India Developing Vehicle To Knock Enemy Satellites

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India Developing Vehicle To Knock Enemy Satellites

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday January 13, 2010 @05:15AM from the start-humming-the-music dept.

Frankie70 writes "Star Wars are back in fashion. With perennial (and nuclear armed) foe Pakistan always teetering on the brink of political collapse and neighboring regional superpower China taking greater strides into space technology, India has announced that it is developing an exo-atmospheric 'kill vehicle' that will knock enemy satellites out of orbit."

26 of 178 comments (clear)

Oh great, more orbital shooting gallery! by PeterM+from+Berkeley · 2010-01-13 05:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

With everyone "testing" their antisatellite weaponry and creating ever more orbital debris, pretty soon there'll be so much debris up there we won't be able to keep any satellites operational.
China's test of a year or two back may have already generated enough debris to start a chain reaction, any more and we may definitely go over the brink to where nothing is survivable in low earth orbit.
--PM
1. Re:Oh great, more orbital shooting gallery! by MRe_nl · 2010-01-13 05:41 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  There's an article1 about the military version of the Soviet Salyut space station, which flew as Salyuts 3 and 5 between 1974 and 1977.
  Virtually no information was available about the military Salyuts until recently, when access was opened up to a full-scale training model at the Moscow Aviation Institute. Well, guess what--Salyut 3 had a machine gun. The station had a 23 mm rapid-fire cannon mounted on the outside, along the long axis of the station "for defence against US space-based inspectors/interceptors".
  http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/spaceguns/
  
  --
  "Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
2. Re:Oh great, more orbital shooting gallery! by GreatBunzinni · 2010-01-13 05:43 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Well, that is the least of any government's worries if the alternative is letting his enemy freely communicate, spy, command and bomb their positions as they wish. If you absolutely need to point out the responsibility of turning space (well, the earth's orbit) into a shooting gallery then put the blame where it should be put: those who started putting there military equipment/targets there and not the ones needing to take them down.
  
  --
  Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
3. Re:Oh great, more orbital shooting gallery! by icebrain · 2010-01-13 06:02 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  The thing is, it's not just military spacecraft that would be targeted. Assuming the ASAT rounds have the range, you'd see things like com satellites (even civilian ones--think Iridium), GPS satellites, maybe even weather observation satellites. In a full-blown war where it's drastic enough to start downing birds, you're going to hit anything that could possibly help your enemies and give you a better chance to survive.
  
  --
  The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
4. Re:Oh great, more orbital shooting gallery! by Quiet_Desperation · 2010-01-13 06:52 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I am open to suggestions, since I am out of silly ideas that sound appealing to me.
  Um... um... giant space wet napkin?
  Using quantum mechanics to probabilistically erase the debris out of objective reality?
  Sex bot?
  Yeah, I know sex bot don't clean up teh orbits, but I'd worry less about space debris if I had one.
India announces a lot. by tjstork · 2010-01-13 05:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

India and Russia both have this habit of announcing these awesome things, and then never actually doing them. If India and Russia would have done everything they said, India would have five aircraft carriers and a man on the moon, Russia would have mach 15 planes for everyone, and more.

--
This is my sig.
1. Re:India announces a lot. by MRe_nl · 2010-01-13 08:04 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Five aircraft carriers on the moon would do India a fat lot of good,
  there's no atmosphere for the planes you dumbass.
  
  --
  "Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
2. Re:India announces a lot. by CodeBuster · 2010-01-13 11:19 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  India and Russia both have this habit of announcing these awesome things
  The Americans started the tradition, at least with regard to anti-satellite and space based weapons, with the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka "Star Wars") under then president Ronald Reagan. It has been speculated by some that SDI hastened the decline of the Soviet Union by promoting even more military research and spending on counter-counter measures at a time when the Soviet Union could least afford to "keep up" with accelerated US defense spending. The Soviets bought the artist renderings and animations of SDI laser satellites (peew, peew, peew) hook, line and sinker. They thought that not only were the Americans capable of building such things, but that they would work exactly as advertised (the Soviets had long had an inferiority complex when it came to western technology). It worked for the US during the Cold War so now other countries are taking a page out of the US playbook and touting their own "advanced" weapons or counter-measures programs.
Bad Idea by zifferent · 2010-01-13 05:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

Weaponizing space is a seriously bad idea. The US, Russia, Japan and China are not going to like this.

--
cat sig > /dev/null
1. Re:Bad Idea by Jeff+DeMaagd · 2010-01-13 05:35 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Does Pakistan have satellites? They've had some put up for them, but it looks like it numbers a total of three that have been put up there, and it looks like they're all dead or abandoned now.
  It seems more to me they're concerned about China.
2. Re:Bad Idea by Colonel+Korn · 2010-01-13 05:44 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Why not? If you're allowed to weaponize earth, why not space? Is it some kind of holy shrine? As for the 'bad idea' part- Well they should have thought of that when they created weapons in the first place right? India is doing what it takes to protect itself from some sort of maniacal attack from the Amreicans and the ruskies who'll try to blame it on someone else.
  It's a bad idea because blowing up a few satellites may make low Earth orbit a field of debris dense enough that it is impossible to keep the other satellites intact. Once we cross a certain orbital debris density threshold, the debris will impact with satellites and create new debris faster than existing debris falls to Earth due to drag. I think that's called the Kessler Effect (someone correct me here). Once that happens, we may be locking the whole world away from space exploration and exploitation (like commercial communication satellites) for a long time.
  
  --
  "I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
3. Re:Bad Idea by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2010-01-13 06:21 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Umm... Non sequitor alert here.
  
  It is, unfortunately, true that Pakistan has nukes and (despite being our ostensible buddy) a fairly large and influential class of religious enthusiasts with a penchant for explosive politics.
  
  However, there is absolutely nothing about that situation that is improved by spending a big pile of cash on whizbang space weapons. India and Pakistan are right next to each other. Even if Pakistan's team jihad decides to use missiles(rather than just putting a warhead in the back of a truck under a pile of something boring, or chartering a small cargo plane, or any other cheap, prosaic, and quite plausible method) this isn't going to be some "NORAD gets several minutes of warning while the ICBMs fly over the north pole" thing. This would be a very short range job. If anything could intercept in time, it wouldn't be grand space-based satellite killers.
  
  As for Pakistani satellites generally; satellites are all kinds of useful, and it can be prestigious to have your own(and, if you need certain specific capabilities, you pretty much have to build them yourself); but basic GPS and GPS equivalent services, as well as reasonably high resolution images in a variety of wavelengths, are close to commodified. It isn't as though Pakistan is going to build the "JihadPS" satellite positioning system that India can then knock out. Anybody who doesn't have the cash to build their own vertically integrated defense complex is just going to use off-the-shelf GPS/GALILEO/GLONASS receivers and hope for the best. You think India wants to go knocking out some or all of those?
  
  India faces some very real security issues, Pakistan among them; but the value-for-money in using satellite warfare to confront them seems absurdly slim, even by defense contractor standards.
4. Re:Bad Idea by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2010-01-13 06:26 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  True. However, their creepy intelligence agency, the ISI, which is arguably even more influential and less accountable than ours, has an unfortunate enthusiasm for unsavory groups.
  
  At best, they have a penchant for using fanatics as cost-effective proxies. At worst, they are actively sympathetic to them(They are hardly alone in this, it isn't a huge secret that the CIA has had a major hard-on for every tinpot right-winger who promises to hate the commies for some decades now; but that doesn't really make India feel any better about it).
5. Re:Bad Idea by Cjstone · 2010-01-13 06:38 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  The US has had ASAT capability for a while now, and has "shot down" way more than a single satellite. Our earliest ASAT systems actually detonated nukes in or near space. The first US hit-to-kill interceptor was in 1985, and was launched from a fighter jet. I think that test still holds the record for the only fighter jet to have shot down a satellite. In my opinion, the recent test was there to show that our standard weapons are capable of intercepting ICBM warheads. That test was strange, in that it took place at a relatively low altitude as far as satellites are concerned. The SM-3 missile can't reach a high enough altitude to knock down orbiting satellites, but it's good enough to nail vehicles reentering the atmosphere, and the test demonstrated that it can handle orbital velocities. So, basically, it wasn't an effective test of an anti-satellite weapon, but it was an effective test of an anti-ICBM weapon.
6. Re:Bad Idea by mjwx · 2010-01-13 12:34 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Weaponizing space is a seriously bad idea. The US, Russia, Japan and China are not going to like this.
  India is not weaponising space, India is developing ground based anti satellite weapons. This is perfectly acceptable as it's not banned by the treaty that prevents the militarisation of space (cant remember name).
  
  Besides, Russia, China and the US (Japan by proxy of the US) already have this technology. In addition to this Russia and China don't give a crap what India is doing within it's own borders (and I don't think Japan does either).
  
  --
  Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
7. Re:Bad Idea by couchslug · 2010-01-13 13:19 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Pakistan is militant, Muslim and therefore a threat. There is no reason to be politically correct and accord Islam respect it does not deserve.
  India should be ready to destroy Pakistan if attacked. It would be doing the rest of the non-Jihadist world a considerable favor should it come to that.
  
  --
  "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Knock out of orbit? by jpmorgan · 2010-01-13 05:21 · Score: 4, Interesting

You can't just 'knock something out of orbit,' like it's a porcelain vase on a mantelpiece. Orbits do not work that way! They're building a kill vehicle to blow up satellites.
They're still going to be in orbit, just in lots of little pieces.
Go Missiles! by decipher_saint · 2010-01-13 05:22 · Score: 2, Funny

Can't regular missiles do the job?
Won't somebody think of the missiles?

--
crazy dynamite monkey
Ready set fight by RedTeflon · 2010-01-13 05:24 · Score: 5, Funny

I personally cant wait for Dish & Direct TV to start battling it out by shooting down each others satellites.
1. Re:Ready set fight by vlm · 2010-01-13 06:02 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I personally cant wait for Dish & Direct TV to start battling it out by shooting down each others satellites.
  And the only way the public wins, is if they BOTH are successful.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The problem is by LoudMusic · 2010-01-13 05:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

The problem is, even if you knock down their satellites they're going to retaliate on the ground in your largest populated cities. And they don't need their satellites to do that.

--
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Re:Knock by MRe_nl · 2010-01-13 05:48 · Score: 4, Funny

Luckily, very few satellites these days have "Wizard Lock" and or "Hold Portal" cast on them.

--
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Buckshot orbital shooting gallery! by SEWilco · 2010-01-13 06:31 · Score: 3, Interesting

Any of the countries with space launch capability could ruin the party. It was pointed out years ago that a vehicle loaded with ball bearings can be sent around the Moon and back toward Earth, releasing a load of shrapnel which would sweep across all Earth-based orbits. Fortunately, space is big. Really big. So the damage would be spread out over time, depending upon how large the attack is.
1. Re:Buckshot orbital shooting gallery! by Arthur+Grumbine · 2010-01-13 07:29 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Fortunately, space is big. Really big.
  [citation needed]
  
  --
  Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
2. Re:Buckshot orbital shooting gallery! by Calinous · 2010-01-13 19:03 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  And with a decreased chance to hit the intended target it the target manage to escape that 10 kilometer wide "kill area" at the first shot. Coming to think about it, if it escapes the target area in the first ball bearing pass, chances are that it won't be on the same path with the ball bearings for a looooong time. So no, I don't think this "space ship loaded with ball bearings" is a good space-based kill weapon.
  For your information, 10 million ball bearing having about 5mm diameter would weigh more than 5 metric tons
India & China going to war? by assertation · 2010-01-13 09:34 · Score: 2, Funny

If India and China went to war that would wipe out the take-out industry on a global scale. We would all be stuck eating Mexican.