include reconnaissance satellites, like the Lacrosse and Advanced Keyhole orbiters, as well as weather-monitors, like the Defense Meteorological Satellites Program series. In other words, this test directly affects the American military’s ability look for terrorist hideouts, and survey a potential battlefield. These are not small matters. “Our space assets are the first asset on the scene,” GlobalSecurity.org’s John Pike tells the AP. “They are absolutely central to why we are a superpower – a signature component to America’s style of warfare.”

Frequent Defense Tech commenter Robot Economist, now with his own blog, warns that “this situation has the potential of becoming the next Katyusha rocket or IED problem for the United States.” Even the International Space Station could be at risk. That said, RE reminds us that “it is unlikely that [China's] success… translates into any sort of immediately fieldable capability.”

If the spotty record of our ground-based missile interceptors demonstrate anything, it is the difficulty of intercepting even predictable space targets… [And] the Chinese had a pretty good handicap on this test.

Robert Farley sees the anti-satellite trial as “first and foremost… a deterrent move aimed at the United States.”

The US military isn’t completely dependent on spy satellites (in case of war, the Taiwan Straits would be overflown by enough spy and communications aircraft to make the satellites redundant), but destroying them is a way of chipping away at US capability, and thus indicating that China can inflict real costs in case of a US intervention in a militarized China-Taiwan dispute. The public way in which the Chinese have carried out this test, as well as earlier “blinding” tests, and the recent submarine-stalks-carrier debacle indicates to me that they’re as serious as possible about showing the US their capabilities, which is key to a deterrent strategy. Also, Chinese anti-satellite capabilities don’t have to be targeted against US military satellites; the Chinese may threaten commercial satellites as well, which would help to metastasize the costs of any US intervention.

No wonder, then, that governments around the world are protesting the move. With one exception, apparently: Russia. Arms Control Wonk notes…

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov commented to reporters that he has heard reports of the Chinese test, but thinks that the rumors are quite abstract and are exaggerated.

In an interview, vice-preseident of the Russian Academy of geopolitcal affairs, General Leonid Ivashov, said that he thinks the Chinese used Russian developments for making their antisatellite missiles.

How do you think this is going to play out? Speak up!

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* China Tests Satellite Killer?
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* Who Ordered the Satellite Strike?

China’s satellite shoot-down isn’t just a provocative, dangerous act, writes veteran space analyst Jim Oberg. It also marks the rise of a new kind of satellite-killing technology — one in which a weapon is shot directly from the ground, to the orbiter up on high.

Previous anti-satellite weapons tests, conducted during the Cold War, involved either co-orbiting killer satellites (the Soviet approach) or an air-launched anti-satellite missile (the U.S. approach, also considered by the Soviets but never attempted). Some tests involved shooting ground-based anti-missile missiles toward satellites, but those missiles never hit their mark.

That’s because it’s hard to nail an orbiter, traveling hundreds of miles up at thousands of miles per hour, from the ground. The fact that the Chinese were able to do it could have troubling repercussions beyond space, as one commenter to the FPSPACE list notes:

Assuming the [Chinese target satellite] was on the order of 3 meters in size, and assuming the kill was made in direct ascent mode as opposed to co-orbiting mode, this test demonstrates the capability to achieve a velocity error on the order of 3 meters / ~1000 seconds, i.e., way less than 1 cm per second. This has obvious implications for their CEPs [Circular Error Probables, the accuracy] of Chinese ballistic missiles.

Now, Beijing seems to have cheated just a bit in this test, Oberg observes.

The last orbital data released by NORAD seem to show one end of the [Chinese target] satellite’s orbit being raised by about 20 miles (32 kilometers). Such tweaking is characteristic of a satellite lining up its orbital path for a rendezvous with a ground-launched visitor. The international space station does this in preparation for Russian spacecraft visits.

In fact, the reason the U.S. Air Force chose the air-launched anti-satellite system is that it does not have to have its target line up with a ground-based missile pad. Naturally, a real target in the real world would never make such a helpful maneuver.

Without the target’s maneuver to make itself easier to kill, a ground-based shot would likely have to be made from the side — or “out of plane,” in space navigation parlance. With such a geometry, the final approach for physical contact occurs under much higher rates of angular change, making terminal guidance much more difficult. It can be done, but with less reliability.

But even with some fudging, this remains a very serious technical accomplishment. Oberg’s piece has lots more — including some possible (repeat, possible) countermeasures to a satellite strike. Be sure to read the whole thing.

Of course, for a long time, directly attacking the orbiter with another piece of metal seemed like the least likely, least effective way to knock a satellite out. Since 2004, the U.S. Air Force has had in its arsenal a series of radio frequency jammers, to interfere with satellite operations. Three or four times a year, small groups of junior officers gather at an Air Force Research Laboratory facility in New Mexico to figure out how to take American satellites off-line using nothing more than sweet talk and off-the-shelf gear.

Then there are the lasers. Not only did China recently light up an American orbiter with a ground-based laser. But, as Dan Dupont reminds us, the U.S. military spent much of the 90’s testing out a satellite-shooting beam weapon of its own: the Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser, or “MIRACL.”

“In October 1997, the Air Force commissioned a test of an ASAT [anti-satellite] system based on the MIRACL laser,” the Union of Concerned Scientists notes. “This system was directed toward a satellite orbiting 420 km above the Earth. The MIRACL laser apparently had technical difficulties, but the results of the test were startling.”

A lower-power (30-watt) laser intended for alignment of the system and tracking of the satellite was the primary laser source used during the test, and it appeared that this lower-power laser was sufficiently powerful itself to blind the satellite temporarily, although it could not destroy the sensor. That a commercially available laser and a 1.5 m mirror could be an effective ASAT highlighted a US vulnerability that had not been fully appreciated. Although the Pentagon described the test as defensive (i.e., to learn about the vulnerability of US satellites to laser attack), many—in particular the Russians—expressed concern about the offensive capabilities of this system and whether it constituted a breach of the ABM [anti-ballistic missile] Treaty, and formally requested negotiations on an ASAT weapon ban.

(Big ups: AT)

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* China Tests Satellite Killer?
* China Space Attack: Unstoppable
* Satellite Killer’s Broad Impact
* Why Did China Smack the Sat?
* China Sat-Killer Not Yet Weapons Grade?
* Who Ordered the Satellite Strike?

China has shown it can destroy a satellite in orbit. What could the U.S. do to stop Beijing, if it decided to attack an American orbiter next? Short answer: nothing.

It takes about 20 minutes to fire a ballistic missile into space, and have its “kill vehicle” strike a satellite at hypersonic speed — over 15,000 miles per hour — in low-earth orbit. That’s far too quick for anything in the American arsenal to respond, in time. There’s “no possibility of shielding” a relatively-fragile satellite against such a strike. “And it is impractical [for a satellite] to carry enough fuel to maneuver away even if you had specific and timely warning of an attack,” Center for Defense Information analyst Theresea Hitchens notes.

The American military today counts on its satellites to relay orders, guide troops across battlefields, and spy on enemy hideouts. The U.S. Air Force’s primer for war in space — “Doctrine Document 2-2.1: Counterspace Operations” — lists a number of measures that can be taken to protect American assets in orbit, including “deploying satellites into various orbital altitudes and planes” and “employing frequency-hopping techniques to complicate jamming.” But those tactics are used to preserve the U.S. satellite constellation as a whole. None of them could save a single American orbiter against a direct attack. “Physical hardening of structures mitigates the impact of kinetic effects, but is generally more applicable to ground-based facilities than to space-based systems due to launch-weight considerations,” the Air Force document notes. “Maneuver[ing] is limited by on-board fuel constraints, orbital mechanics, and advanced warning of an impending attack. Furthermore, repositioning satellites generally degrades or interrupts their mission.”

With today’s conventional defenses proving so impotent, expect a new push within the U.S. military for more exotic countermeasures. The Airborne Laser is a modified 747 that’s being designed to blast missiles out of the sky, as soon as they leave they launch pad; the jet’s first flight test in expected in 2009, after years and years of delays. The Kinetic Energy Interceptor is a long-range, non-explosive missile, meant for the same task. But the weapon “exists mostly on paper, and couldn’t be operational before 2014,” Defense Tech’s David Axe noted recently.

The U.S. could also try to destroy an anti-satellite missile, before it took off. Over the last several years, momentum has been building in the Pentagon for the ability to conduct “Prompt Global Strikes,” hitting anywhere on Earth, in an hour or less. But near-term PGS plans — using modified Trident ballistic missiles — have been put on hold, for fears that such an attack could start World War III, in the process. Destroying a satellite is as clear an act of war as there can be, however. Perhaps those Trident attacks will now be seen as worth the risk.

In the meantime, GlobalSecurity.org director John Pike figures the Chinese will continue to test their satellite-killing weapons. It takes a dozen or more trials before a strategic weapon like this is deemed reliable enough to be considered operational. “So expect one or two more tests like this every year, for a long time,” he says.

The Chinese test, now confirmed by the National Security Council, would be the first successful anti-satellite weapons trial since 1985, when the United States used an F-15 and a kill vehicle to destroy the Solwind research satellite. And that trial was dangerous — not just for its target, but for nearly everything orbiting in space, Hitchens notes. Even small pieces of space debris can be lethal to spacecraft. The ‘85 test “resulted in more than 250 pieces of debris, the last of which deorbited in 2002.”

The Chinese trial could “lead to nearly 800 debris fragments of size 10 cm or larger, nearly 40,000 debris fragments with size between 1 and 10 cm, and roughly 2 million fragments of size 1 mm or larger,” the Union of Concerned Scientists‘ David Wright notes on the Arms Control Wonk blog. “Roughly half of the debris fragments with size 1 cm or larger would stay in orbit for more than a decade.”

“This raises an interesting public policy question because we are so much more dependent on commercial and military satellites that the ASAT [anti-satellite] options available to us are much more complicated than those available to the Chinese,” adds Jeffrey Lewis. “This is a race that favors them, unfortunately.”

ALSO:
* China Tests Satellite Killer?
* Beijing’s Next-Gen Sat Strike
* Satellite Killer’s Broad Impact
* Why Did China Smack the Sat?
* China Sat-Killer Not Yet Weapons Grade?
* Who Ordered the Satellite Strike?

“China performed a successful anti-satellite weapons test” last week, according to Aviation Week. In the trial, a ballistic missile, armed with a non-explosive warhead, “destroy[ed] an aging Chinese weather satellite target” over 500 miles above the Earth, U.S. intelligence agencies believe.

The news comes just a few months after reports of China testing high-powered lasers to temporarily blind American orbiters. “If the test is verified it will signify a major new Chinese military capability,” AvWeek says. And it could be the spark that ignites an arms race in space, analysts believe. Theresa Hitchens, with the Center for Defense Information called it an “irresponsible and self-defeating act” that will give “space hawks… more ammunition to take the United States down a similarly dangerous path.”

Details emerging from space sources indicate that the Chinese Feng Yun 1C (FY-1C) polar orbit weather satellite… was attacked by an ASAT [anti-satellite] system launched from or near the Xichang Space Center.

The attack is believe to have occurred as the weather satellite flew at 530 mi. altitude 4 deg. west of Xichang, located in Sichuan province…

Although intelligence agencies must complete confirmation of the test, the attack is believed to have occurred at about 5:28 p.m. EST Jan. 11. U. S. intelligence agencies had been expecting some sort of test that day, sources said….

USAF radar reports on the Chinese FY-1C spacecraft have been posted once or twice daily for years, but those reports jumped to about 4 times per day just before the alleged test.

The USAF radar reports then ceased Jan. 11, but then appeared for a day showing “signs of orbital distress”. The reports were then halted again. The Air Force radars may well be busy cataloging many pieces of debris, sources said.

Harvard University’s Jeffrey Lewis, a self-admitted skeptic about China’s space ambitions, has been hearing from many sources in recent months that “China’s ASAT work seem[s] to have been ramping up.” He writes over at his blog, Arms Control Wonk:

If China has conducted an ASAT test, this is extremely bad. I had been hoping that the Bush Administration would push for a ban on anti-satellite testing, either in the form of a code of conduct. The Bush folks, however, have been fond of saying that wasn’t necessary, because ‘there is no arms race in space.’

Well, we have one now, instigated by an incredibly short-sighted Chinese government.

(Big ups: EM)

UPDATE 11:42 AM: Why would Beijing pull a stunt like this? The China Matters blog has a theory. Meanwhile, one keen space-watcher notes that, if this anti-sat weapon was really “kinetic” — i.e., hit-to-kill, non-explosive — instead of a plain ol’ exploding weapon, that’s extremely bad news. That means the booster rocket has to be very accurate “in order to deliver the kill vehicle to the desired initial trajectory…. Then the kill vehicle needs to tweak its trajectory into a precise collision course using on-board propulsion and either on-board target tracking or… command guidance from the ground.” That’s no mean task.

ALSO:
* China Space Attack: Unstoppable
* Beijing’s Next-Gen Sat Strike
* Satellite Killer’s Broad Impact
* Why Did China Smack the Sat?
* China Sat-Killer Not Yet Weapons Grade?
* Who Ordered the Satellite Strike?