Associated Press May 11, 2003
Satellites crucial to American warfare
By JON SARCHE
Moving through the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, a Special Operations group came upon a fortified Taliban position that Northern Alliance guides said could take several weeks of ground fighting to defeat.
Nineteen minutes later, the site was reduced to smoking rubble, a victim of America's growing use of space in warfare.
"We've done even better than that in Iraq," said Col. Jim Rodgers of the Air Force Space Command. "We have a goal of single-digit minutes."
Making that possible are scores of satellites providing soldiers and commanders with navigational, communications and early warning capabilities that were impossible 20 years ago.
"It's why the United States is unbeatable on a conventional battlefield," said John Pike, a military analyst with Globalsecurity.org. "It's why the United States is the sole remaining superpower. It's why we frighten the living daylights out of the rest of the planet."
Even during the 1991 Gulf War, space-based military assets played a relatively small part in military planning and operations.
Air Force Secretary James Roche has described the satellites as indispensable, and said they are expected to become more important in preventing, fighting and winning wars.
"What space brings to modern warfare is improvements in speed, precision and lethality. That would be the bumper sticker," said Rodgers, chief of the command's Task Force Enduring Look.
The task force is part of a larger Air Force group working to apply lessons learned from recent military actions through the war on terrorism in Afghanistan.
There were few jaw-dropping revelations from that conflict because space has become deeply integrated into the military, Rodgers said.
About 1,000 Air Force Space Command members are assigned to Central Command, which is responsible for the region including the Middle East.
Their work has helped ensure that satellites are used to their full capabilities and integrated with other military activities, Rodgers said.
Afghanistan was the first conflict where the space technology began coming together, Rodgers said.
In numerous examples in Afghanistan and Iraq, a soldier on the ground would use a laser rangefinder linked to a Global Positioning System receiver to get a target's coordinates.
Those coordinates could be sent via satellite radio to a command site hundreds of miles away, which would then send them to a bomber. The coordinates are then loaded into GPS-enabled bombs that receive navigational signals from satellites and can adjust their course in flight.
Bombs fitted with GPS kits allow the airplane to stay safe at 30,000 feet or higher while dropping bombs that are accurate to within a few yards, even through heavy cloud cover or darkness.
In 1991, some 10 percent of bombs dropped were guided by lasers or GPS signals. During the war in Iraq, most of the bombs used laser or GPS guidance systems. At the peak, U.S. warplanes dropped 1,000 or more precision-guided bombs each day.
GPS-enabled weapons have become a favorite of military commanders for their relatively low cost and their reliability, Rodgers said. Smoke or cloud cover that can confuse or block lasers is not a problem for GPS signals. The GPS kits cost as little as $14,000 and can be fitted to bombs made years before the navigation satellites were in operation.
After a bomb is dropped, aircrews and ground soldiers no longer have to be put in harm's way to determine whether the target was hit. Satellites that were designed for the Cold War-era job of watching for the infrared signature of a missile launch also are being used to assess bomb damage, Rodgers said.
At Air Force Space Command headquarters on the eastern fringe of Colorado Springs, models of some of the satellites hang from the ceiling, constant reminders of the military's evolving and expanding use of space.
Rodgers pointed proudly to a copy of one of the fliers the military dropped around Iraq. Printed in Arabic, it says "We can see everything. Do not use nuclear, biological or chemical weapons."
Air Force Space Command has about 40,000 soldiers assigned to bases and satellite ground stations around the world. It is responsible for the operation of the GPS, communications and missile-warning satellites, many of which are steered by technicians at nearby Schriever Air Force Base.
"We're becoming more and more integrated. It's becoming more transparent to the guys out there. They don't know or care that they're using (satellite communications)," Rodgers said. "We've certainly tapped a lot of the potential of what space can do for our nation, but we have more to do."
Copyright © 2003, Associated Press
