To Combat Drone or Not to Combat Drone?

[Shroom Man 777]

Okay, Iran can develop ASAT capability in the near future. But this somehow dooms the UCAVs? Is Shep that pessimistic and defeatist about American military capabilities, and is he that enthusiastic and optimistic about Iranian military capability? It looks like he's giving the US military too little credit, and the Iranians a bit too much.

[MKSheppard]

Okay, Iran can develop ASAT capability in the near future.

Not just Iran, but a whole clutch of other nations, who are also major arms producers, and do not follow nonproliferation agreements. For example, did you know that Sudan(!) of all places has fairly decent tanks produced in country (though via kit imports from Iran/China)?

The real wild card in all of this is the militarization of solid state lasers. That's a technology that will proliferate rather rapidly once China manages to develop a semi portable version that can blind satellites.

It looks like he's giving the US military too little credit, and the Iranians a bit too much.

I'm definitely not assuming our enemies in the future will be Iraqis -- the same people who tried attacking M1A1(HA) abrams with steel (!) penetrator rounds, and thought that basically having their entire air force run to Iran in the opening salvo of the war was a great idea; or that immobilizing their tanks in giant berms was the epitome of tactics.

Everyone has been studying the various US campaigns against Iraq since 1991 very intensively -- they're a perfect card list of what NOT to do if you're facing the Americans. Step One on any smart opponent's TO DO list is to degrade US Space capabilities -- since a lot of our overmatch capabilities depend on unimpeded space access. We've just been lucky that we've either faced third rate opponents with third rate equipment (the Iraqis), or competent people who just didn't have enough military capability to face down NATO credibly (the Serbians in 1999).

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh, you gotta give the Serbians credit though. Their PVO guys were pretty damn competent and despite having meh stuff in gear, through their clever brains they still managed to ruin the shit out of an F-117!

The badass genius guy who did that currently owns a bakeshop too, and keeps a piece of the F-117 in his garage as a trophy!

Bad. Ass.


Anyway, I can see where an overreliance of UCAVs would be a bad thing if ASAT and other countermeasures are proliferated, especially when it comes to ruining the shit out of adversaries with decent anti-UCAV capabilities. However, for low-intensity conflicts against Iraqs that require aircraft with long-loiter times and where pilot fatigue is a problem because of all the sorties to blow up bad guys in their caves, UCAVs would be just what the doctor ordered. So, perhaps, in the future a significant number of UCAVs (for quashing tiny countries) could be had while the USAF also invests in badass manned vehicles (for ruining the shit out of competent countries with advanced ASAT/anti-UCAV capabilities)?

After the manned aircraft ruin the shit out of enemy ASAT/anti-UCAV capabilities, the UCAVs could then come into play and a combined manned/unmanned air force would be able to do all sorts of gnarly stuff. You can have unmanned UCAVs do stuff like close-air-support where their pilotless nature makes them more disposable against anti-aircraft fire, or you can have the UCAVs do air patrols and stay in the air for long periods of time while the manned aircraft and their pilots can get adequate amounts of rest. Then the manned aircraft can do trickier jobs, like fucking over ASATs and... well... whatever it is the UCAVs can't do. UCAVs would totally make the manned fighter workload easier.

[Starglider]

Stark, with regard to ASATs, Shep is making sense and you are flailing about without a clue.

Btw Starglider tells me in 20-30 years he expects human level AGIs on a single chip. There goes satlink dependency, even if we ignore thing like 'relays'.

Yeah, let's not get into the 'what happens when we have AGI' debate, because you don't need anything that advanced to massively reduce the bandwidth requirements. Currently drones operate in one of two modes; like an RC model plane with video cameras stuck on, or with a waypoint-following autopilot similar to a cruise missile. The former mode requires the bandwidth for live video (current drones don't even use terribly good compression) and latency (on the control inputs) low enough for pilots to fly it smoothly.

The next generation of drones will have vision recognition software on board, good enough that they can find likely targets, create a nice zoomed cropped shot, and send just that image (or a few choice images) back. Space probes have had this capability since the 1970s (see; automated visual target acquisition and imaging on the Voyager mission) but of course it's rather harder to implement in a combat setting. The autopilot will be full-time, rather than just for the boring parts of the mission; commands will be abstracted to things like 'approach target from west at 1500m, release bomb and turn away at 3km' rather than a stream of servo inputs. It will be independently combat capable; not for dogfighting with fighters, but for evading mobile SAM sites and long-range radar guided missiles (even a moderate evasion capability can reduce the effective range of enemy missiles and make the overall UAV swarm harder to stop). Finally data compression will catch up with the commercial state of the art.

The two order of magnitude reduction in core data rate, order of magnitude improvement in latency tolerance, plus the ever-growing sophistication of spread spectrum techniques, will allow the use of lower frequencies and make UAV comms links more robust and longer ranged. Having a big well-defended manned aircraft haul an huge phased array antennae into the theatre will still help enormously though.

Thus clearly the US should bring back the XB-70 Valkyrie as an AWACS aircraft.

[adam_grif]

If satellites become threatened and drones become more widely utilized, I can definiately envision some form of mobile command centre like that becoming standard eqipment. The closer they get to the fight, the harder it gets to jam and the lower the latency is. Of course, if all you're doing is designating targets as hostile, then very high latencies become somewhat acceptable.

And then there's that a mobile command centre would be a very juicy target.

[eion]

The ASAT missile used by Shep as an example of, I assume, low-cost and easier to develop Anti-Satellite capability is the ASM-135 ASAT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT) being launched by F-15A 76-0084.

The entire program cost an estimated 5.3 billion and produced 15 missiles. That's 353 million a launch.

The budget for the Iranian Space Agency: 400 Million.

Even if they used their entire defense budget (7.31 billion in 2007) on a similar ASAT system (assuming they could develop the rather complex technology behind the final intercept vehicle) that would only give them 20 missiles.

ASAT is not just putting a hunk of metal in orbit, it's putting a hunk of metal in a very precise orbit, if your kill vehicle is 3 feet in diameter and you're 1 foot away from the target, you miss. Close doesn't count in orbital mechanics.

That being said, the ASM-135 successfully destroyed a target 20 times smaller than the KH-12 in its only test launch. The test, by the way, forced NASA to up the shielding on its planned space station. If someone did deploy such a weapon en masse, it could cause a Kessler Syndrome, crippling other satellites.

But still, 5.3 Billion for 15 missiles, doubtful Iran's putting serious efforts into such miniature ASATs, and anything much larger than this will be easily identified, monitored, and targeted using orbital and terrestrial intelligence.

[Sea Skimmer]

The ASAT missile used by Shep as an example of, I assume, low-cost and easier to develop Anti-Satellite capability is the ASM-135 ASAT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT) being launched by F-15A 76-0084.

ASM-135 can only hit a target in a very low orbit like a reconnaissance satellite. Communications and navigation satellites orbit much higher, as much as tens of thousands of miles vs. a few hundred miles. You need a big ground launched missile to kill higher stuff or else a larger bomber sized aircraft for the air launch . ASM-135 was a bleeding edge program because it had to be so damn light and yet have totally autonomous guidance and be able to be fired off an F-15 which was more or less stock. Low cost and easy to develop it was NOT.

The entire program cost an estimated 5.3 billion and produced 15 missiles. That's 353 million a launch.

The budget for the Iranian Space Agency: 400 Million.

Even if they used their entire defense budget (7.31 billion in 2007) on a similar ASAT system (assuming they could develop the rather complex technology behind the final intercept vehicle) that would only give them 20 missiles.

Why exactly would you conclude that work done by Iran must cost exactly the same as work done by the US? The entire Iranian military budget would barely fund the operations and maintenance budget of two US Army divisions. But this isn’t stopping Iran from maintaining over a half million troops, and an air force and a small navy and a nuclear program and missile programs, because it a much cheaper country to do work in and a lot of the industry is directly owned by the government.

The US meanwhile had previously deployed Nike Zeus ABM weapons and then converted Thor IRBMs as ASAT weapons at a fixed site on Kwajalein without breaking the bank. This adoption of existing technology and existing missiles is much more relevant to consideration of Iranian ASAT. Iran can adapt the space boosters it has already developed and demonstrated with that 400 million dollar budget into ASAT weapons. This is inherent and cheap. All they need is the kill vehicle end.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah, let's not get into the 'what happens when we have AGI' debate, because you don't need anything that advanced to massively reduce the bandwidth requirements. Currently drones operate in one of two modes; like an RC model plane with video cameras stuck on, or with a waypoint-following autopilot similar to a cruise missile. The former mode requires the bandwidth for live video (current drones don't even use terribly good compression) and latency (on the control inputs) low enough for pilots to fly it smoothly.

The bandwidth requirements to stream video are nothing compared to the bandwidth requirements to stream ground mapping radar. One radar equipped Global Hawk is capable of using up 1/6th of all US satellite bandwidth and the USAF wants to buy at least a dozen of them, ideally they want several dozen but the budget isn't allowing that. Right now all Predators can fly with radar too, but usually doesn’t because insurgents rarely use vehicles and we already mapped everything in Afghanistan. But in a different future war against a real enemy, real time radar capability becomes very important and will absurdly increase bandwidth requirements to make a joke of anything that came before. The only way to get around this would be to give the UAVs the ability to autonomously hunt, identify and attack ground targets, which is just a bad idea end to end. The only solution is going to be to orbit a large number of laser communications satellites, a couple prototypes are already in orbit, but last I heard Obama killed off the funding for the current program.

[MKSheppard]

The entire program cost an estimated 5.3 billion and produced 15 missiles. That's 353 million a launch.

I like how you leave out the fact that the USAF planned to deploy 20 F-15As at with 112~ ASM-135s. That's about what, $4 million a missile. It only cost so much because the program got terminated without a chance to recoup it's sunk costs.

Even if they used their entire defense budget (7.31 billion in 2007) on a similar ASAT system (assuming they could develop the rather complex technology behind the final intercept vehicle) that would only give them 20 missiles.

The Chinese ASAT tested a few years ago apparently used a modified HQ-19 (aka S-400) SAM IIR head for it's terminal kill phase.

ASAT is not just putting a hunk of metal in orbit, it's putting a hunk of metal in a very precise orbit, if your kill vehicle is 3 feet in diameter and you're 1 foot away from the target, you miss. Close doesn't count in orbital mechanics.

Yet we've been capable of doing this since the 1960s, with skin to skin hits of Nike Zeus on incoming ballistic targets, tests in the 1980s for KKV technology now coming to fruition, and of course, other nations have demonstrated this capability, notably now China and India.

And there's a pretty cheap way of ensuing a kill, despite a several foot miss distance; without an explosive warhead.



HOE hanging in the NASM's Udvar Hazy McDonnell Space Hangar.

[Starglider]

The only way to get around this would be to give the UAVs the ability to autonomously hunt, identify and attack ground targets, which is just a bad idea end to end.

The 'autonomous weapon release' part has issues but what's wrong with the 'autonomous hunt and identify' part? It would work for radar exactly the same way that it would for video; the software on the UAV handles the search / filter / preprocessing, and only alerts ground control with the final set of data they need to make a weapons release decision. Currently all that nearly-raw ground mapping data has to be streamed back to base because the UAVs have neither the processing power nor the software to make sense of it locally, but that will change.

The only solution is going to be to orbit a large number of laser communications satellites

Presumably that only works reliably for high-flying recon UAVs, not low-flying ground support ones.

[Blayne]

I want that in my truck.

[Sea Skimmer]

The 'autonomous weapon release' part has issues but what's wrong with the 'autonomous hunt and identify' part? It would work for radar exactly the same way that it would for video; the software on the UAV handles the search / filter / preprocessing, and only alerts ground control with the final set of data they need to make a weapons release decision.

Not going to do the job. The future air war the USAF wants requires that as much information as possible be collected and centralized. Radar is rather easy to spoof on the ground so we need many platforms streaming data together to build up a true picture of enemy capabilities and locate concealed objects. It also allows us to track movements and encampments over wide areas. You can’t do much simplification before you stat giving up actual information, some of which you might not know you needed then, but you might suddenly want 30 minutes latter when an enemy mobile missile launcher just fired from an area you thought held nothing but civilian milk trucks.

Currently all that nearly-raw ground mapping data has to be streamed back to base because the UAVs have neither the processing power nor the software to make sense of it locally, but that will change.

Its raw data that we want a lot of the time. Maybe not all the time, but the capability must exist to do this.

Presumably that only works reliably for high-flying recon UAVs, not low-flying ground support ones.

If the laser is strong enough it doesn’t matter, communications lasers that can go through light-medium cloud cover have been tested. Ideally these communications lasers platforms will also have enough power that they can aim several of the lasers at one target, dial up power to maximum and destroy it. Thus giving them a self defense capability against ASAT missiles, and also the ability to strike time critical ground targets. Then the enemy has to use his own lasers for ASAT, and that’s something a country like Iran would have a much harder time doing. Someone like China or Russia however already has ASAT laser capability, so does the US with MIRACL.

[eion]

Why exactly would you conclude that work done by Iran must cost exactly the same as work done by the US? The entire Iranian military budget would barely fund the operations and maintenance budget of two US Army divisions. But this isn’t stopping Iran from maintaining over a half million troops, and an air force and a small navy and a nuclear program and missile programs, because it a much cheaper country to do work in and a lot of the industry is directly owned by the government.

The US meanwhile had previously deployed Nike Zeus ABM weapons and then converted Thor IRBMs as ASAT weapons at a fixed site on Kwajalein without breaking the bank. This adoption of existing technology and existing missiles is much more relevant to consideration of Iranian ASAT. Iran can adapt the space boosters it has already developed and demonstrated with that 400 million dollar budget into ASAT weapons. This is inherent and cheap. All they need is the kill vehicle end.

Both your examples utilized nuclear weapons as they could not co-orbit with their targets. While I concede this reduces one's development costs vis-a-vis a kill-vehicle, it also increases the size of your launcher, which increases its visibility. Iran's best rocket (the Simorgh) can boost 60 kg to LEO, and as you already stated most targets are in MEO or higher.

The W-54 nuclear warhead (smallest manufactured by the US) has a maximum yield of 1 kiloton and weighs about 23kg. Iran in all likelihood hasn't and won't match or excide this level of sophistication for many years; their nuclear program is still in its infancy. So a nuclear tipped ASAT is out for the near future.

Getting the thing in orbit isn't the problem, its intercepting the target, and Iran doesn't have the orbital monitoring network needed to allow them to target off of that, which brings us back to an independent kill-vehicle. Putting a satellite in an orbit and putting a kill vehicle in a specific co-orbit are very different levels of sophistication. Iran has launched only one satellite by themselves (Sina-1 was Russian launched) and this was in a rather simplistic LEO. Iran has not demonstrated the ability to co-orbit anything.

Ergo, if Iran develops ASAT capability, it will probably follow similar lines to US programs, Nuclear tipped in the near future, and kinetic kill-vehicles in the long-term. The former will be readily observable by US intelligence assets; the latter will require far more development in both their launch and targeting capability, the tests of which will be equally observable. If Iran does develop ASAT capability, it will be a surprise to nobody, and as such will be planned for in any UCAV program, which wouldn't necessarily even need satellites for communication.

[eion]

The entire program cost an estimated 5.3 billion and produced 15 missiles. That's 353 million a launch.

I like how you leave out the fact that the USAF planned to deploy 20 F-15As at with 112~ ASM-135s. That's about what, $4 million a missile. It only cost so much because the program got terminated without a chance to recoup it's sunk costs.

Which meant that building 15 missiles cost 5.3 billion. If they had built 112 of these one-mission-missiles it would have cost less, yes. The point was Iran can't throw around billions of dollars on specialized programs you used as an example of ASAT capability. I absolutely concede the ASM-135 was a bad example, but you are the one who brought it up.

Even if they used their entire defense budget (7.31 billion in 2007) on a similar ASAT system (assuming they could develop the rather complex technology behind the final intercept vehicle) that would only give them 20 missiles.

The Chinese ASAT tested a few years ago apparently used a modified HQ-19 (aka S-400) SAM IIR head for it's terminal kill phase.

ASAT is not just putting a hunk of metal in orbit, it's putting a hunk of metal in a very precise orbit, if your kill vehicle is 3 feet in diameter and you're 1 foot away from the target, you miss. Close doesn't count in orbital mechanics.

Yet we've been capable of doing this since the 1960s, with skin to skin hits of Nike Zeus on incoming ballistic targets, tests in the 1980s for KKV technology now coming to fruition, and of course, other nations have demonstrated this capability, notably now China and India.

And there's a pretty cheap way of ensuing a kill, despite a several foot miss distance; without an explosive warhead.

HOE hanging in the NASM's Udvar Hazy McDonnell Space Hangar.

That 4-meter umbrella does improve your chances of a hit. But if all you can manage is to get within 6 km of the target (Bold Orion, 1959-60) you've not really changed the outcome. You need Gemini levels of orbital mechanics to do this, which Iran does not and will not have anytime soon. The HOE by the way only succeded in its last of 4 tests. When they've successfully rendezvoused and docked two of their satellites, then we can seriously worry about their ASAT capability, but not now and not soon.

On an aside, that is a wonderfully cool looking missile. I must visit Udvar Hazy again now that they have the place more fully stocked.

[Simon_Jester]

Also:

On 28 October 2009, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, presented a report to the Third Committee (social, humanitarian and cultural) of the General Assembly warning that the use of unmanned combat air vehicles for targeted killings will be regarded as a breach of international law unless the United States can demonstrate appropriate precautions and accountability mechanisms are in place.[2]

This... could be more of a problem.

If we are fighting Iran, and they are still capable of launching ASATs (which they can only do from the pads or silos that fire space-capable rockets, which are not small)

[Image of F-15 launching ASAT rocket, and jumbo jet firing air-to-orbit satellite launch rocket]

Do you contend that Iran has or is about to acquire the capability to launch systems equivalent to either the Pegasus booster rocket or the ASM-135? That's a big step up from what you were saying earlier. I mean, it seems a bit odd that you cite evidence of weapons they don't own to prove that they can do something with the weapons they do own.

There are plenty of enemies we might use the drones against that can't shoot down satellites, and

Like who? Taliban in caves? Then you don't need high tech UCAVs, but Predators with turboprops.

Or, say, Venezuela, which has no missile program. Or pretty much every Middle Eastern country that isn't Iran or Pakistan. And then there are a lot of enemies that are, yes, functionally equivalent to Taliban in caves. We seem to fight Taliban-in-cave level enemies a lot more often than we fight high-end Third World nations that can build their own ballistic missiles these days, or hadn't you noticed? On top of that, the problem of supporting guerilla operations in a country where we can't put divisions on the ground (like Pakistan today), where worthwhile drones are a must and where making them satellite dependent is fine.

You seem to be arguing that because our toughest possible enemies might be able to disable the weapon system, the weapon system is not useful or cost-effective. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, because that would be a really stupid argument.

[Sea Skimmer]

Both your examples utilized nuclear weapons as they could not co-orbit with their targets.

Actually very few ABM weapons even designed on paper are intended to reach an orbit at all let alone one equal with the target. You don't need to orbit with the target to physically collide with it or hit it with a fragmentation warhead. Look no further then the recent SM-3 based ASAT shot. Direct skin to skin kill, and yet SM-3 has a peak velocity which is nothing like orbital, more like about 1/4th the required speed.

[eion]

Actually very few ABM weapons even designed on paper are intended to reach an orbit at all let alone one equal with the target. You don't need to orbit with the target to physically collide with it or hit it with a fragmentation warhead. Look no further then the recent SM-3 based ASAT shot. Direct skin to skin kill, and yet SM-3 has a peak velocity which is nothing like orbital, more like about 1/4th the required speed.

The SM-3 was launched by perhaps the most effective anti-ballistic missile system ever conceived by man, the Aegis BMD. Like most ABM systems, it costs a lot of money, about a billion a ship, which doesn't include the cost of the ship, of course, but Aegis can be land deployed.

The cheaper (i.e. the Iranian) way is to co-orbit rather than direct intercept. That gives you much more time to match your orbit with the target, and gives you repeated chances to do so, maximizing your limited inventory. Direct Intercept requires expensive systems and orbital monitoring networks, neither of which Iran can afford.

The SM-3 intercept of USA-193 is also not a good example because the satellite was already in a rapidly decaying orbit. It was intercepted and destroyed at 247 kilometers, barely even LEO (160 - 2,000 km). If the threat of almost 500kg of hydrazine didn't exist, the US may well have let if fall all by itself. This threat also provided convenient cover to demonstrate to China the US's ASAT capability.

[eion]

It's also worth noting that USA-193 with its radar antenna deployed (as I believe it was at the time of its destruction) was about the size of a basketball court. That's a pretty big target as far as ASAT goes. And while the Navy was pretty sure that the fuel tank was hit and destroyed, it wouldn't have to be a direct hit by the SM-3 missile.

[MKSheppard]

The SM-3 was launched by perhaps the most effective anti-ballistic missile system ever conceived by man, the Aegis BMD.

Actually no, thats the Boeing GBI at Fort Greely. It has far more kinetic energy, and a much larger defended foot print.

but Aegis can be land deployed.

No it can't. Yet. What we have is some dirty paper and promises by the Obama administration to make a boxed up SM-3 system that can be deployed on land. We're at least ten years from even getting an integrated land system that works.

Direct Intercept requires expensive systems and orbital monitoring networks, neither of which Iran can afford

Actually, All Iran needs to do is use it's own radars to doublecheck orbital statistics of certain things published publically for accuracy. Remember, Iran doesn't need to track all 25,000+ pieces of crap in orbit; just certain things of interest.

Anyway, you really do not need complicated guidance systems. All you need is one radar to track the target, another radar to track the interceptor, and a radio link to relay guidance commands to the interceptor. If this sounds suspiciously like NIKE, you're right. The Indians use a system very much like NIKE, and so did the Chinese; except their first one was literally a modified SA-2 back in teh seventies.

The SM-3 intercept of USA-193 is also not a good example because the satellite was already in a rapidly decaying orbit. It was intercepted and destroyed at 247 kilometers, barely even LEO (160 - 2,000 km).

That of course, is why you have more than just one small interceptor that's size constrained by having to fit into existing VLS cells in your arsenal of ASAT weaponry.

[Sea Skimmer]

The SM-3 was launched by perhaps the most effective anti-ballistic missile system ever conceived by man, the Aegis BMD. Like most ABM systems, it costs a lot of money, about a billion a ship, which doesn't include the cost of the ship, of course, but Aegis can be land deployed.

I doubt that, given that the Forward Based X-Band Radar antenna is about the size of the entire superstructure of an AEGIS warship. A land based AEGIS does not exist; and it would be so big it would have to be static like the SPY-1 cornfield cruiser, or moved broken down on railroad cars and assembled to deploy at best. That’s why we built AN/TPY-2, which is specifically designed to be moved on land. Though it’s still more relocatabul then truly mobile given the major setup time and need for multiple semi trailers. This is the radar or a version of it is what the USN wants to place on a future BMD cruiser, and which will be used for a land based SM-3 if it ever appears.

But all and all, BMD is much harder then ASAT because you expect to have to deal with dozens of incoming missiles chunking out all kinds of decoys. What is necessary for the former is overkill for the latter.

The cheaper (i.e. the Iranian) way is to co-orbit rather than direct intercept. That gives you much more time to match your orbit with the target, and gives you repeated chances to do so, maximizing your limited inventory. Direct Intercept requires expensive systems and orbital monitoring networks, neither of which Iran can afford.

Actually the lack of worldwide space tracking capability would make co orbiting much more difficult, because you can’t talk to the interceptor for most of its flight path so it has to become highly autonomous. With direct intercept you can see a satellite coming, fire and make an intercept in a fraction of an orbit with a simple command guided missile. The only major requirement is for the booster, which can be a triple purpose space launch/ballistic missile/ASAT item.

It doesn’t take any great technology to do localized space tracking either, the first US radars for this, and ballistic missile early warning were just large modified height finding sets. You can use a telescope for target identification.

It's also worth noting that USA-193 with its radar antenna deployed (as I believe it was at the time of its destruction) was about the size of a basketball court. That's a pretty big target as far as ASAT goes. And while the Navy was pretty sure that the fuel tank was hit and destroyed, it wouldn't have to be a direct hit by the SM-3 missile.

Yeah it kind of does have to be a direct hit with the SM-3 on the actual satellite. The antenna on that kind of radar satellite usually isn’t even a solid sheet, its more of a grill on one end, and a missile strike on it would have punched right through and done nothing to disrupt a fuel tank. Plus terminal guidance on SM-3 is IIR anyway, and that antenna being heated in the sun is going to make the picture more confusing and make it a harder target to score that precision hit on a piece of the object, not easier.

[eion]

Shep,

From what you wrote, it sounds like you'd agree that any system Iran would deploy in the near future is not going to be something small enough to hide from US observation. It might be somewhat disguisable as satellite launch capabilities, but an analyst is going to pick up on the second targeting radar, just as you did.

Suffice it to say, this isn't something Iran can hide on a few mobile launchers in the near future, because as you said the richest nation on the world hasn't deployed a land based integrated system yet. NIKE had a lot of distributed infrastructure. Iran might only build one such launch site, but it’s still going to stick out to any analyst.

And even if they got a NIKE like system up and running, it still won't help them reach the 40,000+km orbit of the backbone military communications satellites that any UCAV system might, not must, utilize.

Getting back a little to the original topic:

I think the US will field a true air-to-air capable UCAV in the near future. But I doubt it will replace human piloted interceptors one-for-one. Rather, I think we’ll see them used as a force multiplier, robotic-wingmen if you will.

If you fielded two similarly capable UCAVs with each F-22, you’ve used tripled your intercept force. The F-22 could act as a local command authority, and if communications with the base was lost or jammed, could direct the UCAVS as needed. Think of them as missiles that carry more missiles.

[Samuel]

This... could be more of a problem.

Not really.

warning that the use of unmanned combat air vehicles for targeted killings will be regarded as a breach of international law unless the United States can demonstrate appropriate precautions and accountability mechanisms are in place.

Have they listed what they consider appropriate precautions and accountability mechanisms are yet or is the US going to have to make it up as we go along?

[eion]

It's also worth noting that USA-193 with its radar antenna deployed (as I believe it was at the time of its destruction) was about the size of a basketball court. That's a pretty big target as far as ASAT goes. And while the Navy was pretty sure that the fuel tank was hit and destroyed, it wouldn't have to be a direct hit by the SM-3 missile.

Yeah it kind of does have to be a direct hit with the SM-3 on the actual satellite. The antenna on that kind of radar satellite usually isn’t even a solid sheet, its more of a grill on one end, and a missile strike on it would have punched right through and done nothing to disrupt a fuel tank. Plus terminal guidance on SM-3 is IIR anyway, and that antenna being heated in the sun is going to make the picture more confusing and make it a harder target to score that precision hit on a piece of the object, not easier.

The giant radar dish (chicken wire or not) does give you a very large target to aim at using the radar on the ship, and as they know exactly how far that dish is from the fuel tank, they can vastly improve their chances of hitting it during terminal. They'd be foolish to to use the large radar reflector as a target for their tracking RADAR.

This is probably a pretty good guess of what USA-193 looked like:



"Yeah, aim just to the left of that big circle."

And still, 247km is a damn sight short of any proper orbit for a comminications or recon satilite. USA-193 was coming down, we just made it more spectacular.

Orbital heights:
Defense Support Program (Recon) - 35,900 km
Global Positioning System (C&C) - 20,200 km
Milstar (Communications) - 41,200 km
Wideband Global SATCOM system (Communications) - 35,900 km
KH-12 (Recon) - 914 km

So they might be able to bring dowm a KH-12 in a decade or two. Which would be a big blow, those things don't grow on trees, but 2 have been de-orbited already as their mission-life ended, and the CIA was going to have to build more anyway.

[Simon_Jester]

The entire program cost an estimated 5.3 billion and produced 15 missiles. That's 353 million a launch.

I like how you leave out the fact that the USAF planned to deploy 20 F-15As at with 112~ ASM-135s. That's about what, $4 million a missile. It only cost so much because the program got terminated without a chance to recoup it's sunk costs.

Shep, you're being an idiot. The fact that the program never got to recoup its sunk costs is irrelevant to whether the Iranians can afford to duplicate the program. If you have to lay down five billion dollars before the first missile hits the first satellite... Iran would really have to stretch to afford it. That's getting pretty close to their entire military budget for a year. Granted, the costs would be spread out over a multi-year program, but they'd also have the disadvantage of not having the massive US aerospace industry supporting the program.

I'll buy that the Iranians might develop limited ASAT technology in the next decade or two, but face facts: they have far less money and far less of the aerospace industry supported by that money than we do. Anything they can do is going to be limited by those terms, and spending a large fraction of their total resources on developing a very specific ASAT capability that still won't reach above low earth orbit isn't likely to be one of their best bets.

[MKSheppard]

The fact that the program never got to recoup its sunk costs is irrelevant to whether the Iranians can afford to duplicate the program.

Considering a private company has this capability -- I.E. Orbital Sciences Corporation and it's Pegasus space launch vehicle; color me unimpressed over your arguments.

I'll buy that the Iranians might develop limited ASAT technology in the next decade or two

They already have an ASAT capability thanks to their previously demonstrated space capabilities. It is however, limited and more of a adhoc capability using liquid fuelled boosters with long reaction times -- e.g. it would take a day or two after an order to pot a US satellite for the mission to be executed.

What is worrying is the next decade or so, as that capability becomes more reliable, faster reacting, and more dispersable as they become better at solids as a propellant for space launch vehicles/ballistic missiles.

And as I've said before, the true wild card is reliable, cheap militarized solid state lasers proliferated by China.

and spending a large fraction of their total resources on developing a very specific ASAT capability that still won't reach above low earth orbit isn't likely to be one of their best bets.

Who says they have to duplicate the exact characteristics of the ASM-135? That thing weighs only 2,600 lbs; and it can still pot satellites in LEO. As Skimmer says, one of the big problems was making the missile that light and yet retaining performance. If you let it grow to 4,000 lbs -- that's still capable of being carried by a MiG-29 -- things become significantly easier design wise.

And ironically, due to the proliferation of GPS/GLONASS, the precision inertial systems required for the earlier ASM-135 and other self-guided kill vehicles aren't as critical -- since you can just keep updating the INS in the missile as it drifts off alignment with hacks from GPS/GLONASS.