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While the Department of Defense’s (DOD) space surveillance network tracked about 4,600 objects in 1980, it currently tracks more than 22,000. It is therefore becoming increasingly important for the U.S. government to have sufficient space situational awareness (SSA),
A significant aspect of SSA involves tracking many thousands of man-made space objects that typically travel 9 times the speed of a bullet8 and reside in a search volume 220,000 times the volume of Earth’s oceans. SSA also involves knowing where each of these objects came from (who owns them), where it is and where it is going, its purpose, and its capabilities.
Table of Contents
I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
II. Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
III. Space Object Tracking and Identification Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . 7
A. Non-Government Satellite Observers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
B. Optical Tracking and Imaging Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
C. Radar Tracking and Imaging Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
D. SIGINT and Passive RF Tracking and Characterization Systems . . . 17
IV. Offensive Counterspace Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
A. Counterspace Denial and Deception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
B. Ground Segments Attack or Sabotage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
C. Non-Directed Nuclear ASATs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
D. Interceptor ASAT Weapons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1. Low-Altitude Direct-Ascent ASAT Interceptors . . . . . . . . . 26
2. Low- and High-Altitude Short-Duration Orbital
ASAT Interceptors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3. Long-Duration Orbital Interceptors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
E. Stand Off Weapons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1. Laser ASAT Weapons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2. Radio Frequency (RF) ASAT Weapons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3. Comparison of High-Power Laser and High-Power Microwave Weapons . 36
4. Particle-Beam ASAT Weapons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
F. Electronic Attack on Communications, Data, and
Command Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
V. Impact of Counterspace Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
VI. Countermeasures—Strategies for Enhancing Survivability . . . . . . 41
A. Reliable Threat Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
B. Mobile Ground Control Stations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
C. Autonomous Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
D. Hardening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
E. Proliferation-Redundant Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
F. On-Board Systems For Attack Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
G. Maneuverability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4
Threats to United States Space Capabilities
H. Rapid Reconstitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
I. On-board Decoys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
J. Self-Defense or Escort Defense Capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
VII. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
VII. Conclusion
As history has shown—whether at Pearl Harbor, in the killing of 241 U.S. Marines in their barracks in Lebanon, or in the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen—if the U.S. offers an inviting target, it may well pay the price of attack.
With the growing commercial and national security use of space,U.S. assets in space and on the ground, offer just such targets. Widely dispersed counterspace threat capabilities coupled with space situational awareness platforms threaten the U.S. ability to freely operate in space. We can no longer look at traditional adversaries as the only threat as there will likely be various space threats from several nations.
History is replete with instances in which warning signs were ignored and change resisted until an external, “improbable” event forced resistant bureaucracies to take action. The question is whether the U.S. will be wise
enough to act responsibly and soon enough to reduce U.S. space vulnerability. Or whether, as in the past, a
disabling attack against the country and its people—a “Space Pearl Harbor”—will be the only event able to galvanize the nation and cause the U.S. Government to act.
One example of a highly capable space object tracking radar is Germany's TIRA imaging radar. The tracking radar's detection limit operating as a monostatic system is a 1.8 cm sphere at a range of 1,000 km. Germany's L-band radar was reportedly used to test bistatic operations due to the belief that further improvements in space debris detection and characterization capabilities could only be realized using a more powerful receiver. The plan proposed using the German L-band radar as the transmitter in conjunction with a receiver 21 km away. The 100 m radio telescope at Bad Munstereifel Effelsberg, Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), Bonn, Germany, was used as the receiver. The MPIfR is the world's largest steerable radio telescope. The experiment took place in November 1996 and resulted in 0.9 cm objects being detected at a 1,000 km range.