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

[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

[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.

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)

[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

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.

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.

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.