The U.S. decision and subsequent destruction of ailing spy satellite USA 193 was justified on humanitarian grounds. The satellite was on an uncontrolled re-entry course that could have ended with it crashing into populated areas and contaminating them with the toxic substance hydrazine. The operation was conducted within international guidelines for dealing with re-entry risks and was with consistent with historical precedent. Opponents who charge that this was a test of missile defense systems fail to recognize the unique nature of this operation and its inapplicability to the missile defense mission.
Keywords: USA 193 (Operation Burnt Frost).
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During a Pentagon news conference Thursday morning, General Cartwright rebuffed those who said the mission was, at least in part, organized to showcase American missile defense or anti-satellite capabilities. He said the missile itself had to be reconfigured from its task of tracking and hitting an adversary’s warhead to instead find a cold, tumbling satellite. “This was a one-time modification,” General Cartwright said. Sensors from the American missile defense system were an important part of this mission, though, he said. He stressed that "the intent here was to preserve human life," but also acknowledged that "the technical degree of difficulty was significant" and the accomplishment earned cheers from personnel in command centers across the military, as well. Shanker, Thom. "Pentagon Is Confident Missile Hit Satellite Tank." New York Times. February 21, 2008.
The decision to intercept the U.S. 193 satellite will be debated in the months to come by arms control advocates, opponents and proponents of missile defense, and space experts in the U.S. and abroad. Critics will portray the operation as a staged event that was undertaken just to test missile defense or ASAT technologies under the guise of a humanitarian exercise. They will likely accuse the United States of starting a space arms race and will portray the two ASAT tests as moral equivalents. However, these arguments fail to recognize the vast discrepancies between the two strategies that stand behind the corresponding events. China's ASAT test was a military exercise to demonstrate its ability to execute an aggressive strategy of asymmetric warfare. As such, it does not compare to the transparent and necessary actions taken by the United States in the face of pending humanitarian danger. The U.S. operation demonstrated the defensive and protective features of a damage limitation strategy. No matter how small the chances that hazardous materials would have reached the Earth's surface without the shootdown, the United States was fully justified and possibly obligated to pursue its chosen course of action. As such, this operation marks an important point in the transition from a Cold War strategy focused on retaliatory deterrence and vulnerability to a damage limitation strategy based on protecting and defending people in the U.S. and elsewhere. Other nations, including China, would do well to consider the merits of the damage limitation strategy. The world will be a better place if they do. Spring, Baker. "Satellite Shootdown Was a Necessary Operation." . February 22, 2008.
John Pike, a military and security analyst who runs the highly regarded website Global Security.org, believes the shootdown has no implications regarding the space arms race. "In my view it means nothing," Pike said. "it has no larger implications." Pike's rationale is that the U.S. has demonstrated its anti-satellite capabilities beginning in about 1985 and the missile used in the shot last night doesn't have the ability for a real missile-defense system. "The United States has got other better ways of shooting down satellites. This is not a very good ASAT interceptor," Pike told SPACE.com. The missile reached about 150 miles (241 km). "No self-respecting satellite is ever going to find itself that low, because you're not going to stay in orbit that long. Typically, satellites reside at an altitude of about 300 - 400 miles (483 – 644 km) in order to remain in orbit without extra boosts. "Space Arms Race Heats Up Overnight." Space.com. February 21, 2008.
At least one expert saw the demonstration as a crucial step by the U.S. to ensure its military and political dominance if a space arms race becomes inevitable. "This was in my view a very positive move by the U.S. for stability," said Dolman. "The fact that you're using a Navy ship and a fairly standard weapon to do this is really ratcheting up the technology curve." The shootdown certainly seems to confirm U.S. technological prowess. The interceptor missile "was never designed to engage a satellite," according to Raytheon Missile Systems, adding that its success "demonstrates the capability of the SM-3 missile to meet a unique situation and perform beyond its intended purpose." Dolman observed that the U.S., China and Russia will all try to control space in the near-future, but that developing anti-satellite and other weapons won't necessarily lead to a catastrophic war because of the relatively bloodless nature of space conflict. "No one's ready for control of space yet, although they'd all like to have that capability," Dolman said. "Space Arms Race Heats Up Overnight." Space.com. February 21, 2008.
Secondly and more importantly, it's absolutely false that past safe outcomes always occurred even when countries let their big satellites randomly fall to Earth. Just the opposite is true: for decades, major spacefaring powers took deliberate and expensive steps to mitigate the ground-impact hazards of satellites, especially the large satellites most likely to peel back layer-by-layer during atmospheric entry and as a result deliver large intact hunks of the structure all the way down to the surface. All Russian spacecraft heavier than about 6,800 kilograms (15,000 pounds), and all US military satellites of similar masses, are deliberately steered into untraveled expanses of the far southern Pacific Ocean. In another example, eight years ago an expensive NASA spacecraft, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, was shut down over scientists' protests, and steered into the atmosphere, when partial failures in its control system threatened a random fall to Earth that threatened a high possibility (1-in-1,000) of human injury. Here's another: in 1978, NASA began an expensive effort to revive the shut-down Skylab in a deliberate attempt to steer it into the atmosphere over open ocean—an effort that failed in mid-1979, but was considered necessary at the time. These steps were taken specifically because allowing these massive objects to fall randomly was judged irresponsibly risky and so mitigation efforts were deemed mandatory. Nobody ignored these hazards—they acted to minimize them as they have done literally hundreds of times. So it is incorrect to allege that this latest falling satellite could have been allowed to fall randomly since that's what space programs had been safely doing for decades and "nobody has ever been hurt". Now, the mix of motivations for making the missile attack can be debated, but the up-front official claim about mitigating hazard cannot be glibly dismissed. Oberg, James. "Sense, Nonsense, and Pretense about the Destruction of USA 193." The Space Review. March 4, 2008.
These widespread allegations mostly ignore the first-ever special circumstances of this event, where a full tank of the chemical remained untouched by the crippled satellite, and where it had frozen solid, based on the expected low temperatures on board. Safety officials had never been faced with this type of falling material before. These non-intuitive effects of long-term "cold soaking" in Earth orbit were dramatically illustrated in 1985 when the Soviet Salyut 7 space station lost power. After several months, a repair team of cosmonauts arrived to find the station's water tanks frozen solid. Now, ordinary hydrazine (the kind on USA 193) freezes at a point a few degrees warmer than water, so it shouldn't be surprising that it would freeze too. In the Russian case, that station's thrusters used a variant form called "UDMH" (unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine) that has a much lower freezing point, and it did not get cold enough to freeze that fuel—but the water did. Oberg, James. "Sense, Nonsense, and Pretense about the Destruction of USA 193." The Space Review. March 4, 2008.
Myth #8: Russia and China will be "forced" to respond by developing corresponding weapons. This "blank check for the bad guys" claim seems to be a view espoused by spokesmen for DC lobby groups, for foreign governments, and for other associations who seem to favor one spin in common: any foreign action allegedly sparked by anybody's worries about US actions is excusable, while any US action sparked by activities of another nation is dangerously paranoid. But China has already "pre-responded" with its own test a year ago—a weapon with far greater capability (and leaving far worse space pollution) than the US missile. As for Russia, it's had its space-capable anti-missile defense shield deployed around Moscow for decades, and recently reopened a mothballed missile test range at Sary Shagan in Kazakhstan to test-fire upgraded missiles. They are probably launched so far only against imaginary missile or space targets, or potentially against real ones with no final impacts. Even if one of them is soon used in a demonstration against a satellite, it will represent nothing new in their arsenal, only the exercise of a latent capability that had always been there. Oberg, James. "Sense, Nonsense, and Pretense about the Destruction of USA 193." The Space Review. March 4, 2008.
Actually, NASA space debris expert Nicholas Johnson addressed this accusation directly in a paper he presented to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer space (COPUOS) in Vienna on February 18. NASA was a member of the US delegation to the 45th Session of the COPUOS Scientific and Technical Subcommittee, and the State Department reviewed and approved Johnson's paper. But so far as I can tell, the world news media totally ignored the presentation and its contents. "To be compliant with the COPUOS STSC space debris mitigation guidelines and to minimize any effect on the near-Earth space environment, the kinetic engagement of USA-193 would occur shortly before a natural reentry and at an altitude below 250 km," the paper stated. "More than 50% of the debris created will not be orbital and will enter the Earth's atmosphere within 45 minutes of the event. Of the debris left in temporary orbits about the Earth, more than 99% will fall out of orbit within one week of the event." The United Nations explicitly recognizes that it may occasionally be necessary to smash a satellite, and spells out the conditions under which this is acceptable. The NASA paper describes how the requirements will be satisfied: "Guideline 4 of the Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines addresses those rare cases when 'intentional destruction and other harmful activities' might be necessary: 'Recognizing that an increased risk of collision could pose a threat to space operations, the intentional destruction of any on-orbit spacecraft and launch vehicle orbital stages or other harmful activities that generate long-lived debris should be avoided. When intentional break-ups are necessary, they should be conducted at sufficiently low altitudes to limit the lifetime of resulting fragments.' Under the plan to neutralize the USA-193 spacecraft, the event will take place at a very low altitude and will result in space debris with extremely short orbital lifetimes to be fully compliant with Guideline 4 of the COPUOS STSC Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines." Oberg, James. "Sense, Nonsense, and Pretense about the Destruction of USA 193." The Space Review. March 4, 2008.