Re: Vulnerability of US arsenal to anti-Sat weapons

From: Michael Emrys (emrys_at_olypen.com)
Date: 12/04/04 

To: sci-military-moderated@moderators.isc.org
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 21:22:55 -0800

in article 7c28d4ba.0412022058.480c135@posting.google.com, George at
Geodanah@yahoo.com wrote on 12/2/04 8:58 PM:

> I was wondering about the potential vulnerability of the current US arsenal to
> an attack on the GPS satellits. Since a majority of US precision guided
> munitions are now GPS guided, Tomahawk, JDAM, JSOW, cluster munitions,
> artillery shells, I should wonder that any potential enemy of the US (with any
> space tech base) would get an ASAT capability up and take out as much of the
> GPS constellation as they could. That should degrade or eliminate the utility
> of US PGMs. The sats are too expensive to have more than two or three spares,
> if that. Any comments?

This has been a concern of mine ever since it was first announced that PGMs
would be GPS guided. What kind of backup systems do they have? 'Cause
otherwise, they seem awfully vulnerable to me too.

Michael