The US Space Force

Looks like the so-called Space Force is focusing much more on dancing electrons than orbiting assets. Cheap solutions beget weak protection.
 
martinbayer said:
Looks like the so-called Space Force is focusing much more on dancing electrons than orbiting assets. Cheap solutions beget weak protection.
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On the other hand, such "commercial" solutions allowed them to got required capabilities without spending decades and billions on the "traditional" military hardware development. Also, "semi-commercial space defense" allowed them a significant degree of plausible deniability in many gray areas of space military operartions.
 
Dilandu said:
martinbayer said:
Looks like the so-called Space Force is focusing much more on dancing electrons than orbiting assets. Cheap solutions beget weak protection.
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On the other hand, such "commercial" solutions allowed them to got required capabilities without spending decades and billions on the "traditional" military hardware development. Also, "semi-commercial space defense" allowed them a significant degree of plausible deniability in many gray areas of space military operartions.
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Just opening up yet another avenue/pipeline for buying readily avaliable commercial off the shelf solutions most certainly does not justify a stand alone command outside the USAF, so I'd *dearly* like to learn more about those gray areas of space military operations that you appear to be cognizant of. Hic Rhodus, hic salta.
 
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martinbayer said:
Just opening up yet another avenue/pipeline for buying readily avaliable commercial off the shelf solutions most certainly does not justify a stand alone command outside the USAF
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Just like merely different kind of planning did not justify the standalone air force outside the army?)
 
martinbayer said:
stand alone command outside the USAF
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USAF is absolutely NOT suited for space warfare. This club of elderly fighter jocks managed to drag behind Iran in combat drone technology - just because unmanned aircraft works against interests of professional pilots.
martinbayer said:
so I'd *dearly* like to learn more about those gray areas of space military operations that you appear to be cognizant of. Hic Rhodus, hic salta.
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Oh, they are numerous ones. For example, what's are the "rules of engagement" in space? How close one spacecraft could be to other spacecraft without it being considered hostile action? What trajectory change could be considered justification for self-defense (for example, if one spacecraft seemingly burned to a collision course with another, but the interception time is still many minutes away, so it potentially could burn to some other orbit)? Would it be premittable to remove "dead" military satellite, if it theatened the orbit of the sattelite of other country, but the owner of the "dead" satellite could not/did not want to remove it in time? What could be the legal justification for destroying opponents satellite if state of war is not declared, but localized hostility is taking place? Etc., etc., etc.
 
Dilandu said:
martinbayer said:
Just opening up yet another avenue/pipeline for buying readily avaliable commercial off the shelf solutions most certainly does not justify a stand alone command outside the USAF
Click to expand...
Just like merely different kind of planning did not justify the standalone air force outside the army?)
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Let's explicitly see that different kind of planning then.
 
Dilandu said:
martinbayer said:
stand alone command outside the USAF
Click to expand...
USAF is absolutely NOT suited for space warfare. This club of elderly fighter jocks managed to drag behind Iran in combat drone technology - just because unmanned aircraft works against interests of professional pilots.
martinbayer said:
so I'd *dearly* like to learn more about those gray areas of space military operations that you appear to be cognizant of. Hic Rhodus, hic salta.
Click to expand...
Oh, they are numerous ones. For example, what's are the "rules of engagement" in space? How close one spacecraft could be to other spacecraft without it being considered hostile action? What trajectory change could be considered justification for self-defense (for example, if one spacecraft seemingly burned to a collision course with another, but the interception time is still many minutes away, so it potentially could burn to some other orbit)? Would it be premittable to remove "dead" military satellite, if it theatened the orbit of the sattelite of other country, but the owner of the "dead" satellite could not/did not want to remove it in time? What could be the legal justification for destroying opponents satellite if state of war is not declared, but localized hostility is taking place? Etc., etc., etc.
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Please lay out in detail what exactly you envisage open outer space warfare to look like. An inquiring aerospace engineer really wants to know. Your breathless legalistic hypotheticals above that are pretty much akin to complete strangers maintaining their personal space against each other on a subway train don't really cut it, you know, since they seem to be more like TV courtroom drama scenarios than kinetic interaction.
 
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Forest Green said:
jsport said:
https://breakingdefense.com/2023/03...ykA&utm_content=250067526&utm_source=hs_email
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"There are hard kill and soft kill capabilities, if you will, that we're funding," Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said with regards to offensive space capabilities, but none that would created dangerous space debris.​

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To me that seems to says "lasers", or that's the only hard kill option I can think of that doesn't create space debris, at least not much.
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High powered microwaves would be a candidate. Aerosol to the solar arrays to block power generation. Some how spinning the target past the limits of its gyros so that it loses orientation of the solar cells and uplink/downlink.

But a powerful ground based laser would probably work too. MIRCL was tested on a defunct USAF satellite a decade or two ago; result unknown. If you could scorch the solar panels it would eventually translate into a hard kill.

EDIT: I think in this context "hard kill" is anything that permanently disables a satellite, as opposed to "soft kill" that temporarily interfers with a satellite's operation in a reversable way (eg jamming, dazzling, etc).
 
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I'm still waiting (but most certainly not holding my breath) for some kind of those actual concrete mission/vision statements that would lay out in qualitative detail exactly what the USSF is actually supposed to do, and how.
 
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https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2...extraterrestrial contest between superpowers.
The U.S. Space Force is set to launch a constellation of satellites this summer to track Chinese or Russian space vehicles that can potentially disable or damage orbiting objects, the latest step in the burgeoning extraterrestrial contest between superpowers.
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Dubbed “Silent Barker,” the network would be the first of its kind to complement ground-based sensors and low-earth orbit satellites, according to the Space Force and analysts. The satellites will be placed about 22,000 miles (35,400 kilometers) above the Earth and at the same speed it rotates, known as geosynchronous orbit.
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I think it would be incorrect to say "Silent Barker" is the first effort in this regard. It is known fact that the US orbitted at least two satellites for GEO inspections - one just above GEO and one just below, such that the satellites drift through the GEO halo in opposite directions. I forgot the program name but it is one of public record, not something black.
 
Josh_TN said:
I think it would be incorrect to say "Silent Barker" is the first effort in this regard. It is known fact that the US orbitted at least two satellites for GEO inspections - one just above GEO and one just below, such that the satellites drift through the GEO halo in opposite directions. I forgot the program name but it is one of public record, not something black.
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You're talking about GSSAP, right?

https://spaceflight101.com/spacecraft/gssap/
My impression is that Silent Barker is different because it's a constellation in GEO but looking down toward satellites in lower orbits, while GSSAP is in (almost) GEO and is looking at other GEO sats.
 
Wow, Netflix really got it *spectacularly* wrong in their short lived "Space Force" workplace dramedy - reality and bureaucracy is still mindboggingly much more underwhelming, boring, and duller than any Hollywood writer could have imagined, even for a satire...
 
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Well, I would have had an episode where a triumphant Elon Musk celebrates the death of SLS, only to learn it was really a cover for funding Boeing’s massive antigravity saucer:

“We got the DIRECT guys to knock out an SD-HLLV for less than a Falcon…easy peasy. Oh, the conical adapter? That was our EM Drive test frustrum…we have fifty of them in the saucer…it’s how we put China’s new aircraft carrier on Everest’s summit as a prank.”

Only five people would have gotten the joke.

—But the look on Elon’s face would have been priceless…

“There—that’s the look…”
 
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