Pentagon Wants Disposable War Satellites

Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has invited manufacturers to propose squads of disposable mini-satellites costing about $500,000 each, capable of providing reconnaissance to soldiers at the press of a button. 'We envision a constellation of small satellites, at a fraction of the cost of airborne systems, that would allow deployed warfighters to hit "see me" on existing handheld devices and in less than 90 minutes receive a satellite image of their precise location to aid in mission planning,' says the agency. The U.S. Army already has access to drone aircraft to provide intelligence from the skies, and last year they announced that new helicopter-style machines equipped with 1.8 gigapixel cameras will soon go into service in Afghanistan. However, DARPA says such unmanned aircraft cannot cover extended territory without frequent refuelling. The SeeMe constellation will consist of some two-dozen satellites, each lasting 60-90 days in a very low-earth orbit before de-orbiting and completely burning up, leaving no space debris and causing no re-entry hazard. 'With a SeeMe constellation, we hope to directly support warfighters in multiple deployed overseas locations simultaneously with no logistics or maintenance costs beyond the warfighters' handhelds,' says program manager Dave Barnhart."

Comments

Expensive

[SJHillman]

$500,000 per satellite with a 2-3 month life? Pretty expensive. Does that include the cost of launching it too?

Re:Expensive

[Magada]

Wanna talk costs? This is a re-purposed FOBS.

Imagine how expensive it would (will?) be for other nuclear nations to track these launches and determine if they should start nuclear Armageddon or not.

I can only see this being used in a shooting war with China or Russia.

Re:Expensive

[shortscruffydave]

If you look at how much it costs to drop a Tomahawk missile onto a target then this could start to look more cost effective. If good satellite imagery/intel can point you more accurately onto where the bad guys are, then maybe you only need one missile instead of two or three if you're not so sure where your target is. Still not small beer, but it's all relative.

Re:Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

$500,000 per satellite with a 2-3 month life? Pretty expensive. Does that include the cost of launching it too?

Its not expensive at all even considering other "normal" military hardware.
For instance the phoenix missile carried onboard the F-14s cost 500 000 dollars each or a HARM missile can cost up to 900 000 $.

Re:Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

How much can that satellite save is the question. It doesn't have to save much in the way of life and materials to offset its own costs.

Re:Expensive

[daem0n1x]

No problem, cut the education and health care budgets to finance this. Things that matter should go first!

Re:Expensive

[fredrated]

We don't even know who the 'bad guys' are when they are sitting next to us, how the hell are we going to tell them from low earth orbit?
Besides, what good does it do when we are the bad guys? Do we start shooting ourselves? (Might actually be a good idea).

Re:Expensive

[strack]

if you combine that with a reusable falcon 9, much like what spacex announced they would be developing over the next few years, this starts to make more sense.

Re:Expensive

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention didn't we already spend a ton developing those huge wings that are supposed to be able to loiter for days or even weeks at a time using solar power? Between those, the drone planes, drone choppers, and actual manned craft this seems like just another excuse to cut the MIC a big fat check which when we are drowning in debt is the LAST thing we should be doing and if anything we should be cutting back. Cancel the F35, buy the stealth eagle instead, make the Ford the last carrier we buy for 20 years (we have ten while the next biggest military has two, talk about extreme overkill) and quit blowing money on technocrap and instead give our troops a raise and break, stop the endless stirring of shit and the constant redeployments.

Re:Expensive

[khallow]

No problem, cut the education and health care budgets to finance this. Things that matter should go first!

Actually, this is a pretty good choice. These programs typically have negative value, harming the US by driving up the cost of education and health care. The military has a lot of things to cut as well. And health care and military spending covers two of the biggest items in the federal budget.

Re:Expensive

[SillyHamster]

To add on to your point: Notice how the federal gov't didn't have the responsibilities of healthcare or education for the first 100~ years.

On the other hand, it's always had the responsibility of protecting our country from foreign threats. It really shouldn't be that hard to discern which items should be a higher priority for our federal gov't.

I can buy myself cough medicine and pay for a visit to my doctor.
I can buy a book or search the internets to educate myself.
I cannot buy myself a warplane or a warship to defend against a foreign gov'ts army, or to fight and destroy terrorists overseas. (And if I could afford it, my neighbors might not care for me having a private army/navy)

Re:Expensive

[TheLink]

Sometimes it costs even more to hit the wrong target ;)

Sounds familiar...

[icebrain]

I think Dale Brown had something like this in some of his novels... called them NIRTSsats or something.

Re:Sounds familiar...

[Enry]

Yep. Need It Right This Second Satellites.

I figured the military already had these in operation. It's a pretty obvious and inexpensive concept.

Re:Collision Risk?

[necro81]

The launch of a rocket isn't a secret, and the resulting orbit isn't, either. Even if the satellite makes an orbital change afterwards (unlikely, given the price and how expensive orbital maneuvers are), it's probably large enough to be trackable on radar. Even if it isn't clear what it is in the database (a spy satellite? a rocket fairing? ET?), those who care will know that it's there and can plan around it.

Expense Reduction

[VernonNemitz]

It seems to me that another and even cheaper solution to the problem of long-duration flight is being ignored. Just combine a balloon for lift with propellers for movement. Because most of the need for fuel goes into keeping it aloft --use the balloon for that part. The good old zeppelin shape can reduce the effect of wind on it (not that it needs to be very large, for a reconnaissance drone). And if the balloon was transparent plastic, it would be harder to see from the ground.

Re:Expense Reduction

[SJHillman]

Paint it something like sky blue or gray and it'll be even more difficult to see than transparent plastic, plus you're not limited to using materials that are transparent.

Disposable

[Taibhsear]

Only in the military can you label a $500,000 piece of equipment as "disposable"...

I would have loved to have this

[CPTreese]

I was in OIF 06-08 and I would have loved to have this intel a couple times. Once I was sent out to recover a vehicle that had been blown up, and due to terrain requirements, I had to take a road that hadn't been traveled on for some eight months. Consequently we didn't know it was heavily defended with IEDs and had huge ditches from rain runoff (pretty common in desert environments). It took my convoy about 24 hours to travel 5 kilometers because we had to improvise material to fill in the holes enough for the trucks to travel over. The satellite coverage wouldn't have helped with the IEDs but it might have helped give me a better idea of the road conditions.

Another time I was leading a convoy of about 30 vehicles and the route I chose had been blocked by another unit the previous day. It can be an emotional event to turn around that many vehicles in some Iraqi towns.

Re:I would have loved to have this

[Lumpy]

Yes it would have, giving teams like that their own private UAV to control and fly ahead so they can look for baddies setting up an ambush would go a very long way. Problem is it would give the baddies a heads up that someone was coming.

I think AWACS with gyro telescopes giving visual high def intel would be a better and cheaper way.

Re:I would have loved to have this

[CPTreese]

It might have helped but UAVs were allocated to the shooters. I was just a simple support guy. If a satellite was already flying overhead and all I had to do was download the images to my SIPPER computer it would have helped.

Re:Collision Risk?

[rgbatduke]

To quote Doug Adams: "You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

Even near-Earth space. People worry about being hit by things falling from orbit, or hitting things up in orbit, but 10-50 meteorite falls occur every day (source: American Meteor Society) -- meteorites that are macroscopic, that is, since meteor dust is constantly drifting down everywhere from the millions of impacts on the upper atmosphere every day (I've collected these micrometeorites -- it is very easy -- and they fall at a rate that thickens the Earth's surface by a millimeter every few decades). How often do they hit something? Do I live in fear of being brained by a falling rock? Even with the "densely" populated Earth's surface, odds are that nobody within a hundred miles of you will even see a single meteor actually fall to the ground within their visual field in their lifetime. And we don't worry much about the "launch" of valuable resources (such as jet airplanes) that drive through this veritable hail of death every day. Rocket launches, OTOH, happen a few times a year. Having 100 or so more microsatellites up there won't even double their already existing risk, since rockets actually have to launch into the shitstorm of small meteors that are impacting the upper atmosphere all of the time. These are harmless to us -- nearly all of them come apart before they reach the ground -- but even a centimeter sized chunk of rock moving at a relative velocity of ~10 km/sec might as well be an anti-tank projectile to a rocket or satellite.

Your documented risk of death by bee-sting, shark bite, mad cow disease, being killed by a bullet fired into the air at random, choking on a bite of your food, being struck by lightning, or contracting a fatal disease from e.g. a tick or flea or animal bite are all way, way larger than the incremental risk to rockets by a few dozen satellites thrown up into a spaced orbit that keeps a patch of ground visible by one or more all of the time.

rgb

Aren't they *all* disposable??

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't *all* satellites disposable? I don't recall us going up to grab one and then re-using it.

Misleading title

[prisoner-of-enigma]

"War" satellite? Umm...the article speaks mainly of imaging missions. This is a "recon" satellite. I guess the temptation to scream "war" just won out, eh? Sounds much more sensationalist that way.