Pentagon Poised To Unveil, Demonstrate Classified Space Weapon
By THERESA HITCHENS | Breaking Defense on August 20, 2021
The system in question long has been cloaked
in the blackest of black secrecy veils — developed as a so-called
Special Access Program known only to a very few, very senior US government leaders. While exactly what capability could be unveiled is unclear, insiders say the reveal is likely to include a real-world demonstration of an active defense capability to degrade or destroy a target satellite and/or spacecraft.
Expert speculation on what could be used for the demonstration ranges from a terrestrially-based mobile laser used for blinding adversary reconnaissance sats to on-board, proximity triggered radio-frequency jammers on certain military satellites, to a high-powered microwave system that can zap electronics carried on maneuverable bodyguard satellites. However, experts and former officials interviewed by Breaking Defense say it probably does not involve a ground-based kinetic interceptor, a capability the US already demonstrated in the 2008 Burnt Frost satellite shoot-down.
Many military space leaders believe that Space Force and Space Command
must publicly demonstrate to Moscow and Beijing not just an ability to take out any space-based counterspace systems they may be developing or deploying,
but also to attack the satellites they, like the US,
rely upon for communications, positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR).
Notably, the second-in-command of the Space Force recently foreshadowed movement in the long-running debate about declassification of all things related to national security space — a multifaceted and complex debate which has pitted advocates against upholders of the traditional culture of secrecy within DoD and the Intelligence Community.
For years,
Gen. John Hyten, the vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staf, has argued that
it is impossible to deter adversaries with invisible weapons, and he has taken the lead in calling for space systems to be declassified at a more rapid pace than some traditionalists find comfortable.
“In space, we over-classify everything,” Hyten told the National Security Space Association (NSSA) on Jan. 22.
“Deterrence does not happen in the classified world. Deterrence does not happen in the black; deterrence happens in the white.”
Further, Hyten, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond, and Space Command Commander Gen. Jim Dickinson
all have asserted that OFFENSIVE SPACE WEAPONS are a necessary part of that deterrent.
“We need to take a very hard look at what capabilities we keep concealed, as in our, quote, ‘ace-in-the-hole’ capabilities, if you will, that we would
only use in an actual conflict to ensure we maintain the military overmatch we would need to ensure victory, without allowing the enemy to devise ways to defeat that particular capability by having advance knowledge of it,” Matt Donovan, undersecretary of the Air Force under the Trump administration, said in a July 10 Mitchell Institute podcast.
“But what we would really like to do …
is prevent that conflict from happening in the first place, by convincing the enemy that they cannot win in a conflict, that the costs of entering into a conflict would be so high to them they don’t start it to begin with; that is the essence of deterrence,” said Donovan, who now heads Mitchell’s Spacepower Advantage Research Center. “So, the problem with only having ‘ace-in-the-hole’ capabilities is they do nothing for deterrence.”
There are also a number of experts who believe that whatever decisions are made,
the march of technology guarantees there soon will be no possible way to keep US satellites, or actions on the ground, secret.
Choosing what tools to use when, however, is where agreement breaks down.
This is particularly true with regard to China, which up to now has not had as great a military reliance on space as the US — and more importantly does not have a strategic view shaped by Cold War superpower nuclear deterrence theory (i.e. “mutually assured destruction.”)
Following Beijing’s 2007 anti-satellite (ASAT) test, there have been oodles of studies inside and outside DoD specifically on deterring China in space, many of which come to the same conclusion, if not always the same solutions: it’s hard.
“
The response of an offensive ASAT to a Chinese ASAT is not going to make them stop doing it,” one former government official said. “If you want to demonstrate a response, demonstrate … an unexpected maneuver or a LEO satellite that they had never seen before. But the fact that the response was, ‘well, I can shoot down satellites too,’ that doesn’t do shit about stopping them from shooting mine down.”
And even today, one concerned insider said, “A lot of the DoD work on space control ‘strategic messaging’ isn’t backed up by any real strategy, or red-teaming.”
(...)
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Folks, what do you think of this rather bizarre piece? Is it something quite real, or just some kind of psywar?
Now I realize why I felt rather bizarre when I read this piece at first, after some time I remembered about the article written by Byron King in July 2021 that I posted earlier. If these two articles be read together, it looks like this article is a response to the King's one talking about the US vulnerability with all the wartime communications esp. the sats.... and in both Gen. John Hyten, is the central figure.
Another thing is like some establishment may worry China will take real actions over Taiwan. Thus they want to intimidate PLA by hinting that they have some new "assassin mace" in pocket, or in space precisely
Well, I leave it to more experienced members in this field to interpret this latest article
