Subject: AWST interview with DoD Space Architect
From: thomsona@netcom.com (Allen Thomson)
Date: 1996/06/05
Message-Id: <thomsonaDsJLJA.Ixx@netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy,sci.space.tech,alt.politics.org.cia
There is an interview with the DoD's "space architect," Major
General Dickman, in AWST this week in which he says a number of
interesting things about threats to US space systems. Here are some
excerpts (indented) and ruminations (left justified):
Architect Maps Milspace Defenses
by Joseph C. Anselmo
Aviation Week and Space Technology
June 3, 1996, pp.93 & 94
[EXCERPTS]
The U.S. Defense Dept.'s new space architect is looking at
ways to protect military satellites against electronic and later
physical attacks that he believes are inevitable.
It's refreshing to see some Official Person recognize the
obvious. Up to now, the talk has been about how we (US) are going
to use space to overwhelm future enemies, with little recognition
that the enemies might not be entirely cooperative.
[He] said American forces should expect an enemy to try to
disrupt satellite communications through electronic attack the
next time they go into combat.
An interesting prediction, particularly if the military is using
commercial satellites with no anti-jamming features. The owners
and other users of the satellites might want to think about this
possibility.
And while the actual physical attack of an orbiting U.S.
spacecraft probably won't happen for a long time, the
development of crude anti-satellite weapons is not particularly
difficult, he said.
This seems contradictory. If acquiring rudimentary ASATs isn't
difficult (which I believe to be correct), and attacking the
satellites is militarily very desirable (which it obviously is),
then why are such attacks not to be expected for a "long time?"
Protecting U.S. satellites against physical and electronic
attack is a major part of a "space control architecture" his
office is developing to assure U.S. warfighters access to space.
The architecture, which will look at "the whole spectrum of
denial protection" is on track to be completed by late
September.
This report may provide some entertainment for Washington-
watchers, as it's going to have to assess at least implicitly the
effectiveness of the NRO's approaches to "denial protection."
Moreover, it's also going to throw light on the issue of whether
the current plan to reduce the numbers of intelligence satellites
and ground stations compromises system survivability. These are
rocks the NRO very much hopes remain unturned, for the excellent
reason that under them lurk things which could spell the end of the
organization if revealed. So I think we can anticipate some
bureaucratic fireworks come autumn.
Dickman's staff is also drawing up a military satellite
communications architecture that is scheduled to be finished by
late July and a satellite operations architecture that is
expected to be completed in December.
The furthest along of the three architectures... is the [one]
for satellite communications. "the projections are that
certainly within the next 10 to 15 years... we'll need five
times as much satcom in the theater," he said. " Our goal is
to do that for the same total cost."
That will require increased utilization of commercial systems
for non-vital communications and innovative new ideas such as
the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) "as equivalents to
satellites."
"One concept is, as you project the force and establish the
ability to protect it once it's there, satcom may be your
principal link... But once you establish the force in the
theater and you can protect the air over the theater, then UAVs
may become the predominant satcom basis in addition to the
commercial augmentation"
This is good, as it shows that Dickman isn't of the "do
everything from space" mindset, and may be similarly ready to
consider mixed solutions for tasks other than communications,
particularly reconnaissance. His suggestion of UAVs "as
equivalents to satellites" echos John Pike's point that in many
cases the best satellite for the job may be a UAV. But again,
Dickman can expect a fair amount of flak from traditionalists
at Chantilly.
The satellite operations architecture, begun just last month,
is looking at how spacecraft are controlled on orbit -- a
function that hasn't changed much from the 1960s.
"The way we have controlled spacecraft in the past with
single command links to single spacecraft and crews worrying
about each spacecraft one at a time, it's just a non-player,"
Dickman said.
An important study, and long overdue. It would seem, however,
that it should logically precede the protection study due in
September, as the current operations architecture itself
constitutes a major vulnerability.
A debate is currently raging in Congress over how quickly the
National Reconnaissance Office should move toward procurement of
small satellites. But Dickman believes the evolution of small,
interconnected satellites that each perform one job instead of
many is inevitable.
"There are some hard core challenges," he said. "How do you
collect enough photons, whether for imagery or missile warning,
on a very small satellite?... Can you do that with distributed
apertures? You can't do it today, but maybe you can do it in 15
years."
Hmm... The "enough photons for imagery" and "distributed
aperture" comments indicate that he's thinking of spysats with the
same aperture and resolution as today's monstersats (generally
believed to have apertures of 2.5 - 3 meters giving ~10 cm @ 500 km
or ~1 meter at 5000 km). The really interesting military
applications for imaging smallsats, though, mostly need ~1 meter
resolution @ 500 km range, for which a 30 cm aperture would do just
fine. I suspect that the commercial 1-meter imaging satellites
will make this point pretty obvious in the near future.
It will, however, be useful for other reasons to continue work
on distributed aperture techniques, which have been discussed here
under the name "optical interferometers."
"The satellites that are flying in 2005 probably aren't going
to be downsized, less capable spacecraft," he added. "But the
ones that are flying in 2015, individually, probably are."
Which seems to mean that we don't expect to have to fight a
serious war for the next 15 years or so. (This reminds me of an
interesting exercise which helps understand the decorrelation time
of history: starting now, in mid-1996, step back in increments of a
dozen years until you hit a date when the next 12 years contain no
major, change-the-course-of-history surprise.)
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