I was at the Reinventing Space conference yesterday, and an AF general gave a speech saying that space is currently an advantage for the nation, strategically, but he fears that it is on the verge of becoming a vulnerability. We have to come up with a new way of doing business.
Anyway, I was thinking about going over today as well, but the Internet was dead when I got up this morning, so I had to hang around here waiting for a Verizon guy to show up. It needed a new modem.
Did he say how space becomes a vulnerability, and what different ways of doing business he had in mind?
Losing GPS sats is a military problem. Maybe a new way to do business is to find a way to launch new sats and get them on line in an extremely rapid way..
I’m using clear.net’s 4G modem. Always get 5 bars.
Every advantage is a vulnerability. Another General, named Sun Tzu, pointed that out long ago. Any asset can be taken away.
Currently, we only use space defensively. There’s an old fighter pilot adage that says, “When you’re on the defensive, it means you’re losing.”
Our military is far more dependent on space systems than other countries. GPS is the big one but all of the military space systems for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, communications, launch detection, weather, etc. are becoming more vulnerable to disruption. If we lose those capabilities, we have to go back to the bad old days where long distance communications means using HF radio, where smart bombs aren’t so smart any more (e.g. JDAMS), and where troops have to deal with the inaccuracies and uncertainties of map & compass instead of GPS.
Currently, we only use space defensively.
Not from my perspective. Dropping GPS guided munitions on a target is offensive, not defensive. Using space ISR assets to determine targeting is offensive, not defensive. Using communications links to control a UAV and direct it to put ordanance on a target is offensive, not defensive.
Launch detection is largely defensive, but the actions taken to retailiate for said launches gets offensive real quick.
I think one way to look at it is if the military becomes too dependent on it, then it’s in trouble when it gets knocked out.
Our current air forces count on the fact that every bomb and munition goes precisely where we need it to – we’ve become used to cheap GPS guided bombs, and have designed the next generation of fighters (which may or may not ever get built) to only carry two or four munitions. If we let all our heavy bomb trucks retire, then find ourselves in a heavy jamming environment, or one where all our satellites get blasted, with no GPS guidance, we can’t attack from the air anymore.
Yes, if we lose our military space assets, we’d be cast back to the 1960s, or earlier, without many of the weapons systems we had at that time.
It looks like the good old Buff will be around for a long time to come, so we’ll still have a bomb truck capability. The B-1 and B-2 both have pretty impressive iron bomb capacities as well. For precision guided munitions, there are two basic types: laser guided and GPS guided. The laser guided bombs will still work without GPS and are actually a bit more accurate than JDAMS. However, they have some big operational limitations, such as requiring a designator to laze the target (or the ground or from another aircraft) and problems when the visibility is poor (smoke, fog, etc.)
The magnitude of the problem is huge. Over 30 years ago when I was in the infantry, we had nothing but map and compass for navigation. With proper training and in good conditions, that’s pretty good. However, some terrain is fairly featureless (one sand dune looks pretty much like another to the average person) and night navigation wasn’t much fun, especially without NVGs.
Consider what it took to do spotting for artillery or mortars.
1. The forward observer uses his map and compass to try and determine his own coordinates.
2. He uses a compass, a set of binoculars and a lot of guesswork to estimate the target coordinates.
3. He radios those coordinates to the fire control center, who’ve also used their map and compass to try and determine their own location.
4. The fire control center does the calculations and sends the directions to the shooters. They fire a round.
5. The forward observer watches the impact and sends corrections to the fire control center until they can walk the rounds onto the target.
Now, consider what they can do with GPS.
1. The forward observer uses a GPS equipped laser rangefinder to spot the target. The rangefinder knows where it is, knows the azimuth to the target (internal compass) and the distance to the target.
2. Those coordinates are sent to the fire control center, which knows quite well where it and the cannons are located. They do some quick calculations and send the info to the shooters. The shooters fire a round.
3. The forward observer watched the target get hit with the first or second rounds. In a hostile environment, everyone can pick up and move to avoid counterfire. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Man, what I would’ve done to have that technology back in the not so good old days! Now, multiply that kind of capability across the range of military weapons systems and think of what they’re able to do today. Lacking the space systems, they’d have a much harder time operating and would be a lot less effective. Space is a major force multiplier.
It’s not just GPS.
We heavily reply on comsats to send data from one aircraft to another, air to ground, ground to ground. F-22’s can get data from other sources. As far as I know, the Predator drone pilots communicate with the aircraft via satellite.
Our whole real-time situational awareness is heavily dependent upon satellites.
Perhaps all of the big UAVs use satellite comm links for command & control and data relay. Predator, Reaper, and Global Hawk certainly do and they’re not the only ones.
For long range communications with ships at sea, you basically have the old, unreliable HF (if they even have that any more) or satellite communications. It isn’t exactly practical for ships to be dragging a fibre optical cable around behind them. The same is true for long range aircraft. Not all aircraft have satcom capability but more than a few do.