Re: Satellite defense


Jake McGuire wrote:
Ed Kyle wrote:
Rand Simberg wrote:
On 22 Jan 2007 12:09:08 -0800, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
<edkyle99@xxxxxxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

Frogwatch wrote:
I vaguely remember that some US survelliance sats have the ability to
maneuver. Is this sufficient to dodge a hit to kill asat?

The satellite would have to have more maneuvering capability than the
ASAT that
is aiming to hit it. Since most spysats are big and heavy and most
ASATs are
small and very quick-footed, it would appear that most ASATs would
prevail in a
one-on-one contest. If not on the first shot, then on the next pass,
or the pass
after that.

That assumes that it gets a second chance. The one that the Chinese
fired was almost certainly suborbital.

Right. But a determined attacker would probably assign several ASAT
missiles to a specific target. They could be fired on sequential
passes
if the first one misses. Either the presumably mobile missiles could
be
lined up beneath multiple orbit tracks, or the attacker could simply
wait
12 or 24, or however many, hours.

Yes, if you have a large number of ASAT interceptors, you can probably
be assured of destroying one or a few particular satellites. But a
large number of ASAT interceptors take money and time to build. Also,
once you try to destroy a billion dollar military asset of a foreign
country and fail, you have put yourself in an undesireable situation.
The owner of the satellite may decide to destroy a few billion dollar
military assets of yours, on the "do unto the other guy what he would
do unto you, but do it unto him first" theory. Some obvious
hard-to-hide choices are space surveillance radars and satellite launch
complexes.

- jake

Yes. So much would be at stake that I don't think we would
see ASAT attacks unless a big war was already on, or was
just about to begin. China's main wargaming scenario has
to be Taiwan, where it would need to blind the U.S. for just a
few days. Once they have swarmed onto that island, and
have it surrounded by a gazillion submarines and protected
by a missile screen, the war is over.

- Ed Kyle

.

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    ... maneuver. ... Is this sufficient to dodge a hit to kill asat? ...
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    ... The satellite would have to have more maneuvering capability than the ... ASAT that is aiming to hit it. ...
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