Space Wars

There have been lots of interesting stories recently about the US's growing reliance on satellites to control gee-whiz weaponry and provide detailed real-time images to battlefield commanders. MSNBC has a story on the military's growing bandwidth crunch. The AP has a story about how many other nations are putting up their own spy and communications satellites, suggesting that the US edge in space imagery might disappear (unless we start shooting other satellites down, of course). And Bruce Sterling has a fun story in Wired (fun in writing style, not in its implications) suggesting that we're entering an age of Pax Americana, where the US military is so dominant that competitors exist only at our sufferance (though that might not stop people from trying).

Comments

Military threats promote innovation

[atrowe]

While war and weaponry are generally considered to be Bad Things(tm), there could still be an upside to all this. The fact exists that the military is traditionally the single biggest innovator in new technologies and ideas. During the cold war, our government spent trillions of dollars funding research in all fields of science and as a result, we gained a lot of useful technology that has civilian as well as military usefulness.

Without the soviets to compete against, NASA's budget has been shrinking to pathetic levels, leaving little funding for research and exploration these days. Perhaps the threat of military satellites orbiting the Earth, and the need to defend against them could be just the thing the government needs to start funneling some more much deserved money into NASA again. Think of all the benefits that would result from the US getting into another space race with China.

Re:Military threats promote innovation

[Yokaze]

Actually, competition promotes innovation. Military conflicts are a form of competition.
But in contrast to most other forms of conflicts, military ones tend to be quite lethal.

Furthermore, for some reason, the military tends to be quite picky about releasing their achievements to the public.

They have developed a microchip-cpu for some fighter several years before the supposed first one by Intel. And now guess what, about a year or two ago the chief architect was finally allowed to lecture about the chip. What an achievement for humanity.

Of course, the money is not lost. Military people tend to spend their money, too. But the scientific and technological achievements are surely hidden away for about 20 to 30 years.

Re:Military threats promote innovation

[jw32767]

WWI _is_ a good example. Mass production of airplanes, trucks, and ships were required for the military effort, prompting a host of long term improvements in all those areas. In addition, radio was begining to be used by forces in the war, which helped fuel the radio boom of the 20s and 30s.

Re:Military threats promote innovation

[technos]

Barbed wire is a much older invention. Try 1860.

The important parts to World War I were aerial recon, machine guns, and long-range artillery. Oh, and poison gas. And the end of the grand march across Europe, as was done as late as 1880. It gave us real trench warfare too. Of course, it also gave us the laughed at Zeppelins and bombers that were nothing more than a man throwing a grenade with an impact fuse out of a plane.

I remember a writer claiming that after his experiences in Italy and France in WWI, that all wars after would center over air superiority. He was damn well right, even though his other prediction, that we would build huge honking land-cruiser tanks to rival battleships, was not. Of course, he was extremly pleased that his idea, the tank, had been built, and I think we can excuse him on that basis.

WWII was an expansion on air superiority. Everything revolved aroung getting your long-range artillery and bomber targeted on a real kill, so you could push them back.

What we have here it the ultimate in air superiority. We can see everything they do, and plop a laser-guided bomb down into their tent twenty-five minutes after they get ballsy enough to set it up. What is left to innovate? The speed of the kill vehicle? The number of kill vehicles available for any one target? Reducing the thirty minutes of time between SuperSekretSpySat-7 taking a picture of that BadGuy going to use the outhouse to a delay small enough to hit him before he finishes wiping? Do we need to watch everybody, all the time, and have the capibility to take out people at any place on the globe at any moment in time?

Re:Military threats promote innovation

[SectoidRandom]

The important thing is the reason, military competition is the reason why war promotes technological advances, be it World War or a Cold war, it's all the same, to varying degree's..

Economic competition has the same effect, to varying degree's, some area's such as space have at present limited commercial applications, for example with the Moon and Mars, there is no financial return on such ventures. At least not yet. So it takes government spending, mainly for propaganda purposes to reach them, meaning that in todays world, we're a long way from putting a man on Mars.

Throughout history war has benifited many things, such as for one peace itself! Without certian major wars, the relative peace we now how enjoy would not exist. War may be an absolutly terrible thing, but it's benifits are very noticable it has shaped the world we now live in, the question is when war is made obsolete (through the lack of significant threats) what will drive us?

Of course the answer is simple, it is the same thing that WWI and WWII were fought over, that is democracy, or more specifically capitalism. In years past it was the merchants and growing middle (working) class of Europe and America that created the revolution that replaced Monarch's with Democracies, those newly rich democracies then were forced to defend against the old ways of the Empires and Dictatorships! Hence very vaguly WWI / WWII.

The new world we live in, one of capitalism ruleing, will mean a much slower path to certain advances. Space exploration will only take off (excuse the pun) when the econmic need is found, say new resources, living space, etc.

Pure exploration right now unfortunatly is on hold... :(

Re:Military threats promote innovation

[(outer-limits)]

Which makes you wonder why we need a war for these things to occur. And for all the anti-govt rhetoric that is going on these days, it is governments that run wars.

Re:Military threats promote innovation

[PsiPsiStar]

The problem is that this dosen't measure what is lost. A cold war might spur innovation, but a government is neither the most efficient innovator, nor is it the most likely to freely distribute its innovations. You can measure what war 'gives' in terms of technology, but it's difficult to measure what it 'takes' away.

Would lower taxes result in more innovation, or not? Our economy is based on the idea of constant expansion. Research (in war or peace) is one way to do it.

Re:Military threats promote innovation

[PsiPsiStar]

>It 'takes' away either one's self or one's enemy.
Yes, resources, money, destruction of capital and destruction of human life....

So if a war costs 100 million in taxes total to both sides, does 250 million in property damage, kills 200 people on your side and 10,000 people on the other side and produces some cool night vision apparatus for one side...

Did it spur technological innovation or not?
Would the money have produced more innovation in peacetime?

Well, personally I was looking at how the government reacted to Celera's attempt to sequence the genome, and how state funded universities employeed poorer technology that made sequencing less efficient. The public sector won the race by throwing money at the problem (which I'm glad of, but I wish they could have been more streamlined about it). Of course, it may be bad to generalize here. But with the bay (sp) dole acts and technology transfer acts forcing public research to become more privatized and secretive the point starts to become moot.

Pax Americana

[Anonymous Coward]

The US might be the big kid on the block for now, but wait about 10 years. The European Union has talked about creating a European military. If this happens, the EU might give the US a run for its money.

What I'm NOT saying is that a Cold War will start between the EU and US. (Although relations have chilled recently between theUS and EU.)

Re:Pax Americana

[stoolpigeon]

I don't know if you'll ever see this- it being the next day and all.

But I'm telling you that while this is a generalization - it holds true on an alarming scale.

I think that the "European" culture is homogenous to some extent, especially as it relates to military action. I think, given the history of the region that this is completely understandable.

The problem is that the militaries of those nations are not handled properly. And what I described above takes place much too often.

Someone replied mentioning Somolia. I would argue that the situation is a bit different. But I would give it to them as well if they wanted to stick to it.

I'm not saying all the blame is on the European nations- but I am saying that America is more likely to take part in military action and more likely to see it through.

Some will see that as a positive, some as a negative.

.

Space Defense Initiative (SDI)

[Prolapsed Anus]

I believe that the US push for 'defensive' weapons in space is a farce; they're going to primarily be offensive weapons, 'defensive' only in their 'deterrence' to nations (particularly Third-World) that do not possess such weapons....

Dr. Bob Bowman http://rmbowman.com/ssn/ has asserted this for years - his website is an excellent resource for alternative analysis of the SDI programs that you won't find in the major media outlets.

PA

Re:Space Defense Initiative (SDI)

[prisoner-of-enigma]

I'd love to know how you'd propose turning a space-based kinetic kill vehicle into something you could conceivably use against a ground target. Or for that matter an orbitting laser.

Do a little research on kinetic kill vehicles from the old Reagan-era "Star Wars" program. It's essentially a hunk of dense metal with a few thrusters and an infrared seeker on the front. It has no explosives and doesn't need any; it kills its target by impact at orbital velocities (18,000mph). Using this against a ground target would result in either (a) a burnt-up kill vehicle or (b) a small hole in the ground about the size of a trashcan. Offensive weapon? Unlikely.

What about space-based lasers? Well, let's forget for a moment that no easily-loftable laser is currently available, and if it was it'd be hideously expensive to launch. Let's focus on the physics, namely "blooming". No, we're not talking about flowers here, we're talking about atmospheric attenuation of a laser beam. You could try shooting a ground target with an orbiting laser, but you'd lose a ton of beam power just punching through 50 miles of atmosphere. And again, all you'd get is a very small impact. You'd do much more damage with a cruise missle.

No one is proposing lofting any orbiting nukes, and even if they did, so what? What can an orbiting nuke hit that an ICBM or nuclear-tipped cruise missle can't already hit with impunity?

Or were you referring to space-vs-space offensive weaponry? Well, what would we shoot down with our lasers and KKV's? Comm and surveillance satellites perhaps, but we'd risk war by doing so, and for what gain? The only folks on earth who have a sizable space presence other than the U.S. and the E.U. is the former Soviet Union. Last I checked, the cold war was over, so I don't think they're our target. China is starting to get into the game, but a conflict with them would have to be decades off if China wants any hopes at actually winning anything.

So, in short, take your knee-jerk reaction and apply a little logic and common sense to it. Space-based weaponry right now pretty much HAS to be defensive, because we lack the technology to make an offensive use practical or even economical. If you're so concerned about indiscriminate use of offensive weapons, why not choose weapons that are actually useful at what they do, like cruise missles.

Re:Space Defense Initiative (SDI)

[Wyatt Earp]

One can not compare the AD and MAD thinking of deterrance the same way as the Roman Empire's "defensive" war thinking and Nazi Germany's expansion for living space.

The power to destroy armies, cities and entire cultures within a day didn't exsist until the mid 1950s when the Soviet Union, United States and United Kingdom developed fleets of long range manned bombers and later, ICBMs that could rain megatons of explosives at the push of a button.

MAD, did bring a period of realative peace in the sense there was not another fullscale war in Europe or the Pacific.

It's been since the World moved out of the bi-polar Super Power model that things have been less stable.

Defense through deterrence served alot more than the "ruling nations/classes".

Re:Space Defense Initiative (SDI)

[prisoner-of-enigma]

I would point out that an orbiting nuclear launcher would be subject to intense scrutiny by any potential target, thus partially offsetting some of the "surprise" factor. It would also be a fat and juicy target, as manuevering satellites is very expensive from a fuel standpoint -- ergo, the satellite will be easy to track, target, and destroy with something much cheaper than an orbiting nuclear "bomber".

Remember our anti-sat missle program using F-15 jets as launchers? Very cheap. Not very reliable, but if you can launch 50 missles at it for 1/10 the cost of the target, who cares?

And I'm going to go out on a limb here that will undoubtedly bring some flak, but I'm going to say it anyway -- the U.S. is not about to start an offensive nuclear war of conquest. If we were, we would've done it in the 50's when we could've wiped the Soviet Union off the map without fear of retribution. We had the nukes, they didn't. We could've taken over the world militarily and nobody could've stopped us. We didn't. I have a very funny feeling that had things been reversed (i.e. the Soviets having the bomb, not us) the outcome would not have been so pleasant. Or if the Nazi's had developed it first...imagine a nuclear payload on a V-2 rocket hitting London. How many of those would Churchill have put up with before capitulating? He would've had little choice except extermination, and the Nazi's already showed they had no compunction in that area.

The U.S. will continue to ply the world's economic and political culture to further our national interest -- as does ANY country on the planet. Again, I will allude to Darwinism and the survival instinct. It is in our best interests to cultivate governments that are friendly to us and to penalize those that are not. Like it or not, that's the way the world operates and the U.S. is far from being the worst example here (we are, however, the LARGEST example, one reason we're a lightning rod for criticism). While other countries kill their own citizens for speaking out against their government and no one utters a whimper, we are castigated daily for failing to shell out billions in economic aid to "the less fortunate", even though "the less fortunate" chant "Death to America" every other breath.

Okay, I'm heading OT here, so I'm going to stop. I still say that a defensive space-based weapons system is absolutely necessary. One crazed madman controlling one silo in Siberia could make the WTC disaster look like a sunburn, and there is nothing at all we could do to stop him once the "launch" button is pressed. A defensive shield would not be to protect us from mass nuclear war for the obvious reasons that are plaguing the system now (tracking, decoys, etc.), but it could make childs play of a small attack mounted by some lunatic with an axe to grind, nothing to lose, and a desire to be a martyr.

What time is it?

[depth_13]

This is kind of scary stuff really. When I was in the military there were several times when we were using Satellite Communications Uplinks and we had to sit around on our asses waiting for the right time so we could get an allotted frequency. There is so much demand for the few frequencies that the military satellites possess that you can end up waiting quite a while. The bad thing was sometimes you REALLY needed it. And you could get it...in 30 minutes.

For what its worth...

Just don't shoot down mine!

[SrlKlr]

I could really care less if they shot down some military spy satellites, but can you imagine if a foreign country went after our other satellites? Boom, no more cell phone, no more tv, no more satellite internet. You could seriously harm a nation's communications by targeting their satellites. Also, it is not just consumer end stuff, but much of the backbone of the communications go through satellites. I wonder if there are any internation war laws about this. I am sure the government has already mapped out this senario, at our cost of course...

Lots of Fun 'til It's Used on You

[Nightspore]

Sometime around 2008-2016 the machinations of supra-national trade organizations will have finally hammer-locked the bulk of humanity into a cycle of miserable economic and cultural servitiude as well as political impotence. At that point we'll experience protest like those of Seattle and Genoa but played out on an enormous, international scale.

That is the moment you and/or your children will find out first-hand what it feels like to be attacked by space-based weaponry.

All of this stuff is ultimately meant to exert power over /you/ - American, Canadian, French, Pakistani -- it doesn't matter. This is a jackboot in your face and the joke is you're paying for all of it and Bruce Sterling thinks it's cute. Have a nice day!

Night

Did Jon Katz Write This Crap?

[thelizman]

This article is a great sound and fury which signifies nothing. People have been commenting upon the video-game wars since '91. The obvious advantage of satellite intel was figured out with the Chronos missions of the 50's, and is the reason we've got a half dozen hubble space telescopes pointing down at us.

If you're going to write a report on modern military technology deployment, you might want to do a better job of explaining the variated threat we face today from both traditional military-industrial threats like China, to fluidic asymetric threats like rogue states which have the conventional ability to cause great damage, but not defeat, and support terrorist insurgents which can cause defeat without great damage.

Bandwidth crunch

[Chairboy]

One of the biggest roadblocks to military bandwidth is the number of TDRS satellites in orbit. These guys (Tracking Data Relay Satellites) are the backbone of modern space communications and have been in orbit since the early 80s.

The TDRS network was originally put in place to support the Space Shuttle and provide 24x7 communications access to ground control. Before TDRS, there had to be tracking stations around the world and in expensive ships crewed by hundreds. Before TDRS, re-entering spacecraft would experience a communications blackout because the ionized gases of the reentry blocked line of sight transmissions from the ground.

With TDRS, there is almost always a relay satellite around to link a spacecraft (or military satellite) to ground. Re-entering space shuttles now have contact with ground control through the entire entry sequence because the antennas can 'see' the TDRS network above them, unblocked by the plasma around the nose.

The problem? The TDRS network (which is continuosly refreshed with new satellites as older ones go out of service) is based on protocols from the 1970s that were supposed to provide voice and telemetry. Now, they're being tasked to channel still images and even video in some circumstances, and not just by the shuttle fleet and NASA. The military uses TDRS on occasion to get spy satellite data too, further sapping the infrastructure.

It's time to start upping a new network of satellites with K band or better transmitters and receivers (which use more power) and so on.

Re:Ooh.

[(outer-limits)]

It doesn't just spend, it exports more arms than any other country as well. Lets see now, just where do all those arms come from that allow all these countries around the world to destroy each other with come from?

Just how much was the US paying to buy back stinger missiles it gave to Muslim fundamentalists in Afganistan?

Israel has massively more arms than Palestine but it doesn't look to secure for me.

Re:Not Really A Concern

[Anonymous Coward]

>"This bandwidth crunch isn't really a major problem. The Star Wars program won't be up and running for a long time [...]"

You might want to actually read the MSNBC article. There is ALREADY a bandwidth crunch and it has nothing to do with Star Wars. One Global Hawk unmanned plane consumes ~500 megabits/s, "about five times the total bandwidth consumed by the entire U.S. military during the Gulf War."

Pax Americana Can't Be Done With Weapons Only

[Mittermeyer]

Folks, this is not good military analysis, this is just Bruce selling an article.

It is true that the satellites provide massive reconaissance and communications force multipliers to the military. It is also true that we are very dependent on them not just for military functions but also for tele-economic industries (making them juicy targets). And it is true that America's constant investment in various technologies mean a uni-polar world re: conventional military power.

What Bruce fails to realize is that these tools are just that- tools that can be broken, circumvented or worse copied and used better by others.

For instance, if we follow through with heavy DEWAD use (Directed Energy Weapon Air Defense), yes we can knock down missiles and rule the skies- for a while. Then our enemies will eventually duplicate the technology, and knock down our cruise missiles, UAVs and bombers. Then all the satellites in the world won't help our inability to affect events on the ground with airpower.

Even if we have a Rumsfeldian dream US Space Force, that doesn't stop the VW driving in from Mexico City with the nuke in the trunk.

Our enemies will move around our military power. Take a looksee at this translation of two Chinese colonels writing about our Desert War dominance, and how to circumvent and defeat the US in spite of military superiority. Somehow in his rush to sell his article, he did not deal with assymetric warfare.

Pax Americana needs these toys to happen, but the toys by themselves can be beaten. What we really need is plenty of mutual interest (read money and self-determination) for most of the world to participate in Pax Americana, the will to crush in Cold or Hot War those who will take away self-determination and money from others in the name of an ism (even if they are American), and the spread of fair legal and financial system to the average world citizen.

We will win with satellite TV moreso then satellite lasers.

I don't know what happened to Bruce- way too many blue hawaiians on Austin's Sixth Street I imagine.

We'd Be Stupid Too Depend On Space in War

[RhettLivingston]

The Chinese have already announced the development of very small mini-satellites that attach themselves to our satellites and can be blown up on demand. The idea is that they would launch these long before any war and have them in place just in case they needed them. They were small enough that many could be launched at once.

The concept is so simple and cheap and seemingly effective as to make it mind boggling that we would ever depend on satellites in a real war. If China wanted to retake Taiwan, all they'd have to do is put one of these on every military and civilian satellite and then push the button a few hours before their attack. We'd be so lost when all of the beepers, cell phones, TV networks, GPS units and other satellite based technologies stopped working all at once that it would probably take a couple of weeks before the majority of US citizens even knew what happened.

US power is overrated

[j09824]

The US really doesn't have much power to act independently. While the US has a big military, if that were ever used in ways not consistent with the interests of powerful European or Asian nations, the US economy would find itself in complete shambles very quickly. It wouldn't even require explicit sanctions by those nations, the market itself would exact the punishment, since the US is highly dependent on the economic well-being of Europe and Asia. The US military is, for practical purposes, a mercenary force that acts in the interest of the other economically powerful nations of the world, not primarily the US domestic interests.

Economically, the US doesn't have that much power either. Sure, the US government moves a lot of money around. But there are very view US corporations left--corporations and capital have become global, and they are associated with the US only to the degree that it furthers their economic interests.

While globalization has its problems, globalization and economic interdependencies have delivered on one big promise: they have eliminated all superpowers and forced all wealthy nations to cooperate, and that's a good thing. Whether Americans realize it or not pretty much doesn't matter. The only nations that are not subject to the imperatives and constraints of globalization are those nations that feel they don't have anything to lose; and the best way to fix that is to make them wealthy enough that they, too, feel that it is to their advantage to play by the rules. In different words, if you turn Iraqis and Palestinians into well-off, happy consumers, they'll kick out any leader that endangers a steady supply of PlayStations or BigMacs. Depressing perhaps, but it beats the alternatives.

Well, I would agree with most of that there...

[El Camino SS]

Our enemies will move around our military power. Take a looksee at this translation [die.net] of two Chinese colonels writing about our Desert War dominance, and how to circumvent and defeat the US in spite of military superiority.

I believe that you think that some of these weapons are useless or easily circumvented, and most of the rest of the world sees our army as full of "toys."

Toys indeed, if you definition includes things that burrow in ground and blow you up inside rock, track you with your cell phone, passive radar that just listens and never transmits, and all sorts of other nefarious things like that. They are not toys. IF OTHER NATIONS THINK THAT A SMARTBOMB IS A TOY, THEN THEY ARE OUT OF THEIR MINDS. They are up for a rude awakening.

Why is it a small, voluntary service US force always seems to run over a full blown, military controlled, conscripted nation in days? Its got to be the toys! Yeah right.

That is a childish justification for the fact that there are people that have put in billions (yes, freaking billions!) into not only developing these weapons, but coming up with the concepts and designing systems for their best implementation.

IN OTHER WORDS, IT IS ALL ABOUT THE RESEARCH EDGE. Go ahead, thwart it, Version 2.0 just shipped last week. See if you can crack it now.

Good example-
the trusty M-16 and its variants. Reliable. Cheap. Useful. All other modern nations have gone to guns with bullpup designs (clip is behind the trigger for more streamlined, futuristic look), because they say they are better balanced, shorter designs for guns. Sounds like a great idea. I thought so. They look cool in movies.

Until you learn that you have to not only take the 'dangerous end' of the weapon away from the enemy, but you have to take your trigger hand off of the grip and trigger to reload it. It takes two hands and more time. Also its nearly impossible to reload easily while laying down to fire, and soldiers do that A LOT. Also a bullpup exposes more head and shoulders around a corner when firing.

That idea has brought you such guns as the British SA 80. It looked and fired like it was made by Kenner. It had plastic parts. IT WAS EASILY OUTMATCHED BY A GOOD OL KALASHNIKOV.

Every arms manufacturer wants the M-16 contract, for obvious financial reasons. They hold competitions constantly and try every possible idea. The US military has tight, important standards FOR EVERYTHING. To think that there is a nation that can just up and exploit the weakness of the US tools in five minutes, is well, ridiculous and full of speculation. The difference? The US has not been speculating, they have been testing these things for decades even after they implement them. They know their holes.

If they research the M-16 so deeply and periodically, then what do they do with bleeding edge stuff?

I just don't see those Chinese Colonels reaching any new conclusions that we probably haven't a generation ago, and are actively trying to fix.

Never played Risk as a child?

[Guppy06]

It seems like the author of the Wired article is another example of a pseudointellectual thinking he can play armchair general. Let's review:

In the early 1990's an air campaign against the Iraqis was very successful. The Iraqis did have a rather state-of-the-art air defense radar system but had no idea how to use it. The result was that they left their radar lit up all the time instead of keeping it off until there was nothing US planes could do to defend against them (like how the Serbians did in 1999). And this is only one example of the numerous mistakes the Iraqis made. The Iraqi's own ineptitude and lack of forethoughtdefeated them, not satellites.

In 1999 and Serbia, NATO was dropping so many munitions that we were running out of cruise missiles. But Belgrade still didn't budge. The campaign was beginning to resemble B-52 raids on North Vietnam. What stopped that conflict was a popular pro-democratic uprising. Not satellites.

Just last year we have a campaign to drive the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. We had all the pretty gun camera footage on CNN. But once again the big contributing factor to our "victory" wasn't our technological gap so much as a popular uprising. We didn't bomb the Taliban back to the Stone Age, just enough to give the Northern Alliance the upper hand. The Afghani people won that battle, not satellites.

And shooting down foreign satellites was mentioned. Anybody who actually thinks for three seconds about that idea realizes that that is a decided BAD idea. If we shoot down their satellites, they are within their rights to shoot down ours. And the US as a whole is far more dependant on satellite technology than any possible future belligerant.

Of course, we're talking about Wired magazine, so what else should I expect other than some half-wit who thinks he knows everything about everything because he made a little money off the internet?