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U.S. Deploys Satellite Jamming System
CNN has an article about a ground-based satellite jamming system that "uses electromagnetic radio frequency energy to knock out transmissions on a temporary and reversible basis, without frying components". Is this just another old school EM jamming technique, or something new? Of course they won't say, citing "operational security" concerns.
This whole control of space thing is approaching the thin line between annoyed and pissed.
While USAF claims this "ground-based jammer uses electromagnetic radio frequency energy to knock out transmissions on a temporary and reversible basis, without frying components", it will only take one mistake (and it's not that unusual) to fry someone's $500mil baby.
If other countries even dare to think about developing a similar jammer to "neutralize" US's satellite communication and its space-based capabilities, it's likely that US will simply launch another pre-emptive attack to destroy those jammers in these countries.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
"The device appears to have been put into service considerably earlier than had been projected by the Air Force as recently as February.
At that time, a long-range planning document, dubbed the Transformation Flight Plan, said such a system would let the United States by 2010 "deny and disrupt an adversary's space-based communications and early warning" of attack."
That's the way to beat the enemy to the punch - make them think you're 5+ years away from ready, then DEPLOY!
When I see verbiage like "electromagnetic radio frequency energy" I immediately get suspicious. Someone's trying to bullshit me here.
Maybe this was a beta version?
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
But i suspect my wifi was temporarily jammed
This is another vaporware lie perpitrated by "the Man" to keep me from telling the truth about *BZZZT* [NO CARRIER]
I'm having a mental flashback of the scene where the anti-missile system hits an MTV satellite and the girl's TV explodes, where she exclaims "Awesome!"
... until SpamSat is launched, and then all will agree that is a good thing.
I think the USAF could easily recoup their investment if they allowed people to "vote" TV channels off of satellite comms. $1 a minute to jam the signal. No more QVC, goodbye to MTV-trash - yippee!
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
"Raspberry! I hate Raspberry!"
uses electromagnetic radio frequency energy to knock out transmissions on a temporary and reversible basis, without frying components
Is it possible to knock out transmissions on a reversible basis while frying components?
Now, jamming the downlink is harder, but if you hit the satellite with enough power on any band, it'll freak out. With a highly directional antenna, you could even take out only a specific satellite.
Satellites do have to deal with ionizing radiation and can't have enough shielding to totally block it, so they're equipped to reset themselves when they get `stuck' because some IC got hit with a stray alpha particle -- because it's not *if* it will happen, it's *when*.
Of course, if you hit the satellite with enough power, you may actually damage it. If that happens, you just play dumb. Sure, it may have happened while the satellite was over the US (or a US base, or US ship), but that was just a coincidence, right?
I guess a new school jamming technique might be to actually hit it with ionizing radiation (typically X and gamma rays, and high energy electrons and protons (often with some neutrons in the form of an alpha particle) but these are generally attenutated greatly by the atmosphere (and the charged particles diverted by our magnetic field), so this would be hard to do from the ground. But I guess if you can make it strong enough, or do it from a tall mountain/plane flying above most of our atmosphere ...
What's to keep people from encrypting communications, and using commercial satellite systems? In fact, you could put up a satellite system and market it for commercial use. Then, when you use it to transmit your nefarious plans, the US won't want to take it down because it would be too large of a disruption to US businesses.
Two relatively expensive terrorist tools I'd like to hear more about:
1) ground-based satelite-destroyers.
2) space-based satelite-destroyers.
Can you imagine the damage to the American psyche if all the TV- and other-entertainment- satellites were knocked out at once? There'd be great moaning and gnashing of teeth while America waited a few months or years for replacements to go up.
Imagine if that happened in the middle of the Superbowl?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
For the moment the Russians have a far more capable space program than we do and the Chinese have a bigger industrial base. We can eventually beat the Russians with technology, but not in the short term. But with all our collective money funding the war in Iraq, we would not be able to out-produce or out-spend the Chinese.
I think all it will end up doing is spurring Russia and China into matching the threat. Hopefully we don't find out the hard way that their space capabilities have improved beyond our ability to catch up.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Michael Powell: You've got to jam the Sirius satellites, Scotty, Howard Stern is corrupting the youth of America!
Scotty: I'm givin' er all she's got, Chairman...
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
This is just another way for bible thumping goverment agents to control my Pr0n surfing!.
Since satellites generally use a few watts to a few tens of watts, and generally use low-gain antennae, it wouldn't take more than a couple of hundred reflected watts to do the job. Say a hundred kilowatts of transmission at the ground.
The chilling implication here: you can only really jam satellites that use low-gain antennae -- e.g. comsats and "cheap" satellites. Anyone who anticipates this type of jamming for a point-to-point communicating bird can just use a high gain antenna to send all their transmitted power straight to the ground station. Another way around, especially for a comlink bird or something that can't use a beam to punch through the noise, would be to use "stealth" planar-panel technology on the satellite. If the satellite presents a flat face to the Earth, the jamming signal will be coherently reflected and probably won't affect the transmission much (except for an unlucky receiver who is in the reflected beam).
So, er, this is probably good for knocking out comsats and academic satellites -- but foreign spy satellites will probably be pretty hardened against it before too long from now.
Note: I'm not a military space insider -- just an astrophysicist. These ideas occurred to me in about 30 seconds, so you can bet anyone with his/her own space program already thought of 'em too.
Or maybe this is the govt's answer to all those people hacking satellite cards.
No TV For YOU
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I'm pretty sure it works by spray painting anti-french slogans on the satellite gyroscope lens....oh crap, I've said too much.... :-)
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
This is part of the threat the senior US official made at a London conference on Galileo.
The senior official promised that in the event China used the Galileo system against the US, the US would attempt what they called reversible action, but, if necessary, they would use irreversible action, to knock out the Galileo system.
Article on the threat
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
Anyone remember Captain Midnight and the HBO incident?
Tracking dish, knowledge of the frequencies in use, signal generator and amplifier and you're pretty much there.
Of course if they're using DS spread spectrum and they don't have the spreading code, it could be considerably harder, though turning up the power sufficiently would probably desensitise the front end of the satellite enough to stop it from working.
... I always wondered why satellites are wrapped in gold foil. The offical reason was that it protected against micro-meteorites, sudden temperature changes and heat stress. Now we know the real reason :)
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Have you ever gotten those places on your FM dial, where it sounds like 10 different stations are coming in at once? That is intermodulation distortion. Very large signals competing with other very large signals. This is most likely what this "weapon" does. Just overloads the telemetry, data channels, etc of a satellite receiver. It takes alot of current to produce overload resistant receivers, and current is always at a premium on satellites, so I would expect weak receiver front ends that are subject to this ground interference.
*sighs* Okay, so all this "homeland security for terrorists" stuff has developed a critical and highly expensive need for us jamming their SATELLITES?
Ya know, I'm not really any form of conspiracy theorist, but when I do see something capable of blocking communications by the government on domestic ground, I want to go re-read the Constitution. The only certainty about such a thing was that it was funded for a purpose, so would someone explain to me what a valid purpose for such a thing would be?
Not unless you can manage to fry ONLY components that the sat doesn't need for communication, and there are, oh, say, zero to few of those in comsats.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Jamming is a traditional tactic in electroninc warfare.
/.ers You guys play strategy and tactics games all the time...
The capability of locating an uplink based on signals received from a satellite is of much greater strategic value then destruction of the satellite. This is true for all engaged parties.
So why jam at all?
Suppose something like a cruise missle with partial guidance from a satellite is on it's way to your ship. Ideally you would want to co-opt the satellite and take some control. However, when the time comes, the last thing you want is the correct information to reach the missle. Here jamming makes sense. Without jamming capability a situation might arise in which the strategic value
to you, of your oppositions satellite, is greater than the value of your ship!
Come on
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
It seems that this ground-based device is "temporary"... does this mean the the DOS is only active while the radio "beam" is activly engaged on the SAT. Would this mean that only geo-sync sats could be targeted 100% of the time, and others would be Off-line only when in the line of site...
Then we should also ban CNN too, they ran the Bin Laden tape. Seriously, Al Jazeera is like an Arabic CNN. It's not like they were pro-Saddam or anything. Yeah, they mentioned the beheadings, they also had Iraqi politicians and Iraqi clerics on to condemn it. Even Israel does interviews on Al Jazeera, think about that.
Technically it was 2.2 buildings(don't forget the pentagon wing) and four planes.
So we still have to take out a chunck of Libya or Iran.
If you take out the Statue of Liberty (even though it was given to us by the French), the White House, and Wall Street I'd expect nothing less than the invasion of three countries, not including the invasion of france to grab some artists to replace the statue. (I'm kidding)
I don't read AC A human right
If fights are fair they are also infrequent. Of the three countries in the "Axis of Evil" we went into Iraq because Iran and N Korea would have been fairer fights. Don't get me wrong, if you are going to pick a dog to kick I'd pick the chihuahua over the pit bull too.