Satcom: Space Weapons to soon turn Earth into Inescapeable Prison

[grarpamp]

These warmongering idiots are going to blast a debris dome
overhead so dense and random that humanity will never be
able to safely push rockets through to the stars. Only in Spaceballs
is there such a thing as an orbital vacuum cleaner. In real life,
even your vacuums get destroyed by all the chunks grinding
themselves into dust.

Everything in orbit is already getting shredded to bits...

https://duckduckgo.com/?iax=images&ia=images&q=orbital+debris+impact
https://duckduckgo.com/?iax=images&ia=images&q=space+debris+impact
https://duckduckgo.com/?iax=images&ia=images&q=space+junk+impact

https://illumin.usc.edu/impact-of-orbital-debris/
https://sma.nasa.gov/sma-disciplines/orbital-debris
https://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space-debris/kessler-syndrome/subject-orbital-debris-impact/
https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-21-011.pdf
https://www.witpress.com/Secure/elibrary/papers/SUSI96/SUSI96025FU.pdf
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/National-Orbital-Debris-RD-Plan-2021.pdf
https://blogs.esa.int/cleanspace/2018/03/27/how-to-evaluate-the-environmental-impacts-of-space-debris/

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37361/space-force-has-a-unit-dedicated-to-orbital-warfare-that-now-operates-the-x-37b-spaceplane

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-anti-satellite-test
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-military-gps-satellites-threatened-by-chinese-lasers-jammers-space-force-general_3810774.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-chinese-weapons-threaten-every-satellite-in-orbit-says-us-general_1323124.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-and-russia-will-soon-be-able-to-destroy-us-satellites-report_2430825.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/russia-tests-nesting-doll-anti-satellite-weapon-space-command_3435527.html
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39277/heres-our-best-look-yet-at-russias-secretive-space-cannon-the-only-gun-ever-fired-in-space
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a33405774/russia-anti-satellite-space-weapon-test-caught/
https://www.theepochtimes.com/as-china-talks-peace-in-space-researcher-shows-secret-chinese-anti-satellite-emp-bases_2868172.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-developing-space-weapons-that-can-take-down-us-satellites_2801279.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-is-branding-anti-satellite-weapons-as-scavenger-satellites_2907825.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/ccp-space-program-is-direct-military-threat-experts_3941742.html



https://www.theepochtimes.com/ccps-anti-satellite-weapons-present-complex-challenge-for-us-experts_3967180.html

CCP's Anti-Satellite Weapons Present Complex Challenge For US: Experts

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has continued to develop an array of
anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons designed to overwhelm U.S. assets in
space, even as advisers to the Biden administration issued calls for
cooperation between the two nations.
Military vehicles carrying cruise missiles are displayed in a military
parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Sept. 3, 2015. (Greg
Baker/AFP/Getty Images)

The CCP’s growing arsenal of space weapons now includes missiles,
cyberweapons, satellite jamming devices, space robots with grabbing
arms, and high-powered lasers designed to blind satellites from the
ground as they pass overhead.

Development of these capabilities has been ongoing since at least
2007, when the CCP successfully exploded a satellite with a missile in
low-earth orbit. And earlier this year, the chief of operations for
the U.S. Space Force testified that both Russia and China were
continuing the development of electronic warfare packages, signal
jammers, and directed energy weapons.

Underscoring the centrality of space in modern military doctrine, the
CCP has continued ASAT launches disguised as rocket tests, increased
Sino-Russian cooperation in space, and developed new technologies,
including so-called inspector satellites capable of grabbing other
objects in space, and “nesting doll” systems consisting of seemingly
harmless satellites that then release other, smaller satellites of
unknown capabilities.

Experts say that China’s emerging ASAT technologies present an
immediate threat to U.S. and international security, but disagree on
the exact nature of that threat and the United States’ ability to
effectively deter and counter it.
A Persistent Threat

Bill Woolf, the president and founder of the Space Force Association,
told The Epoch Times that space-based capabilities were vital to
contemporary security strategy, but warned that the proliferation of
new technologies likely meant that the CCP and other actors had the
ability to attack U.S. space infrastructure.

“Space is such a critical capability to all of our military operations
in the U.S., and with our allies and partners,” Woolf said. “So,
talking about the technology, it’s safe to presume that there’s
technology out there that can disrupt, degrade, or deny our space
capabilities.”

With that in mind, however, Woolf stressed that the military-centric
development of ASAT technologies in space was not novel and presented
merely one more layer of complexity to the international security
space.

“People get pretty animated when they say that space has become a
military domain,” Woolf said. “[But] space has been a military domain
since we deployed military capabilities into space.”

The militarization of space has been ongoing from the Cold War up
through the present. In the 1970s, for example, the Soviet Union
successfully mounted a bomber-defense gun to a satellite and performed
the only publicly known test fire of a ballistic weapon in space.
Similarly, Russia was caught last year testing a new space-based ASAT
weapon.
Gen. Jay Raymond (R), Chief of Space Operations, and CMSgt Roger
Towberman (L), with Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett present
President Donald Trump with the official flag of the United States
Space Force in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, on
May 15, 2020. (Samuel Corum-Pool/Getty Images)

Likewise, the CCP has repeatedly been observed developing classified
ASAT technologies since its explosive demonstration in 2007 and, in
2019, the Pentagon issued a report acknowledging that the CCP’s
primary goal was to target the United States and allied satellite
capabilities.

Woolf explained that the CCP was specifically pursuing a course of
action aimed at undermining the United States and allied space assets,
but that this militarization of outer space was a natural evolution of
the domain given the technologies there.

“In their doctrine they discuss that they will attempt to degrade or
deny all of our space capabilities,” Woolf said of the CCP.

For Woolf, the primary challenge facing the United States and its
allies in space is determining which threats present the most
immediate danger, and how to deter and counter them.

“Regardless of the threat, because the threat’s out there,” Woolf
said, “the key becomes what are the warnings?”
Deterrence Difficult in ‘Most Obscure Battlefield’

The problem of determining what constitutes a reliable warning is
something that Paul Szymanski has often thought about. Szymanski is an
author and researcher specializing in space strategy, and has spent
the last 43 years studying space warfare, during which time he helped
to develop intelligence indicators to signal possible enemy actions in
space.

According to Szymanski, notable risks facing the United States in
space are the relative difficulty of determining who is doing what in
space and why.

Particularly in the era of cyberwarfare and false flag attacks, or
those designed to look like they are perpetrated by someone other than
the actual culprit, Szymanski worries that current technologies simply
do not have sufficiently accurate sensors and algorithms to
effectively determine what is happening to space infrastructure in
real time.

“It’s the most obscure battlefield,” he said.

Further, there is great difficulty in conceptualizing space conflict,
Szymanki noted, because assets in orbit can be physically distant but
mathematically close for the purposes of carrying out attacks. And
once a vital system goes down, it may be too late for a nation to
recover.

“That’s the big thing about space,” Szymanski said, “it’s always worldwide.”

“I don’t think you can defend in space,” he added. “It might just be
whoever shoots first wins.”
A Long March-2F carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft
and a crew of three astronauts, lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite
Launch Centre in the Gobi desert, in northwest China on June 17, 2021,
the first crewed mission to China’s new space station. (Greg Baker/AFP
via Getty Images)

Concerning the CCP’s expanding arsenal of ASAT technologies, Szymanski
said that “inspector” satellites equipped with arms likely presented a
more serious threat than laser technologies, as the use of ASAT lasers
would take time to correctly target satellites on orbit, while
human-controlled inspectors could easily be used to knock rival
satellites out of orbit.

“I was surprised that [the U.S. is] already admitting that China has
these inspector satellites with manipulator arms,” Szymanski said. “If
you’ve got something like that, you can do just about anything.”

“I can say that [the CCP is] certainly going for it,” Szymanski said.
“Certainly, this manipulator satellite is an ASAT, though they can
conveniently call it a ‘maintenance satellite.’”

The CCP has disguised the military applications of such technologies
for years by developing dual-purpose technologies that offer an
innocuous research function that conceals military functionality.
Experts have previously called such dual-use technologies and programs
a direct threat to the United States.

Szymanski also noted that there are immense political difficulties
concerning decisions about which space systems should be funded first,
as most space systems provide information rather than hard assets and
it is difficult to define a specific monetary or strategic value to
them.

“The trouble with space is it’s all information,” Szymanski said. “How
do you measure the value of communications versus imagery?”
Many Threats, Few Ripostes

Ultimately, Woolf and Szymanski offered competing views on the status
quo of the new space race, and what it might mean for the future of
U.S. strategy.

For Woolf, the answer lies primarily in developing, supporting, and
enforcing a rules-based order in outer space that complements the
order commonly recognized throughout the international community.

“Just like every other domain, there needs to be identified norms of
behavior, clearly articulated, that say this is how folks behave in
space,” Woolf said.

Szymanski, meanwhile, expressed weariness with the idea that the
United States should continue to seek a rules-based order with a rival
apparently set on violating rules-based norms. He felt that the United
States’ dedication to deterring the CCP rather than confronting it
might only result in buying the CCP more time to prepare a first and,
perhaps, fatal blow.

“I get the impression that we’re going to self-deter and the space war
is going to be over before we can do anything about it,” Szymanski
said.

“The only purpose of the Space Force is to support terrestrial
forces,” Szymanski added. “If you lose a war in space, you may as well
not even start the war on the ground.”

“They want to say, ‘we have the technologies, we’ll win,’ but we had
the technologies in Afghanistan. Why aren’t we winning?”

To that end, Woolf noted that persistent threats have always been a
reality of politics and that it is the job of the military and
government to uphold the rules by doing the best they can based on
knowledge of extant and emerging threats.

“There is a threat,” Woolf said. “We just have to be prepared for that
eventuality and have the systems in place to mitigate the impact of
that potential threat.”