Home > Bibliography > View Citation

View Citation


Saving Space: Threat Proliferation and Mitigation. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, 2009. [ 7 quotes ]

Evidence Related to this Citation

Chinese ASAT Test Motivated India and France to Expand Military Space Efforts
 
But although the negative reaction was strongest in the U.S. military, which sees China as a potential adversary, the Chinese ASAT test also stirred new discussions among military officials in other nations, including (predictably) India and France, about the potential need for not only satellite defenses but even development of ASAT weapons as a "deterrent" to use of such weapons by others. Indeed, U.S. trade journal Defense News on April 9, 2007 reported that India had reinstated plans to establish an Aerospace Command to oversee a new military space program and that development of ASATs had already commenced. "Sources in the ministry said space- based options must be used to protect national security, and that space programs should shift from support missions . . . to space control efforts," the report stated.9 French Ret. Gen. Bernard Molard, at a Jan. 24, 2008 conference in Washington, laid out the "logic of space deterrence"a concept that is increasingly gaining attention in both France and the United States.
Saving Space: Threat Proliferation and Mitigation. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, 2009. [ 7 quotes ] [ page 4 ]
47 States Own and/or Operate Satellites
 
During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were the only real space powers. The situation today is dramatically different. Currently, some 47 nations own and/or operate satellites, with nearly 900 working satellites in orbitmostly for civil/commercial purposes.16 The bulk of today's satellites are in Geostationary orbit (GEO, 36,000 kilometers in altitude) for civil and military communications purposes: telephony, internet services and broadcast television. However, an increasing number of satellites are being built in Low Earth Orbit (LEO, up to 2,000 kilometers) for Earth imaging, with ever greater resolutions that can provide traditional data such as crop and ocean monitoring, as well as data for tracking (and perhaps targeting) of military infrastructure. There are approximately 389 working satellites in LEO, including Earth observation (both civil and military/intelligence gathering), weather and mobile communications satellites.17 Of that number, about 130 are Earth observation sats, owned and/or operated by 33 countries plus the European Space Agency.18 Vietnam was the most recent nation to orbit an Earth observation satellite, launching it in April 2008.19 In the military arena, India most recently (in April 2009) launched a high-resolution (down to 1 meter), all-weather radar imaging satellite with the explicit purpose of monitoring military activities and terrorist movements primarily in rival Pakistan.20 Indeed, some "real estate" in space is getting crowded: particularly the GEO belt and the area over the poles where many satellites cross over each other's path. This fact has created emerging concerns about simple "highway safety" in space and the need to avoid accidental interference or collisions.
Saving Space: Threat Proliferation and Mitigation. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, 2009. [ 7 quotes ] [ page 6 ]
More and More States Seeking to use Space for Military Advantage
 
Further, many other nations have recently been putting more emphasis on obtaining military advantages from spacealthough China is the only other nation that has tested an ASAT, and just two other nations, India and Israel, are currently suspected of pursuing such capabilities. China, France, Germany, Italy, Israel, Spain and the United Kingdom all have dedicated military space assets for communications and/or imaging. A number of other nations have or are building dual-use satellites that can provide both civil and military functions, including India and Japan. Iran and North Korea are pursuing space launch and satellite capabilities that also would be assumed to have dual-use functions. The increasing interest in military uses of space has been fostered by two major factors. The first is the easier access to space capabilities over the past 20 years, and improvements in capabilities provided by the information revolution of the 1990s. The second is the 1990s "revolution in military affairs," led by the United States, which has resulted in the shift of national security space applications from strategic missions, such as spying and early warning of missile launches, to tactical applications, which include, perhaps most importantly, weapons targeting using global navigation and positioning satellites. The United States and Russia have long maintained navigation and positioning satellites for multiple purposes (besides targeting, these satellites are important for logistics management and own-force tracking), their respective Global Positioning System (GPS) network and the GLONASS constellation. Meanwhile, the European Union hopes to deploy its Galileo system by 2013, and China intends to deploy a similar world-wide navigation satellite network, dubbed COMPASS, by 2015although both systems are claimed to have primarily civilian functions. The new emphasis on tactical applications of space power, while greatly increasing military effectiveness on the ground, also has spurred military thinking in many nations about how to negate enemy space assetsthus the renewed interest in ASAT capabilities.
Saving Space: Threat Proliferation and Mitigation. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, 2009. [ 7 quotes ] [ page 6-7 ]
India and France Looking to Develop Counterspace Capabilities for Strategic Advantage
 
Obstacles to progress toward a PAROS treaty could also come from outside the great power triangle. In India, in particular, there have been behind the scenes debates among the political and military elite about whether India ought to conduct an ASAT test not simply to counter the Chinese test, but to put itself in a position of relative parity in any upcoming negotiations. The Indian political elite has never gotten over the fact that New Delhi's failure to conduct a nuclear test prior to the negotiation of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) demoted India to a "have not" status. For example, Sreeram Chaulia, an Indian scholar at the Maxwell School of Citizenship in New York, said in a recent op ed that the time to test an ASAT capability is now, before any treaties or regimes present restraints.67 In France, there has been (as noted above) much discussion among military officials and think tanks about the possible need for France to develop "counterspace" capabilities as a deterrent against others who might wish to attack France's considerable military space assets. Several other nations, such as Pakistan, Iran and North Korea, also may be considering their ASAT options as they further develop their long-range missile and space launch capabilities. Thus, real progress in the CD's PAROS discussions may be elusive in the short- and medium-term.
Saving Space: Threat Proliferation and Mitigation. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, 2009. [ 7 quotes ] [ page 17 ]
Microsatellite Technologies Contributing to Vertical Proliferation of ASAT Capabilities
 
The proliferation of satellite technology has not only been horizontalthat is, spreading to more and more operatorsbut also vertical, in that new capabilities (sometimes providing lower cost options for achieving certain functions) have rapidly emerged since the mid-1990s. This vertical proliferation includes, for example, the development of micro-satellites (weighing less than 100 kilograms) that could be used for a spectrum of missions from the benign to the lethal: inspection of damaged satellites; re-fueling of satellites; deployment of internet-linked satellite "swarms" to reduce the vulnerability of today's large communications and imaging satellites which come in ones, twos and threes; radio frequency jamming of nearby satellites; and ASATs using kinetic energy (ramming a target satellite), high-powered microwaves or explosives. Micro-sats (and their even smaller cousins nano-sats and cube-sats) further raise the promise of cheaper access to space, especially as the ability to miniaturize components such as cameras continues to improve. This could mean another boom in satellite acquisition. Approximately 400 micro-sats have been orbited over the last 20 years, although mostly for civil research purposes. However, the U.S. and Chinese militaries have been particularly active in micro-sat experimentation over the last five yearsalthough largely in secret.21 One of the complicating factors for space security of an increased number of smaller satellites is the difficulty of tracking them, which could cause even more problems for preventing interference and collisionsas well as raise suspicions about their purposes given the myriad possibilities for weapons applications.
Saving Space: Threat Proliferation and Mitigation. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, 2009. [ 7 quotes ] [ page 7 ]
Directed-Energy ASATs are still not practical enough to be considered a threat
 
While laser-based ASATs are theoretically possible, there remain many technical challenges. Low-power systems for use in "dazzling" optical satellites may not reliably functionespecially on imaging satellites using multiple wavelengthsand given their effects, provide the side whose satellite was hit relatively good information about not only where the attack originated but also about the location of the facility or ground position that the dazzling is trying to protect from view. High-power ground-based lasersthat might be set from "stun to kill"today use vast quantities of noxious chemical fuel, thus requiring very large facilities that are potentially very large targets themselves. The enormous amounts of fuel required for chemical laser operations also contributed to the ABL problems. And despite successes in development of adaptive optics and experiments in bouncing lasers from mirrors to their targets, atmospheric distortion of the light beam continues to be an issue.
Saving Space: Threat Proliferation and Mitigation. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, 2009. [ 7 quotes ] [ page 8-9 ]
Number of States with Direct Ascent ASAT Capabilities Increasing
 
While emerging technologies could someday enable more sophisticated ASATs, the most immediate concerns continue to center on so-called direct ascent ASATs launched by ground-based missilesas tested by the Soviet Union and China, and developed by the U.S. KE-ASAT program and demonstrated by the use of an Aegis- cruiser based medium-range missile to shoot down USA 193. Aside from radio frequency jamming, computer system hacking or bombing of ground facilities, the functioning of satellites in LEO can be most simply negated by such ASATs based on medium-range ballistic missiles. At least 12 nations possess such missiles: China, Egypt, France, Libya, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the United States. Reaching GEO sats from the ground is a much more difficult business because of the distance involved, and no nation has shown that GEO can be reached, much less a satellite attacked, using a long-range ballistic missile. In fact, only a handful of nations and commercial entities can place a satellite in GEO today (including China, the European Space Agency, France, Japan, Israel, India, Russia and the United States.) It is also true that missile launch capability is not the long pole in the tent for ASAT developmentinstead it is the mastery of satellite tracking, precision maneuverability and end-game guidance systemsbut the fact that China, Russia and the United States have successfully demonstrated the feasibility of missile- based ASATs makes clear that conversion of ballistic missiles into workable ASATs can be achieved. Unfortunately, this type of ASAT is the most dangerous to the safety of the space environment for all satellite operators because satellite destruction results in the creation of space debris. Thus, the potential for a space arms race centered on destructive ASATs should be a primary concern of the international community.
Saving Space: Threat Proliferation and Mitigation. : International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, 2009. [ 7 quotes ] [ page 9 ]