Konflikti lähiavaruudessa

Mutta aika harva tahallaan talloo muurahaispesiä, tosin saattaahan avaruudessa luikerrella ihan aitoja psykopaattilajeja...

Ei siihen tarvita psykopaatteja. Eniten minua huolettaisi "uudisraivaaja" -tyyppiset alienit. "Myö ollaan pantu paljon rahaa tähän projektiin, niin ei me täältä lähdetä teidän takia!" Hieman samaa tyyliä, kuin nämä mamut, jotka on maksaneet matkansa ja nyt olettavat sen oikeuttavan heille kaiken mahdollisen.
 
Jos uhka tulee ulkoavaruudesta, niin se siitä sitten. Mikä tahansa sivilisaatio joka kykenee ylittämään tähtienvälisen avaruuden, on lähtökohtaisesti niin paljon meitä teknologisesti kehittyneempi, että varsinaisia keinoja taistella vastaan ei välttämättä edes ole. Vähän sama kuin lähtisi keihäin ja nuolin rynnäkkökoptereita vastaan...
Minä veikkaan myös että peli on selvä heti alkuunsa. Kohtaamamme siviilisaatio on luultavasti kehityksessä miljoonia vuosia meitä edellä.

Katso liite: 20105

Toisaalta kun asiaa miettii, niin sotiminen on aika tyhmää ja jotenkin vanhanaikaista. Voisi hyvinkin olla että ulkoavaruudesta saapuva sivilisaatio onkin päinvastoin meille ystävällinen.

Ei välttämättä. Aivan yhtä hyvin meidän aurinkokuntaan saapuva muukalaisrotu voi olla joku hyönteisyhteiskuntarakennetta vastaava porukka. Toisiin aurinkokuntiin levittäytyminen onnistuisi tällaiselta lajilta ihan vain ison asteroidin ontoksi kaivertamalla ja jonkin biosfäärin sinne sisälle rakentamalla ja asteroidiin moottorit kiinnittämällä. Mikäli me ihmisetkään emme välittäisi niin paljon yksilöiden hengestä, oltaisiin me laskeuduttu Marsiinkin jo aikapäivät sitten.
 
Voitaisiinko tätä ketjua jatkaa ufojen osalta salaliitto puolella?
Aihe on kyllä mielenkiintoinen.

Huono ajatus.

Taktisiin ja strategisiin lähtökohtiin kuuluu se, että pitää hallita maaston korkeimpia kohtia. Se, joka hallitsee niitä, hallitsee paljon muutakin. Tämä johtaa väistämättä avaruuden militarisoitumiseen koska (lähi)avaruus on se suurempien alueiden korkein kohta.

Avaruuden militarisoituminen avaa väistämättä joukon sellaisia kysymyksiä, joiden sivuuttamiseen on tähän asti ollut mahdollisuus. Maapallon ulkopuolisen älyllisen ja avaruusmatkustuskykyisen sivilisaation - tai useamman - todennäköisyys on yksi niistä. Jos todennäköisyydeksi lasketaan yli nolla, niin myös seurauksiin liittyvät kysymykset aukeavat väistämättä.

Oli tuosta todennäköisyydestä mitä mieltä tahansa niin nuo kysymykset omaavat myös turvallisuus- ja sotilaspoliittisen ulottuvuuden ja niitä tullaan käyttämään perusteluina.

Tuollainen asia menee Talebin luomaan mustien joutsenten (Black Swan) kategoriaan. Oli sen todennäköisyys kuinka pieni tahansa, niin toteutumisen seuraukset olisivat niin mittavat ettei asiaa voi sivuuttaa tai ridikuloida.

Ugh, olen puhunut.
 
Voitaisiinko tätä ketjua jatkaa ufojen osalta salaliitto puolella?
Aihe on kyllä mielenkiintoinen.

"Käynnissä olevat sodat ja konfliktit" ei varmaan ole muutenkaan (ainakaan vielä) osuvin paikka tälle säikeelle. Mutta erinomaisen tärkeä aihe on tosiaan kyseessä, jo seuraavien vuosikymmenten aikana jokin konflikti saattaa hyvinkin laajentua lähiavaruuteen osapuolten pyrkiessä tuhoamaan vastustajan satelliitteja tms.
 
screen_shot_2018-03-21_at_9.34.52_am.png


The next thing in space-based weapons could be decades old, according to Michael Griffin, the first defense undersecretary for research and engineering.

“Directed energy is more than just big lasers,” Griffin said. “That’s important. High-powered microwave approaches can effect an electronics kill. The same with the neutral particle beam systems we explored briefly in the 1990s” for use in space-based anti-missile systems. Such weapons can be “useful in a variety of environments” and have the “advantage of being non-attributable,” meaning that it can be hard to pin an attack with a particle weapon on any particular culprit since it leaves no evidence behind of who or even what did the damage.

Like lasers, neutral-particle beams focus beams of energy that travel in straight lines, unaffected by electromagnetic fields. But instead of light, neutral-particle beams use composed of accelerated subatomic particles traveling at near-light speed, making them easier to work with (though the folks that run CERN’s hadron collider may disagree). When its particles touche the surface of a target, they takes on a charge that allows them to penetrate the target’s shell or exterior more deeply.
http://www.defenseone.com/technolog...yes-space-based-ray-guns/146863/?oref=d-river

In July, 1989, the program put a neutral-particle beam into orbit as part of a project called the Beam Experiment Aboard a Rocket, which analysts described as “a major success for the NPB program.” The tests showed that the weapon could be ruggedized for space launch and operation and that the beam was sufficiently narrow to hit a target.

The writeup concluded that a neutral-particle beam would be “difficult, if not impossible, to countermeasure in both the kill and discrimination role since it penetrates in-depth into the target. Analysis and tests have been conducted to verify that the entry level NPB can defeat all proposed counter-measures to the beam-target interaction. It is also effective against homing direct assent [anti-satellite] which allows the NPB to defend itself and other space-based assets.”
 
Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee about the Air Force's fiscal year 2019 budget March 20, 2018, in Washington, D.C.

"The Air Force budget for FY19 aligns with the National Defense Strategy," said Wilson. "In our budget, there are really two bold moves and one continuing theme. The first bold move is the acceleration of a defendable space."

The Air Force, Wilson said, needs to be able to deter, defend and prevail against anyone who seeks to deny the nation's ability to operate freely in space.

"The United States of America is the best in the world at space and our adversaries know it. In any future conflict we expect that they will seek to deny us the use of space. So what we're doing in this budget is accelerating our ability to defend our assets on orbit," she said.

The Air Force operates 76 satellites, 30 of which are GPS and another 25 are communication satellites. According to Wilson, the service is investing in jam-resistant satellite technology for both communications and GPS capabilities.

"The second bold move in this budget is the shift to multi-domain operations and that's most visible in the way the Air Force plans to do command and control," Wilson said. "There is also one continuing effort in our budget and that is to keep improving readiness to win any fight any time, that's what you expect of your Air Force."
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/A...n_operations_key_to_future_readiness_999.html

Ja naapurin vastaus sputnikin kautta.

"The SDI was based on risky scientific research with an unknown result," Viktor Murakhovsky, editor-in-chief of Arsenal of the Fatherland, a Russian military magazine, told Sputnik. "Calculations and experiments were really conducted, but the statements that the US is about to create such systems were nothing but a bluff."

Saranov noted that some observers still believe that the USSR took the bait and joined the arms race which dealt a heavy blow to the country's economy. He noted that some regard the Soviet orbit laser cannon Skif as a sort of response to Reagan's Star Wars. However, Murakhovsky denied the assumption.

"Soviet projects of space weapons system were in no way connected with [Reagan's] program," the scholar underscored. "We had started developing laser and kinetic weapon systems before the launch of the SDI."

However, the SDI project facilitated the development of the USSR's promising arms projects, Saranov emphasized: "In August 1983, the modernization of the strategic missile complex R-36M "Voyevoda" (NATO reporting name SS-18 Satan) was launched," the military observer recalled.
"The upgraded version of the R-36M2 missile was equipped with additional protection for combat blocks from lasers and kinetic weapons."

According to Leonid Ivashov, head of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, a Moscow-based think tank, the USSR's response to the US-led Star Wars initiative was "strong" and "powerful."
"We triggered the development of new technologies in the sphere of air defense and anti-space defense, boosted the capabilities of Voyevoda, and created the potential which still bears fruit.
Americans hoped that we would fall behind, but when they saw that the USSR was surpassing them in more than fifty technologies, they were forced to halt the program," Ivashov opined.

However, the US space war concept has not become a thing of the past. Last week, US President Donald Trump signaled his willingness to create a "Space Force" to fight wars in space.

"Space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air and sea," Trump said in San Diego on March 13, addressing US military servicemen. "We may even have a Space Force, develop another one. We have the Air Force, we'll have the Space Force."

Ivashov believes that the US is seeking to bolster its potential military capabilities in space because the Americans are currently outpacing Russia and China in this sphere. According to the analyst, Moscow should not join the race.

"We must act differently," Ivashov suggested. "[We] should offer a broad international cooperation in space research and promote the issue of the demilitarization of outer space, and ban the launch of nuclear weapons and strike systems into orbit."

Russia has repeatedly advocated for space demilitarization. In September 2017, Russia and China presented a draft treaty on the prevention of the deployment of weapons in outer space. However, their Western counterparts turned a deaf ear to the initiative, Saranov remarked.
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/How_USSR_Rose_Victorious_in_Reagans_Star_Wars_Race_999.html
 
Kyllä heijastuu jälleen kerran väkevät suokaasut täältä härmästä asti. Lähellä on ilmavoimien tukikohtia mutta ei nuo ainakaan soihduilta näytä.
Tuollainen valoshow ainakin minun mielestäni pitäisi herättää enemmän huomiota kuin pelkästään hämärä pätkä netissä.
 
Viimeksi muokattu:
Kyllä heijastuu jälleen kerran väkevät suokaasut täältä härmästä asti. Lähellä on ilmavoimien tukikohtia mutta ei nuo ainakaan soihduilta näytä.
Tuollainen valoshow ainakin minun mielestäni pitäisi herättää enemmän huomiota kuin pelkästään hämärä pätkä netissä.

Selitys löytyy suoraan youtuben kommenteista.
 
Sellainen kommentti lähiavaruuden sotaan, että jos siellä oikein kovasti ruvetaan kamaa pistämään paskaksi, niin kohta koko avaruus on täynnä avaruusromua. Jokainen ymmärtänee sen vaikutukset.
 
Joo. Kiinalaiset saivat paskaa niskaan varsin paljon satelliitinvastaisen ohjuksen laukaisusta muutama vuosi takaperin. Tähtäsivät omaan vanhaan satelliittiin ja sen pahempia ongelmia romusta ei onneksi syntynyt.
 
Lt. Gen. David D. Thompson assumed the newly-created Air Force Space Command Vice Commander position on April 4, after pinning on his third star.

In this new Pentagon-based role, Thompson will report directly to Gen. Jay Raymond, AFSPC commander, while coordinating with Headquarters U.S. Air Force and other national security agencies in the Washington D.C. area to ensure effective corporate advocacy and stewardship for Air Force space missions and capabilities.

"I am honored and humbled to continue to serve Air Force Space Command and the Air Force in this new position," Thompson said. "Space is absolutely critical to the joint fight and to our daily lives; I will be just one of thousands of Airmen working relentlessly to ensure our nation has the space capabilities we need to win any fight."

The position also represents the AFSPC commander in daily interactions in the National Capital Region. This allows Raymond to focus on managing the command headquartered at Peterson Air Force Base as well as his role as the Joint Force Space Component Commander for U.S. Strategic Command.

Thompson previously served as the command's two-star vice commander (renamed as AFSPC Deputy Commander in July 2017) based in Colorado before serving as Special Assistant to the AFSPC Commander since July 2017.

"This is a well-deserved promotion," said Raymond. "DT brings the right mix of leadership and space ops experience - I look forward to working with him to execute the Air Force's critical space mission."

In the new AFSPC vice commander position, Lt. Gen. Thompson will integrate operations, policy, guidance, plans, strategy and requirements of AFSPC space efforts with HAF, the Intelligence Community, the Joint Staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and other agencies, while representing the Commander of Air Force Space Command in daily interactions in the D.C. area.
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/A..._based_AFSPC_vice_commander_position_999.html
 
Major global powers, such as China and Russia, are focusing more on space weapons that neutralize others’ satellites rather than those that destroy payloads on orbit, a new report has found.

The study by the Secure World Foundation, released Wednesday morning and previewed exclusively with Defense News, is a comprehensive collection of public-source information about the counterspace capabilities of China, Russia, North Korea and other world powers that could threaten American dominance in space.

When most Pentagon leaders discuss anti-satellite or counterspace capabilities, they reference the infamous 2007 Chinese test of an anti-satellite kinetic weapon, which successfully destroyed an old Chinese weather satellite and scattered thousands of pieces of debris in orbit.

But a more likely attack in 2018 would come in the form of electronic warfare jamming that could prevent users from turning on their equipment, directed energy attacks to dazzle sensors, or perhaps most plausibly, hacking a terminal on the ground so troops cannot operate it.

This non-kinetic approach is more about rendering equipment useless than it is destroying it outright ― a strategy that costs less and is harder to attribute, said Brian Weeden, a former U.S. Air Force officer and one of the authors of the new report, titled “Global Counterspace Capabilities: An Open Source Assessment.”

In other words, countries are smarter about how they pursue capabilities in space.
https://www.c4isrnet.com/space/2018/04/11/how-the-threat-to-satellites-is-changing/


WASHINGTON – Government and commercial satellite operators are increasingly the target of hackers, who are looking for inexpensive, but effective ways to limit space capabilities, according to a new report from the Secure World Foundation.

“A growing number of non-state actors are actively probing commercial satellite systems and discovering cyber vulnerabilities that are similar in nature to those found in non-space systems,” the report read. “This indicates that manufacturers and developers of space systems may not yet have reached the same level of cyber hardness as other sectors.”

The report, released April 10 and titled “Global Counterspace Capabilities: An Open Source Assessment,” points, among other vulnerabilities, to backdoors in Chinese electronics and Russian software packages used in the aerospace supply chain.

The authors, Victoria Samson and Brian Weeden, note that industry experts say that “despite some increase in awareness of the threat in recent years, the state of cybersecurity for satellite infrastructure remains dismal.”

Chinese hackers have been targeting cyber espionage operations at the U.S. and European satellite industry since at least 2007, the report said. More broadly, cyber attacks have included targeting command and control or data relay stations.

Techniques could include “fly-overs with manned aircraft, unmanned aerial systems (UAS), or weather balloons; signal disruption or hijacking through proximate positioning of broadcasting equipment using a more powerful signal, tapping the structure’s Internet or Ethernet cables, or piggybacking off of the station’s own data relays physical access, through either covert infiltration or social engineering; and network exploitation or attack, using traditional means,” the authors said.

While most satellite facilities are hardened against such attacks, the report notes that “sophisticated State attackers” have penetrated such systems.

In addition, hackers are also trying to exploit the terminals used to process the satellite signal. Using public information, the report cites cases of using very small aperture terminals, or VSATs, were penetrated because factory passwords were never changed. In another example, students were able to essentially recreate a denial-of-service attack on a GPS receiver.
https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/2018/04/11/a-new-target-for-hackers-satellites/
 
Viimeksi muokattu:
Joo. Kiinalaiset saivat paskaa niskaan varsin paljon satelliitinvastaisen ohjuksen laukaisusta muutama vuosi takaperin. Tähtäsivät omaan vanhaan satelliittiin ja sen pahempia ongelmia romusta ei onneksi syntynyt.

En muista tämän yksityiskohtia kovin tarkasti, mutta tämä oli aivan idioottimainen teko Kiinalta eikä siellä ilmeisesti tuhoamiskäskyn antanut henkilö ymmärtänyt seurauksia. Toisaalta ei voi vielä mitenkään sanoa etteikö tästä olisi syntynyt pahempia ongelmia(tai olisi syntymässä). Siis virhe tässä oli, että sateellitti oli 900 km korkeudessa. Tuolla korkeudella ilmakehä ei juurikaan hidasta noita romunkappaleita, vaan ne jäävät todennäkösesti vähintäänkin tuhansiksi vuosiksi kiertämään Maata. Tässä on se riski, että kun tuolla korkeudella nopeudet ovat hyvin suuria, niin joku näistä suuremmista kappaleista törmää toiseen satelliittiin ja suuren nopeuden johdosta räjäyttää sen pieniksi palasiksi, jotka puolestaan saattavat törmätä taas uuteen satelliittiin. Pelkona on siis tietynlaisen ketjureaktion syntyminen, jossa avaruusromu synnyttää uutta avaruusromua ja lopputuloksena lähiavaruudesta tulee ihan käyttökelvoton alue satelliittien kannalta. Ja tälläinen ketjureaktio voi lähteä hyvinkin hitaasti liikkeelle ja muistan jonkun väittäneen, että kriittinen raja avaruusromun suhteen olisi jo ylitetty. En osaa sitten sanoa pitääkö tuo väite paikkaansa, mutta joka tapauksessa tahallinen avaruusromun tuottaminen on täysin vastuutonta tuolla korkeudella mitä kiina harrasti. Jos koe olisi tehty vaikka 200 km korkeudessa, niin siitä ei olisi ollut juurikaan haittaa, koska romunkappaleet olisivat ilmakehän kitkan vuoksi tippuneet maahan muutamassa vuodessa eivätkä siten olisi aiheuttaneet vaaraa muille satelliiteille.
 
Noiden avaruudessa tapahtuvien törmäysten suhteen täytyy muistaa että ne kohtaamisnopeudet on aivan huikeita. 20 asteen kulmassa toisiaan lähestyvät kappaleet LEO:lla kohtaavat edelleen 1km/s jolloin siis 1g painoisella maalihiutaleella on sama energia kun 9mm kuulalla piipunsuulla ja noin loiva törmäys on epätodennäköinen. Todennäköinen osumakulma on 90 astetta tai enemmän jolloin sama 1g hiutale tarjoaa suunnilleen saman energian kun Sergei-itkk:n ammus piipunsuulla tai enemmän. Törmäyksiä noissa nopeuksissa ei mallinneta enää kineettisinä vaan osuvat pinnat höyrystyvät välittömästi plasmaksi ja se sitten välittää energian ympäristöön eli energian välittyminen kohteeseen on todella tehokasta. Minkäänlainen hallittu kohtaaminen ei myöskään ole järjellisesti mahdollista ellei hyökkäävää alusta ole erikseen laukaistu juuri siihen kohtaamiseen sopivalle radalle ja vaikka kohtaaminen olisikin mahdollista niin jäljelle jää se alkuperäinen ongelma eli tuhoaminen tai radan muuttaminen.

Kunnon suurienergisten törmäysten suhteen jäljet johtavat hyvin nopeasti syyllisen luo sillä jokaisen irronneen kappaleen radat kohtaavat jossain pisteessä ja niistä kappaleista sekä kohtauspisteistä on helposti laskettavissa osuman energia, nopeus ja suunta. Tuon informaation kun yhdistää varsin tarkkaan tietoon sekä tutkadatasta että laukaistuista raketeista niin ei tarvitse kauaa ihmetellä kenen hyökkäyksestä on kysymys. Tuosta johtuen kiinnostus maasta ammuttavia anti-sat ohjuksia kohtaa on huomattava sillä riittävän korkeuden saavuttamiseen riittää noin 3% siitä energiasta mikä vaadittaisiin kiertoratanopeuteen. Tuossa siis käytetään sen radalla olevan kappaleen energiaa sen sijaan että itse investoitaisiin ohjukselle sama energia.
 
U.S. Air Force has its focus set on space these days, as evidenced by its recently released Fiscal Year 2019 budget and an ongoing review of the military's space operations. Both look promising.

"The Air Force's FY-19 budget accelerates our efforts to deter, defend and prevail against anyone who seeks to deny our ability to freely operate in space," Gen. John "Ray" Raymond, commander of Air Force Space Command, was quoted in an article in Space News.

Sandra Erwin, the writer of the article, went on to say:

"The unclassified space budget the Air Force unveiled in February includes $8.5 billion for investments in new systems - $5.9 billion in the research and development accounts, and $2.6 billion for procurement of satellites and launch services, according to a service official.

The 2019 request is 7.1 percent more than the Air Force sought for 2018. Over the next five years, the Air Force projects to invest $44.3 billion in space systems - $31.5 billion in research and development, and $12.8 billion in procurement. That would mark an 18-percent increase over the $37.5 billion five-year plan submitted last year."

Meanwhile, Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan is leading a congressionally mandated review of the military's space forces that will culminate in a final report on how the U.S. military can go about establishing a separate department in charge of space-a space force, if you will. The report will be filed by Dec. 31.

In a recent interim report submitted to the Congressional defense committees, Shanahan provided a glimpse of how he plans to reorganize national security space programs and offices. Additionally, "The report is highly critical of the current acquisition system for space systems. It points out that today's processes slow down modernization at a time when U.S. access and use of space capabilities are being threatened by foreign adversaries," Erwin wrote in another article in SpaceNews.

"The biggest challenge we face is the acquisition system, which needs to improve dramatically," Defense Department spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told SpaceNews.

According to the report, the DoD will review the industrial base for space "with an eye toward increasing innovation and reducing risk... Currently the industrial base for space is fragmented and underutilized. The department will seek a new mix of industry and academic partners to dramatically improve DoD space capabilities."

Shanahan may be just the person to help facilitate the much-needed improvements. Prior to becoming Deputy Secretary of Defense, Shanahan served as senior vice president, Supply Chain and Operations, for Boeing. He spent over three decades with the company, including time as senior vice president of Commercial Airline programs during which he managed profit and loss for the 737, 747, 767, 777, and 787 programs.

With his solid background in the private sector, there's good reason to hope that Shanahan will open the door to increased industry cooperation within the DoD. Doing so will enable the department to better take advantage of commercial innovation, like high-throughput satellites (HTS), while maintaining its leadership in space.
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/US_Air_Force_Increases_Focus_on_Space_999.html
 
The United States is getting serious about space junk, according to Vice President Mike Pence.

In a speech today (April 16), Pence announced that the National Space Council will soon send President Donald Trump new recommendations to address the growing threat of space junk circling Earth.

"President Trump knows that a stable and orderly space environment is critical to the strength of our economy and resilience of our national security systems," Pence told a crowd of space and military officials here at the 34th Space Symposium. "And that's why the National Space Council has developed the first comprehensive Space Traffic Management Policy, which we will soon be sending to the president's desk for his approval." [7 Wild Ways to Clean Up Space Junk]

There are more than 1,500 active satellites in orbit today, along with tens of thousands of "dead" satellites and spacecraft fragments, Pence added. In fact, the U.S. military's Space Surveillance Network regularly tracks about 40,000 objects in space, including active satellites, defunct spacecraft and debris.

"And as commercial companies continue to send even more satellites into orbit, the volume of space traffic will only increase in the years ahead," Pence said.

There have been two major space-debris events in recent history. In 2007, China intentionally destroyed its Fengyun 1C weather satellite as part of an anti-satellite missile test, creating a debris cloud in orbit. And in 2009, a collision between an American Iridium satellite and a defunct Russian satellite spawned even more debris.

Pence mentioned the 2009 satellite collision in his speech, adding that the new Space Traffic Management Policy is aimed at safeguarding U.S. assets in space.

"This new policy directs the Department of Commerce to provide a basic level of space situational awareness for public and private use, based on the space catalog compiled by the Department of Defense, so that our military leaders can focus on protecting and defending our assets in space,"
https://www.space.com/40324-mike-pence-space-traffic-management-policy.html
 
Naapurin kynästä.

Sputnik discussed the use of space for military purposes with Duncan Blake, a PhD candidate in law and the military uses of outer space from the University of Adelaide, and a consultant in space law and strategy at the International Aerospace Law and Policy Group, Australia.

Sputnik: Has space been maintained for peaceful purposes since the adoption of the resolution?

Duncan Blake: The idea that space should be used for peaceful purposes was an idea from the very beginning. The issue there is - what do we mean by peaceful purposes? Because it can't mean non-military; in fact, the first man-made object to enter outer space was a German V2 rocket towards the end of World War II.

The first uses of space were inspired by the military and the military was heavily involved. That's not necessarily to say that the military use of outer space is a bad thing. For example, the military has developed global navigation satellite systems like the Russian GLONASS system or the United States Global Positioning System, and they provide navigation assistance, which has a wide range of purposes beyond military ones.

So the peaceful use of outer space does not necessarily mean the non-military use of outer space. There are lots of other purposes, but the fact is that space is becoming more contested, so potentially more hostile.

Sputnik: Can you elaborate on that? Why do you feel that space is becoming more contested and possibly more aggressive?

Duncan Blake: So for some time states have been thinking about the advantages that they each get for their military forces from military uses of space. The fact is that something far out in outer space provides a very broad field of view, it's something that's up there on an enduring basis, it's not necessarily there all the time because the satellite has to orbit, so it has some disadvantages compared to aircraft, but it's apparently under-regulated.

For example, there are no national borders, I'll say it's apparently under-regulated because I'm very interested in the law that applies to outer space. It's relatively remote, so it's difficult to get to it, it seems protected, so there's a lot that appeals to military forces about how they could use space. It can be used for intelligence surveillance, reconnaissance, for communications, for position navigation and timing, and military forces around the world do use it for all of these sorts of things to fantastic effects.

In fact, they make military conflicts more humanitarian, so precision-guided munitions, aided by high-quality intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, allow modern military forces to minimize collateral damage. Modern military forces get great advantages from their access to space infrastructure, so you would expect states to consider how they would deny their adversary the use of outer space.

They do do that, by developing anti-satellite missiles, by thinking about how they can use electronic warfare and cyber interference, or daze with laser weapons or high altitude nuclear donations to cause electromagnetic pulses. All these sorts of things can potentially interfere with space infrastructure.

Sputnik: Another thing I want to ask you about is the problem of space debris. We're hearing more and more about the satellites that are no longer functional and other bodies that have been launched; who is responsible for space debris and is there sufficient regulation to regulate that problem? Because I've heard that it's getting to the point where there might even be issues with being able to launch new satellites or even spaceships because of the amount of space garbage.

Duncan Blake: There are somewhere between 1,400 and 1,500 active satellites in outer space right now. One of the best ways we have to know about the plans of commercial entities and others to launch satellites is that they seek permission to use a frequency years in advance.

Having to look at the applications that commercial entities have made to use frequencies, we are expecting something like 14,000 or 15,000 satellites to be launched within the next decade. When you compare that to the 1,400 active satellites in space at the moment, that's a huge leap in the number of satellites in outer space. A lot of those will be relatively small satellites, but you don't need to be very big when you're moving between seven and eleven kilometers per second to do a lot of damage.

There are over 20,000 pieces of space debris. Who is responsible for those? Well, ideally all states should be responsible for mitigating the debris that they create or minimizing the debris that they create, but, perhaps, the more difficult question is who is responsible for cleaning up the debris that already exists.
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Denying_adversaries_use_of_outer_space_999.html

Russia and China have developed increasingly sophisticated space countermeasure weapons to destroy US satellites, according to a new report.

Evidence "strongly indicates" that "China has sustained a broad effort to develop a broad range of counter-space capabilities," the US-based Secure World Foundation said in its April 2018 report.

"China has at least one, and possibly as many as three, programs underway" for destroying satellites, the report said.

Moscow is "almost certainly capable of some limited" anti-satellite military operation, the report adds. Russian ground-based lasers also have may have the ability to "dazzle the sensors of optical imagery satellites," even if this is not the intended purpose of Russian satellite laser ranging facilities, the global counter-space capability report states.

US President Donald Trump has floated the idea of creating a "Space Force," even though the White House and US Air Force already knocked down Congressional attempts to create a "Space Corps," primarily because it would add yet another layer of bureaucracy to the Pentagon.

"You know, I was saying it the other day because we're doing a tremendous amount of work in space. I said, 'Maybe we need a new force, we'll call it the Space Force,'" the president said.

"And I was not really serious, and then I said what a great idea, maybe we'll have to do that. That could happen. That could be the big breaking story," Trump said during a March 13 speech in San Diego.

In March, the "2018 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community" explained that "foreign countries - particularly China and Russia - will continue to expand their space-based reconnaissance, communications and navigation system in term of the numbers of satellites, the breadth of their capability and the applications for their use... Russia and China aim to have non-destructive and destructive counter-space weapons available for use during a potential future conflict."
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/C...nti_Satellite_Capabilities_Alarms_US_999.html
 
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