US Navy to deal with NRO's screwup by destroying it.

[MKSheppard]

Link

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon is planning to shoot down a broken spy satellite expected to hit the Earth in early March, The Associated Press has learned.

U.S. officials said Thursday that the option preferred by the Bush administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth's atmosphere.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the options will not be publicly discussed until a later Pentagon briefing.

The disabled satellite is expected to hit the Earth the first week of March. Officials said the Navy would likely shoot it down before then, using a special missile modified for the task.

Other details about the missile and the targeting were not immediately available. But the decision involves several U.S. agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Defense and the State Department.

Shooting down a satellite is particularly sensitive because of the controversy surrounding China's anti-satellite test last year, when Beijing shot down one of its defunct weather satellites, drawing immediate criticism from the U.S. and other countries.

A key concern at that time was the debris created by Chinese satellite's destruction—and that will also be a focus now, as the U.S. determines exactly when and under what circumstances to shoot down its errant satellite.

The military will have to choose a time and a location that will avoid to the greatest degree any damage to other satellites in the sky. Also, there is the possibility that large pieces could remain, and either stay in orbit where they can collide with other satellites or possibly fall to Earth.

It is not known where the satellite will hit. But officials familiar with the situation say about half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft is expected to survive its blazing descent through the atmosphere and will scatter debris—some of it potentially hazardous—over several hundred miles. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The satellite is outfitted with thrusters—small engines used to position it in space. They contain the toxic rocket fuel hydrazine, which can cause harm to anyone who contacts it.

--------------

And also sends a nice message to china as well.

[MKSheppard]

Serious question: Will the Cruiser get to paint a little sputnik symbol on it's fire control director?

[K. A. Pital]

And also sends a nice message to china as well.

What message? "We can shoot down satellites" how's that of any relevance, especially to China from the US.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

So American ASAT makes its combat debut on the world stage...

...by blasting one of our own spy sats due to Charlie dancing the Foxtrot.


Hope they splash the dead bird with a minimum of orbital debris. Honestly I'd prefer all the debris to hit Earth at a low grazing angle over the central and eastern Pacific instead of hitting a continent or staying in orbit.

[MKSheppard]

What message? "We can shoot down satellites" how's that of any relevance, especially to China from the US.

Well, the message that goes: "lol, you need a MRBM to shoot down a satellite, we can do the same using a SM-3, which can be put into just about every surface combatant we have?"

[Chardok]

And also sends a nice message to china as well.

What message? "We can shoot down satellites - and we mean it." how's that of any relevance, especially to China from the US.

[Sidewinder]

I guess the USN thought this is an opportunity to test ABM technology, AND to convince Congress to continue funding R & D. Let's see how it goes.

[Sea Skimmer]

So American ASAT makes its combat debut on the world stage...

This really isn’t any closer to combat then the 1985 test of the ASM-135A ASAT missile. SM-3 isn’t an ASAT weapon anyway; it can only hit this sat because it’s so close to reentering. There was a time however, 1962-1975, when the US kept ASAT missiles with nuclear warheads ready to launch, using Nike-Zeus and Thor missiles

Hope they splash the dead bird with a minimum of orbital debris. Honestly I'd prefer all the debris to hit Earth at a low grazing angle over the central and eastern Pacific instead of hitting a continent or staying in orbit.

The US satellite is in such a low and decaying orbit already that the debris will quickly hit the atmosphere and be pulled down, unlike the debris from the Chinese bird which will stay up through the next century.

[Drooling Iguana]

Wouldn't this sort if thing create a hell of a lot of orbital debris? I think our problems with space junk are bad enough as they are.

[Omega18]

Wouldn't this sort if thing create a hell of a lot of orbital debris? I think our problems with space junk are bad enough as they are.

Basically not for any real amount of time at least.

The US is deliberately waiting so long before shooting the satellite down to ensure any debris will burn up in the atmosphere within a couple of weeks.

The decaying orbit of the satellite is also low enough that no other functioning satellites would potentially be in the path of any debris. (You want an operational satellite to be further up and not having to deal with relatively more atmospheric friction among other issues.) This is in other words quite different than the Chinese stunt.

[MKSheppard]

The problem has been fixed.

[FSTargetDrone]

The problem has been fixed.

Here are the grisly details:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An inoperable U.S. spy satellite orbiting about 150 miles above Earth was struck Wednesday by a missile fired from a U.S. Navy cruiser, military sources told CNN.

The Pentagon said the window of opportunity to strike the 5,000-pound satellite opened Wednesday, when the space shuttle Atlantis landed in Florida. The Pentagon wanted to be sure the shuttle would not be struck by any debris from a destroyed satellite.

But earlier the official said conditions had to be perfect, and that was not the case Wednesday with swells in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii running slightly higher than Navy would like.

CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said six- to eight-foot swells were reported in the area through Wednesday night and were not expected to come down until Friday or Saturday.

The United States planned to spend up to $60 million trying to destroy the satellite even though there was only a remote possibility the satellite could fall to Earth, survive re-entry and spew toxic gas in a populated area, said James Jeffrey, deputy national security adviser.

"The regret factor of not acting clearly outweighed the regret factor of acting," he said.

Extensive information, I know, but...

Now, where be some video?

[D.Turtle]

How comparable is this to shooting down an incoming ICBM?

[SirNitram]

How comparable is this to shooting down an incoming ICBM?

Both have extremely predictable re-entry, but there will probably not be the sheer length of prep time, the chance to delay from bad weather(Was that rescinded?), the fact the damn thing was probably broadcasting, and so forth.

Then there's things like decoys and maneuvering re-entry vehicles.

[Pu-239]

Well, satellites have a much higher velocity (obviously to keep it orbiting, otherwise it'd be falling to the ground like a missile warhead), and AFAIK it was not broadcasting, if they had to modify the seeker to pick up the cooler satellite.

One Pentagon official said that since early January, a team including 200 industry experts and scientists had worked furiously to modify the Aegis air-defense missile system so it could shoot down the satellite. Among the team's challenges was modifying the sensors designed to detect the heat from an incoming warhead, as the satellite will be much cooler.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/02/2 ... index.html

[MKSheppard]

Then there's things like decoys and maneuvering re-entry vehicles.

Decoys don't work. Never have. Never will.

And as for manouvering Re-entry vehicles.

Great, you've done our job for us, reducing the warheads carried from 12 to 1, allowing us to shoot down 92% of your RVs without firing a shot.

[Pu-239]

In addition, the requirements to have the debris land in a specific area rather than simply blowing it up also probably might making shooting it down more difficult.

[Stuart]

How comparable is this to shooting down an incoming ICBM?

It's a very good test; not quite as good as doing the real thing but this is as close as it gets. It also demonstrates an ASAT capability that is implicit in the design of any ABM system. ASAT and ABM are two sides of the same coin, develop one and we can develop another.

By the way, something that the media reports have missed out on; as this satellite decayed, the intercept solution was very like the atmosphere-skimming re-entry vehicles the Russians have been playing with. So this was a very pointed message to them - "You think you had something good? Well, watch this."

Then there's things like decoys and maneuvering re-entry vehicles.

Decoys aren't a problem. Nobody has yet made a decoy that works, seperating decoys from the RV is a serious problem that hasn't been fully solved and the only viable decoy would be one that is precisely the same as a live warhead and would replace one. So, decoys don't work.

MARVs do not - repeat not - manoeuver to avoid an interceptor, they manoeuver during the final stages of their attack run on the target to improve terminal accuracy. Usually they do this by radar terrain matching and the footprint within which they can change course is quite small . they gain that terminal accuracy at great cost in weight and complexity (and cost) and essentially are unitary warheads. They are specific tools for a very specific job and evading ABMs isn;t even mentioned as a footnote in that requirement.

[K. A. Pital]

Nobody has yet made a decoy that works

There's only one thing I'm skeptical about. Why the hell does everyone make them. I mean, if they're really so pointless, the US, Russia and even smaller nations would not make (a) decoys (b) MIRVs (c) ICBMs at all. Why waste money on something futile? Especially if as you say that's a given since 1960.

I mean, come on. It's entirely plausible that another nation builds an ABM or an ABM-capable complex; in that case you can't really know where it's interceptors are and how many of them it has (especially in Cold War time).

Yet both sides (and later everyone else) kept building ICBMs. Then MIRVs. Decoys. And still do.

That's a strange lapse of judgement if all of them are completely futile in face of a single ASAT or ABM missile, that's downright ridiculous.

[Lancer]

There's only one thing I'm skeptical about. Why the hell does everyone make them. I mean, if they're really so pointless, the US, Russia and even smaller nations would not make (a) decoys (b) MIRVs (c) ICBMs at all. Why waste money on something futile? Especially if as you say that's a given since 1960.

I mean, come on. It's entirely plausible that another nation builds an ABM or an ABM-capable complex; in that case you can't really know where it's interceptors are and how many of them it has (especially in Cold War time).

Yet both sides (and later everyone else) kept building ICBMs. Then MIRVs. Decoys. And still do.

That's a strange lapse of judgement if all of them are completely futile in face of a single ASAT or ABM missile, that's downright ridiculous.

How many countries have access to viable ASAT/ABM missiles? How many missiles does that country have?

Decoys for individual warheads may be useless because they would take the place of a live warhead, but that doesn't mean that ICBM's are magically negated by ASAT/ABM missiles. It just means that whoever's shooting at you has to devote more of their warheads towards trying to wipe you out, thus either reducing the amount of targets they can hit effectively.

[Stuart]

There's only one thing I'm skeptical about. Why the hell does everyone make them. I mean, if they're really so pointless, the US, Russia and even smaller nations would not make (a) decoys (b) MIRVs (c) ICBMs at all. Why waste money on something futile? Especially if as you say that's a given since 1960.

By and large missiles do not use decoys; space and throw-weight are in desperately short supply on ICBMs (even the weight of paint is kept to a minimum) and decoys are a worthless waste of both. So they aren't used. People play with them because in order to develop anti-decoy technology we have to know what sort of things the decoy producers are likely to come up with. So, every year, the people who produce decoys come up with new ideas and the people who produce discrimination technology see how those new ideas fare against their discrimination systems. When I last heard about this, discrimination technology was pulling ahead of decoy technology so fast that it isn't even funny. As a simple example, the old jettisonable flares and chaff used by military aircraft (and some civil ones) are completely ineffective against modern SAMs. So the decoy people had to come up with a new system (towed decoys) to overcome the new missiles. That happened twenty years ago,.......

As to why people built ICBMs, there were two primary reasons. One was a hopeless overestimate of the levels of performance that could be achieved by SAMs in the late 1960s. For example, it was projected that 1969 SAMs would have speeds of Mach 9 - 10 and ranges of up to 500 miles. If those performance levels had been met we would have severe problems - only even now, 40 years later, we're nowhere close.

The other was that ICBMs appear to be cheap. We've already cranked the figures on them once and shown that "cheapness" is illusion but the people back then didn't realize what was involved. So it looked like a way to deliver nuclear warheads on the cheap. I suspect that the realization on both sides that ICBMs were neither cheap nor invulnerable had a lot to do with the ABM treaty.

That brings us to the "why still build them" issue. Look at it this way; for 40 years, the development of SAMs has been powering ahead while the development of anti-ballistic missile systems has been prevented by political treaty. Suppose we reverse that? Let's assume a world where the development of ABM systems has been powering ahead while the development and deployment of anti-aircraft missiles has been prohibited. We'd have an exact mirror image of the situation we have now. Nobody would have been building ballistic missiles because they were too vulnerable and their development would have atrophied. Meanwhile, everybody would have manned bomber fleet and be pointing to their invulnerability.

I mean, come on. It's entirely plausible that another nation builds an ABM or an ABM-capable complex; in that case you can't really know where it's interceptors are and how many of them it has (especially in Cold War time).

Ummm, not quite right but essentially that's true. I'd say though that makes building ABM even more attractive; once the system exists the enemy can't be quite sure how many interceptors there are or what their coverage is.

Yet both sides (and later everyone else) kept building ICBMs. Then MIRVs. Decoys. And still do.

As we've covered, Decoys, no they don't. The technological base exists but it isn't exploited. Why should it be? Until quite recently there were virtually no ABM interceptors to decoy.

ICBM development is an artefact of a politically-inspired treaty that distorted the whole environment.

That's a strange lapse of judgement if all of them are completely futile in face of a single ASAT or ABM missile, that's downright ridiculous.

No, the environment right up to the last few years was rigged so that missiles were the preferred option, primarily due to the strategic perceptions of various people in high places. It's not a lapse of judgement at that level, its one at the high strategic level of what people wanted to achieve. People stacked their money on ICBMs in the late 1950s and early 1960s, later realized they'd made a bad mistake and spent their time working out patches and band-aids to keep the systems they'd wasted billions on viable. In doing so they distorted everything around them and set up the situation we have today.

[K. A. Pital]

How many countries have access to viable ASAT/ABM missiles?

By now - all major military powers and independent states: US, Russia, India, China. Hell, Israel.

How many missiles does that country have?

If we're talking about tactical stuff like SM-3 which Stuart says is more than enough to deal with warheads, that's lots of missiles. Basically this means US and Russia are already single-launch ICBM-secure, and the US Europe interceptor program is not aimed at a rogue launch of a few warheads, or an accident

Hell, Russia's entire nuclear missile park is ~1000. One fucking thousand (with +800 winged missiles). Of them ~700 are ICBMs. There's also ~350 SLBNs, and ~800 winged missiles (there's virtually no delivery means for them however).

Either all of it is totally useless, or there isn't an over 90% success for taking down warheads with SM-3 and the like.

Breakdown:

It just means that whoever's shooting at you has to devote more of their warheads towards trying to wipe you out, thus either reducing the amount of targets they can hit effectively.

Yeah.

[K. A. Pital]

Stuart
Please. If systems like SM-3 can hit a ballistic missile warhead with an over 90% probability, all ballistic nuclear arsenals are already obsolete. There's only several hundred ballistic missiles. SAMs can take care of the winged missiles - and anyway most nations lack effective means of delivery for winged missiles.

Essentially, the whole "protect from Iran" is total bullshit in this case, egregious, atrocious lie. Why NK blows up some nuclear bomb or tests ICBMs? That's ridiculous. Why the US keeps harping on building new interceptor sites in Europe?

And how ridiculously overpowered that makes the Moscow ABM system! With ~1200 interceptors, it's like a total fortress. The US has a total of ~500 ICBMs. Five hundred. Plus around 400 SLBNs and ~900 winged missiles.

[Burak Gazan]

Liveleak Video of Pentagon Briefing showing intercept


From Drudge Report

[Stuart]

Please. If systems like SM-3 can hit a ballistic missile warhead with an over 90% probability, all ballistic nuclear arsenals are already obsolete. There's only several hundred ballistic missiles. SAMs can take care of the winged missiles - and anyway most nations lack effective means of delivery for winged missiles.

I agree. Been saying that for some time now. ICBMs were great as long as people were prevented by treaty from developing defenses against them. As soon as that constraint was removed the writing was on the wall for ICBMs, it was just a matter of time before we got to a position where they were non-viable.

Essentially, the whole "protect from Iran" is total bullshit in this case, egregious, atrocious lie.

Of course. However, it's not an atrocious lie, its a very good one and worked like a charm. It would only have been an atrocious lie if people had found out earlier. Nor is it egregarious, it served a valuable function in getting ABM set up. The real point of the system, right now, as is, is to put ICBMs out of business. In the old days when our two countries faced off, we were both responsible players and we knew what the rules were. The situation worked because we both wanted it to work and that made the risks inherent in deploying ICBMs acceptable. That isn't the case now, we have players who are not rational and don't care what the rules are. That makes ICBMs too dangerous to have around.

Why NK blows up some nuclear bomb or tests ICBMs? That's ridiculous.

Not if one doesn't have an ABM system. For example to Thailand, Phillipines, Malaysia etc, those missiles are a deadly threat they can't do much about. So the Norks can use the "annoy me and I'll shoot at them" argument. Conversationwill go something like.

"Do thus and so or I'll nuke Manila."

"Then we'll reduce North Korea to a radioactive wasteland"

"That won't bring Manila back."

Hence the SM-3s on the AEGIS ships. We can move them around and position them so they can defend against that sort of threat.

Why the US keeps harping on building new interceptor sites in Europe?

This is a thing called decoupling. There has always been a perceived Russian effort to decouple (ie end the alliance between) Western Europe and the US. One of the tools used to do that was to pose threats to Europe hat could not also threaten the US. For example, theater missiles (the infamous SS-20s) were installed so that the USSR could threaten to destroy Western Europe without menacing the USA. They could then turn around and ask the Europeans "do you really believe the Americans will accept the loss of New York if they respond to the destruction of Amsterdam? Do they even know where Amsterdam is?" Our response to that ploy was the installation of our own theater weapons in Western Europe (cruise and Pershing II)

So, Russia is trying the same game again, effectively saying that the Americans are behind their missile shield, will they risk that for you? Our missile installations in Europe extend the missile shield to them (they are also building their own for precisely the same reason) and negate that threat. Putin's blustering is simply adding weight to the case. If he was smarter he'd say nothing and do nothing and allow inertia to let the threat wither.

And how ridiculously overpowered that makes the Moscow ABM system! With ~1200 interceptors, it's like a total fortress. The US has a total of ~500 ICBMs. Five hundred. Plus around 400 SLBNs and ~900 winged missiles.

I think you're quoting all the SAMs as ABMs. My listing shows about 100 assorted ABMs around Moscow which is bad enough. However, what makes you think Moscow is a major point of attack? We're perfectly well aware its a strategic decoy. The only reason why we plan to shoot at it at all is you'd all be offended if we didn't.

You're making a very good point though. Strategic arsenals have dropped to the point where defeating a mass attack is possible. That's a good thing for everybody.