The Wired Blogs recently published a series of posts entitled, How China Loses The Coming Space War, which are written by MIT researcher Geoffrey Forden, Ph.D., examining the possibility of an all-out Chinese assault on American satellites (h/t Wendy Jackson). A year ago China performed a successful anti-satellite test, shooting down one of its own obsolete weather satellites, putting into overdrive widespread speculation about a possible outer space war with China. In a previous post we joined in this speculation, discussing the new space race and China's use of anti-technology technology as a means to defeat the USA in an armed conflict. Forden obviously believes that the USA would ultimately win an outer space contest with China. His arguments are quite compelling and worth reading in their entirety.
In Part One of the series, Forden opens up with a fictional account of how China's space war against the US could begin:
High above Asia, as the bars and clubs of Beijing begin to fill up at the end of another work day, a US early warning satellite spots the tell-tale plume of a missile streaking out of the wastes of Western China. Warning bells sound all through the Pentagon. Tensions have been running high between China and the United States, as the two countries struggle to resolve the latest installment of the Taiwanese crisis. And China has had a run of unprecedented activity in space: the past two days have seen China launch four large missions into deep space, three within the last six hours.. Fortunately, a high-resolution American spy satellite will be over that second launch site within minutes, giving the US a unique ability to determine what is going on. But even though tasking orders are given to photograph the suspected launch site, none are returned. The satellite, code-named Crystal 3, no longer responds to commands. Within minutes, US Space Command reports that four NAVSTAR/GPS satellites—used to guide American drones and precision bombs—have stopped broadcasting. China’s space war against the United States has started.
Forden then gives a brief summary of his research and overall conclusion, which is that the fear of a single strike that could cripple America's satellite network--an outer space Pearl Harbor-- is unrealistic. The rest of Part One is devoted to analyzing China's successful anti-satellite test. Through a process of backtracking, scientists have reconstructed the collision of the missile and the satellite.
"By backtracking the debris to the point where they all converge, we can determine the two most important aspects of the Chinese ASAT: how China destroyed that satellite, and just how capable its satellite-killer really is." Based on the information gathered from backtracking, Forden concludes that the Chinese have accomplished a phenomenal feat. According to him, China "accomplished the most sophisticated of space maneuvers: a hit-to-kill interception, the equivalent of hitting a bullet with a bullet."
In Part Two, Forden argues that China does not have the ability to launch enough anti-satellite missiles to cripple the US armed forces. "The United States may be the country most dependent on space for its military activities. But it is also the least vulnerable, because of the tremendous redundancy of its space assets." He analyzes whether China could destroy deep-space navigation satellites, early warning satellites, communications satellites, and low altitude satellites, and he concludes that China just couldn't do enough damage to render the USA forces impotent. The sheer number of American military and civilian satellites is simply far more than the number of anti-satellite missiles China has at its disposal.
The most interesting aspect of Part Three is Forden's plea for countries to avoid space warfare. He points out that the destruction of any satellite in outer space will create debris fields that will continue to orbit the Earth, eventually damaging or destroying other satellites.
These debris fields could easily cause a run-away chain of collisions that renders space unusable -- for thousands of years, and for everyone. Not only is this a quickly growing and important sector of the world’s economy (sales of GPS receivers alone reportedly exceeds $20 billion annually), but space is also used for humanitarian missions such as forecasting floods in Bangladesh or droughts in Africa. We cannot allow space to be forever barred to our use for what turns out to be a very minor military advantage. If the military utility of attacks in space are so minor; if the active defense of space assets is impractical, counterproductive, and unnecessary; and if the danger resulting from the consequent debris affects all space-faring nations for thousands of years to come, it is clear that diplomacy is in every country's interest.
The first step the United States should take is a simple declaration that we guarantee the continued flow of information to any country whose satellite is destroyed by an ASAT. We could do this using either our military or civilian-owned satellites. After all, if the space assets of the United States are not vulnerable to attacks because of the inherent redundancy, the same cannot be said of China’s other potential regional competitors such as Australia, India, or Japan. Each of these countries has only a handful of satellites that could be quickly destroyed if China chooses to attack them. This declaration would effectively eliminate any military advantage that a country might get from attacking its neighbors limited fleet of satellites. After that, we should adopt the code of conduct that is being developed by the Stimson Center that establishes “rules of the road” for responsible space-faring nations. Finally, we should work toward a treaty banning the future testing of these most dangerous of anti-satellite weapons: the so-called "kinetic kill interceptors" that create such large amounts of debris. It'd be a first step towards containing the worst effects on war in space.
Forden's series of posts consider the worst possible scenarios and conclude that the American armed forces would still be effective. "And much like Japan’s failure to destroy the US carrier fleet, a Chinese attack on US satellites would fail to cripple our military, China’s strategic goal in launching a space war." However, Forden does not discuss the possible consequences of China synchronously launching a cyber attack on the US. It seems like that would make a significant difference in his analysis. Either way, his analysis of the space war situation is fascinating and certainly worth reading.
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