War in and through the heavens

From: Allen Thomson (thomsona_at_flash.net)
Date: 03/16/05 

Date: 16 Mar 2005 06:41:01 -0800

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38272-2005Mar15.html

  Pentagon Has Far-Reaching Defense Spacecraft in Works
  Bush Administration Looking to Space to Fight Threats
  By Walter Pincus
  Washington Post Staff Writer
  Wednesday, March 16, 2005; Page A03
  [EXCERPTS]

  The Pentagon is working to develop a suborbital space
  capsule within the next five years that would be
  launched from the United States and could deliver
  conventional weapons anywhere in the world within
  two hours, defense officials said.

  This year, the Falcon program will test a launcher for
  its Common Aero Vehicle (CAV), an unmanned maneuverable
  spacecraft that would travel at five times the speed of
  sound and could carry 1,000 pounds of munitions,
  intelligence sensors or other payloads. Among the
  system's strengths is that commanders could order a
  CAV -- an unpowered glide vehicle -- not to release
  its payload if they decided not to follow through with
  an attack.

  The first-generation CAV, expected to be ready by 2010,
  will have "an incredible capability to provide the
  warfighter with a global reach capability against high
  payoff targets," Gen. Lance W. Lord, commander of Air
  Force Space Command, told the House Armed Services
  Committee last Wednesday.

  Within the next three years, the Falcon program hopes
  to enter a second stage of the effort: flight-testing
  two versions of a reusable hypersonic cruise vehicle,
  sometimes referred to as a space plane, that could
  travel a suborbital path, about 100,000 feet high,
  carrying a CAV anywhere in the world. Unlike a
  missile, the vehicle could return to its base after
  releasing the CAV to deliver bombs or intelligence
  sensors.

  The Falcon program vehicles "will improve the
  military's ability to quickly position intelligence,
  surveillance and reconnaissance payloads, while
  reducing its reliance on forward and foreign basing,"
  Anthony J. "Tony" Tether, director of the Defense
  Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), told a
  Senate Armed Services subcommittee last week.

[snip]

  In congressional appearances over two weeks, Lord,
  Tether and other senior Pentagon officials have
  described a variety of new space initiatives for
  meeting challenges such as updating intelligence
  and communications satellite programs and even
  fielding systems that would allow the United States
  to temporarily silence enemy satellites if the need
  arose.

  Space communications have already become important
  to U.S. warfighting. As Lord put it, "Our most recent
  operations in Afghanistan and Iraq prove our nation
  relies on capabilities coming from and through space
  more than ever before." For example, more than 60
  percent of all communications at the height of
  Operation Iraqi Freedom came through satellites,
  which also guided munitions to targets and today
  transmit intelligence from the United States directly
  to troops fighting in the field.

[snip]

  In addition to creating attack weapons, the
  Pentagon is working on new defense systems to
  protect the ever-more-important satellites the
  United States has in space.

  "I think everybody that I know in the United States
  military and the Department of Defense understands
  the important role that our space assets play in our
  national security," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman
  of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed
  Services Committee last Thursday.

  Last October, the Pentagon announced deployment of
  its first mobile ground-based system that could
  temporarily disrupt satellite-based communications
  from an enemy satellite. The counter-communications
  system uses powerful electromagnetic radio frequency
  energy to silence transmissions from a satellite in
  a way that is reversible if the need passes. Two
  more units are due later this year.

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