U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general | Hacker News Reader

U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

thedrive.com

205 pointspseudolus264 comments

Used to work for internet video game companies at the infrastructure level. We were constantly under attack. I mean, out of 40 Gbps of bandwidth on internet spread over multiple data centers, a good percentage was just pure hacks and attacks.

I can't imagine to drop our firewalls, ips and all of the security gears we had for few seconds. The knowledge built to reach this level of maturity in internet security was several years of man power.

I'm not sure how bad are the attacks against the space force, but I suspect it's slightly higher than any other normal high profile entities on internet.

They probably deserve a good shake. Let's give them a good shake, shall we?

> They probably deserve a good shake. Let's give them a good shake, shall we?

What does that mean?

The state of accepting something as honest or deserving of trust even though there is some doubt.

huh. that's basically the opposite of what I'd think of it as - on the American side of things, I read that as "shake them and see what falls out", i.e. see what they're hiding.

I'm also not sure how to search for that kind of phrase though. "a good shake" / "give them a good shake" doesn't seem to find anything relevant in my google. Anyone know of effective ways to search for culturally-idiomatic phrases?

That's because the more usual form is "a fair shake." Here is a definition: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/a%20fair%20shake

> informal : a fair deal : fair treatment

> The judge gave him a fair shake, requiring him to perform community service.

> She expected to get a fair shake from her boss.

That one I recognize, yeah. Though in retrospect it's rather similar sounding...

From usage in this scenario, the actual term you want to search for is "fair shake". You're thinking of "shake down" or possibly "shaking the tree" which is why it seems odd.

Yes, 'fair shake' is the term. Wiktionary defines it as "Reasonable, unbiased treatment; a fair deal." and provides examples from both American and British newspapers, so it seems to be used on both sides of the Atlantic.

I’ve had good luck with https://english.stackexchange.com/ for questions like that, although may need to ask it yourself rather than find it in the archive. No doubt there’s reddit or two that are relevant as well.

On Aug 2020, a US spy satellite moved close to a Chinese satellite, attempting to shadow it closely. It was caught by the Chinese and they maneuvered it to get away from the US satellite. This seems to constitute ill or malign intent. Why would you go and bother the property of another person? What is the intent behind this move?

Trust goes both ways, and it takes effort from both parties to build trust. This kind of actions will only been seen as aggressive and ill intent by the other party, and when there is lack of trust between two parties, the other will come up with defensive and offensive counter measure to protect themselves. And that doesn't help when one party has got an active military branch named space force.

Looks like the space arms race and militarization of space will only escalate in the future. I hope people will realize, like the nuclear arms race before, this kind of wild west arms race is unsustainable for everyone involved, and for humanity as a whole. I hope leaders from all countries involved to have the courage and consideration for all of humanity and our collective peaceful use of space, to put geopolitics aside, to come up rules of responsible use and engagement in space.

https://breakingdefense.com/2021/10/us-china-russia-test-new...

> This seems to constitute ill or malign intent. Why would you go and bother the property of another person? What is the intent behind this move?

The people who make these decisions don't view these sorts of things from the same perspective as you do but from a geopolitical lense of military might. In the simplest case it could be information gathering or even just a distraction. One can say this is an immoral self-perpetuating cycle, but that is how it is today.

This article, Space Command Hints at New Capabilities to Counter China, Russia, from Aug 21, 2020 may help shed light on that. [1] This article is from the same month but an Indian perspective [2]

[1] https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2020/8/21/u...

[2] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/china-atte...

Edit: I have looked at your comment history, and you appear to be very defensive of CCP in every comment you make. I'm not sure your question here was asked in good faith.

> The people who make these decisions don't view these sorts of things from the same perspective as you do but from a geopolitical lense of military might.

For an interesting read on this effect, I'd recommend Lionel Fatton's 2016 article “The impotence of conventional arms control: why do international regimes fail when they are most needed?”[0] (if you can access it).

[0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13523260.2016.11...

I'm going to offer a lone hope: militarization of space may fund the practical colonization of space. I personally wouldn't mind the entirety of the surface navy fleet budget being redirected to space armaments and developments budgets.

I would say off the top of my head that if the US had a well developed moon base, then it could effectively attack most satellites in earth orbit and rockets attempting to reach orbit. No other strategic point in near earth space can provide a base for manufacturing, storage, launch , refuelling, etc of earth orbit superiority.

Right now the military has a rare window: if Starship enables a 10x payload advantage, that is a 10x throughput advantage for getting moon base up and running.

Of course owning the moon would mean even more dominance of the rest of the solar system. You can launch Orion pulse nuclear craft from the Moon pretty easily for practical planetary ships of very very large size (1 million tons)

Would militarization of the oceans fund the practical colonization of the oceans? What about the militarization of Antarctica?

> then it could effectively attack most satellites in earth orbit and rockets attempting to reach orbit

This is the High Ground thesis, dating back to the 1950s (see https://thespacereview.com/article/396/1 and http://spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2015/08/he-who-contro... ).

It takes a couple of days to get from the Moon to the Earth. A Moon base could not prevent rockets from reaching orbit.

I'm pretty sure the US, and likely also Russia, can already effectively attack most satellites in earth orbit, so if that's the goal, a Moon base seems needless.

The naval analogy applies especially in space: any weapon you put on a ship you can build one 10x bigger on the shore.

The shore in this case is the moon.

In the case of rocket interception from the moon, you put a big laser on the moon, not complicated. Could you do that from the Earth? Atmosphere, etc.

As for historical precedent for military dominance presaging development, it isn't really a good example, but it's the period of colonialism in Europe. Countries in europe raced to build economic exploitation empires elsewhere in the world, let by advanced militarization of the seas.

Please don't argue by metaphor.

Unlike the age of sail, modern warfare doesn't use simply bigger weapons. We've got all the megatons of nukes anyone would want.

The USS Hornet was much less powerful than the land-based airfields of Hawai'i. Guess which one was able to bomb Japan first.

Obvious complication with a Moon-based laser system: beam divergence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_divergence . What Moon-based laser system is able to deliver enough power 380,000 km away to a rocket able to take multiple g's and handle the aerodynamic stress of supersonic travel?

Another complication: The power and accuracy loss of the atmosphere makes it hard to target rockets during launch phase. And if you wait until it's out of the atmosphere, how do you track it once its engines are off?

A third complication: Not only is it relatively small and hard to target from 380,000km away, but the round-trip speed-of-light delay is 2.5 seconds. Add some jinking to the rocket's trajectory and it will be quite hard to hit. (How wide do you think the rocket-damaging part of the beam will be?)

A fourth complication: what if the launch is on the other side of the Earth from the Moon?

Given all of these complications, orbital battle satellites are the obvious equivalent to the Hornet, able to be on station in a way that more powerful land-based systems cannot. And these can be supplied from the ground.

Or, if it's truly "not complicated", what are your solutions?

> to build economic exploitation

Which is a euphemism for "use force to extract labor and resources from other people." Look at all that British architecture built on the broken backs of black slaves in the sugar trade. Leopold II certainly managed to 'economically exploit' the Congo Free State. And of course the delightful opium trade with China.

Maybe, just perhaps, it's possible we can do without a repeat of that?

The dream of some non-national space peace nation with everyone [metaphor warning]smoking peace pipes[/metaphor warning] is a nice fantasy. I'd like it to be the case, but if we can't do it on Earth, why would space, with far more difficult resource constraints (and therefore competition) have LESS conflict? Please.

[metaphor warning]It's like VCs[/metaphor warning] to use HN mindthink, who will fund the trillions to get a functional space civs? Oh and they'll just [metaphor warning]kumbaya[/metaphor warning] and write off their massive investments with no controlling interest?

As for the [metaphor warning]British Empire[/metaphor warning] or any other colonialism METAPHOR, at least there aren't [metaphor warning]indiginous tribes[/metaphor warning] that will be displaced, exploited, and exterminated.

Size does matter with gravity wells. If you don't want to concede that, then you're arguing against very basic physics. The moon allows the instant deployment of a far larger force of weapons on demand than from Earth's surface.

If you had a moon base, you could launch an army of battle satellites on short notice. It's basically drone warfare in space. Right now you have to predeploy your satellite flotilla and then the enemy just needs to deploy tracking H/K units. The moon has superior gravity well position to deploy a satellite and satellite killer army without launch windows, rocket and payload preparation, etc. Your deployments are very easily tracked, from launch to payload deployment, to orbit, with bounds on where that satellite will travel and how much delta-v it can have.

The point is there is currently no political [metaphor warning]horse [/metaphor warning] to [metaphor warning]carry the water[/metaphor warning] of putting a functional economic base in space. Military supremacy is a very tantalizing motivation to provide a trillion dollars of funding, and there basically isn't any others [metaphor warning]on the table[/metaphor warning].

As for laser focusing, you are thinking like a small satellite designer would think who is constrained by launch capability. Moon military systems could have VERY LARGE lasers. Hell you could do simple space mirrors to achieve the desired effect, light delays be damned.

I'll argue by metaphor if I want to.

The nuclear armed signatories of the Outer Space Treaty were not "smoking peace pipes" and chanting kumbaya.

Antarctica isn't militarized, and it also has "difficult resource constraints".

Guess they must have been passing around some good weed back then in the UN building.

> you could launch an army of battle satellites on short notice

You've changed the topic. I objected to your claim that a "moon base ... could effectively attack ... rockets attempting to reach orbit".

It CANNOT. Those battle satellites would take two days to reach the Earth, giving plenty of time for rockets to reach orbit.

> Moon military systems could have VERY LARGE lasers

Looks like you got some of that good weed too.

Your "could" requires magic pixie dust. If you're going to break the laws of physics, might as well have transporter beams too.

A moon based laser CANNOT prevent a rocket reaching orbit if only because the rocket can launch from the other side of the planet.

You are of course free to argue by metaphor. The metaphor of comparing modern military tactics to the age of sail, back when more powerful cannon made for a more powerful ship, is still fundamentally flawed.

Your comment history is only comments defending the CCP.

So? It's good that we have a "representative" of the CCP on this website then. It can't only be a US/NATO-aligned echo chamber. There's people from all over the world here. And more than two sides.

Unless you are convinced that NATO are the good guys and CCP are the bad guys so they must be silenced, but I'd tell you that's the propaganda doing the thinking for you.

TBF, there are no representatives of US/NATO on wechat.

It's their loss. To be fair, they had to create a pretty massive and intrusive censorship system to prevent the widespread Western propaganda from entering their borders.

It's kind of creepy how you're implying that the fact the CCP created a massive and intrusive system for controlling what information has access to is a reaction to Western propaganda, and not, like, a textbook power grab that we've seen from every other totalitarian regime in the 20th century.

That's not what I'm implying at all. I'm saying Western propaganda is so thick and widespread only absolute totalitarian regimes can control it, otherwise it reaches everywhere and we're all brain-washed by it. There is no denying the CCP is a totalitarian regime.

I mean, I guess you have a point from a certain perspective, but that sounds a lot like the mindset of a cult.

"Widespread propaganda that the entire world believes except for the select few that live in a tightly controlled bubble where anybody who speaks out is violently silenced" has a lot of common properties with "things that are true".

That's an incorrect argument of yours. Things that are true are, more often than not, widespread. It does not segue that an idea that is widespread has to be true.

The very point and raison d'être of propaganda is to repeat an idea so often that people start to believe it, even if it has no basis in reality.

But then again, plenty of books and philosopher-hours have been spent on the topic of "truth", which honestly becomes a semantic rabbit hole I'm not interested in diving in.

You're seeing selection bias. The regimes that didn't implement strong censorship and the like invariably fell to hostile action. So of course it's going to become textbook, otherwise you end up like the CNT FAI, or Mossadegh, or Allende, or Sankara, etc...

There is a pretty clear pattern that does who don't use censorship end up killed and those that do survive much longer.

You completely missed the point that the poster is a CCP shill.

Mossadegh and Allende were deposed in coups because of lack of censorship??!!

That is a hot take!

A general lack of authoritarianism made the coups much easier.

Space is like international waters and I predict similar hijinks in coming years unfortunately.

Satellites harassing with close passes, blocking antennas, maybe even poking each other. "Damn ye Russian satellites!" The politicians bellow as they shake their fists at the cosmos.

The intent, according to your link: "What we think is happening here is the development and experimentation and validation of what we call a tactic, technique and procedure, a TTP, to spoof an enemy’s network for SSA [space situational awareness]"

> This seems to constitute ill or malign intent. Why would you go and bother the property of another person? What is the intent behind this move?

This question is hard to understand. You don't know why competing militaries would behave this way?

The OP doesn't discuss trust; it informs you about such activity and the US militaries desire to counter it. Should they do nothing? Do you think China and Russia will stop if the US never acts in its own defense? Putin and Xi will suddenly decide we are all friends?

Russia and China were willing to sign treaties with the US to prevent this. Historically they do abide by them. The US refused repeatedly because the US is fundamentally aiming for absolute dominance militarily.

Could you provide some evidence of this? I read a lot of foreign policy and have never heard of it.

Russia and China behave the same way with many countries. Russia even controls parts of Ukraine and Georgia, and threatens Ukraine with invasion at the moment. China does it with Japan, the Philippines, and India, off the top of my head.

The US never does it with their neighbors, and in fact many other countries welcome the US military to operate from their territory. The idea of Russia and China as innocent victims is quite a stretch!

The US never does it with their neighbors because every single US neighbor is dominated and subservient, and the US already invaded more than it can use. The US absolutely did it to Cuba and various Latin American country and did it to Iraq, Syria, etc...

The proposed treaty is called the PAROS treaty and was proposed by Russia in 2008 officially as a draft. The US never gave it any suit and was actively hostile to the subject. https://www.nti.org/education-center/treaties-and-regimes/pr...

China is not threatening the invasion of India, the Philippines, or Japan. There are relatively small disputes of uninhabited territory, with the exception of Tawang with a population of 11 000 in India. You may as well say that the US is threatening to invade Canada because of disputes in the Arctic. I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.

Yes, Russia is threatening Ukraine with invasion. But this is not coming in a vacuum. Russia, in a vacuum, has nothing to gain from invading Ukraine, far from it. The reason why Russia has designs for Russia is because:

A) Ukraine has a border with Russia B) Ukraine discussed joining NATO C) NATO is attempting to encircle Russia D) Russia is very weak strategically on the Ukrainian and Georgian border E) NATO accession is impossible if there is a current conflict

Therefore, Russia will be threatening Ukraine as long as Ukraine has ambitions of joining NATO. It's not because Russia wants Ukrainian resources, it's fundamentally because Russia is afraid of being flanked by a hostile foreign alliance. From their point of view this is perfectly rational, you see the US withdrawing from the ABM treaty and building dozens of weapons systems to try to disable nuclear deterrence, trying as much as possible to deny air defenses and gain the capability to strike deep within Russia, and setting up all these systems that threaten the balance of power right next to Russia, then trying to creep up to the most vulnerable positions of Russia. It's completely logical to seek a neutral buffer state, and if that's impossible, to create a natural obstacle.

Throwing morals out of the window, it would be stupid to expect anything else. Russia never threatened Ukraine with invasion as long as Ukraine did not threaten to join NATO. If we want Russia to stop threatening Ukraine, then we have to stop the NATO threat of invading or blockading or otherwise crippling Russia militarily. The West would actually be pretty happy with more Russian adventures in Ukraine, it weakens their economy and scares off more countries into the EU camp, while giving excuses for sanctions and allows the US to take over some sectors.

The point is, no one is an innocent victim. Russia and China are happy to de-escalate and avoid arms races, as is made evident by the low military spending in China and the efforts to pursue asymmetric competition in Russia. It's just that the United States doesn't want to avoid an arms race. The US wants an arms race in space, because Russia is poor and will struggle competing, and China is trying to avoid spending too much on their military right now. So this is a domain where the US is seeking to buildup a commanding lead, and because of this the US is very happy with an arms race. That is, so long as the Chinese and Russians do not exceed US expectations, which they have a nasty habit of doing right now, and that the US military budget is constantly increasing, which is the purpose of this headline.

I think that the foreign policy you read is simply very biased towards the US and far from neutral. If you haven't heard about the 30 years of constant proposals by Russia to demilitarize space, I really don't know what to tell you. It's a massive oversight. The US loves arms races in space, always has, and this is not the first rodeo of the US avoiding armament treaties or withdrawing and trying to cause arms races. It's in the interest of the US so far.

I don't see why looking at something closely is evidence of "malign intent." After all, the whole point of spy satellites is to look closely at other countries. You could say that it is risky, because there could be a collision, but that is quite different from malign intent, and this risk can be greatly mitigated.

You can see very closely from a distance at satellites. If you're getting close it's probably to tamper or to signal the capability to do so.

They get close to take detailed pictures to understand capabilities.

I'm pretty sure satellites can take detailed photos from a distance.

It's certainly a lot more challenging when the relative velocities are high. You're precluded from using long exposures, and resolution will be limited. Getting close (similar orbits) is going to yield much better results, no?

Spying in itself is a military act. Sure everyone does it but that doesn't make it nicer.

The majority of spying including human intelligence, signals intelligence, and overhead imagery is performed by civilians not military.

What could possibly be gained moving a satellite closer to another? Threatening to crash into it?

It could theoretically be many different things:

- To assess what the satellite is capable of doing

- To geolocate where signals from Earth are originating

- To analyse patterns of multi-spot beam steering and bandwidth re-allocation

- Test denial of service attacks

- Test attacks where signals (or return signals) from Earth are manipulated (e.g. radar signatures faked)

- Test attacks where signals (or return signals) from the satellite are manipulated

- Eavesdrop on unprotected communications

- To waste fuel on the target satellite as it maneuvers to avoid any of the above (even if nothing is attempted)

- To make the other party second guess their technology for no good reason, lowering their confidence in its accuracy or usefulness

I'm sure there are plenty of other possible explanations which could be added to this list.

Satellites have maneuvering thrusters with a very limited supply of fuel that will last just long enough for the designed mission-life of the satellite. Approaching the satellite will cause an unplanned maneuvering burn that effectively shortens the life of the satellite.

For military satellites, proximity avoidance is fully autonomous. Therefore, you can design a satellite to chase other satellites to fuel exhaustion. I’ve been told this is an actual thing.

Getting a close look at it, and seeing what it can do. For instance, seeing if it's capable of precisely the evasive behavior that it apparently demonstrated.

About the only thing I can think of is potential access to narrow beam signals, and or leaking signals like snooping the satellite.

You want an enemy, you get an enemy, maybe enemies. For those warlords, no enemies not profits.

Everything has two sides. Thanks to arms race, militarization; Human race advanced and will advance forward. Internet, computers, and so many other things we take for granted today are developed thanks to military ventures.

Also, military technology is probably one of the coolest, tech-savvy things we will ever have.

There's absolutely nothing cool about the military.

https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

When I was a kid I absolutely thought the military was cool. My kids books had fighter jets, aircraft carriers, tanks, and soldiers. And that was all awesome and badass.

Now I have a toddler, and I think it's appalling that kids books include this machinery amongst the same pages as firetrucks, ambulances, passenger jets, and cruise ships.

It's completely fucked up how we normalize weapons of war and indoctrinate our children into thinking they're cool.

Look, I'm not naïve. There are parts of the world in active military conflict. If you are in Ukraine or South Korea, you have a very legitimate reason to be preparing to take up arms in a military conflict. But just because it might be "necessary", doesn't mean it's "cool".

War means death. Unnecessary human death. Military technology are tools for maximizing unnecessary human death. As a secular humanist who believes we all have only one finite life to live, every unnecessary death is an unforgivable tragedy.

It is not completely fucked. You can only reliably retain that which you can defend. Fighting demands discipline and extremes of performance. Martial arts and dance play similar roles for children for good reason.

"You can only reliably retain that which you can defend." leads to "The best defense is a good offense" leads to proactive military interventionism policy like the invasion of Iraq because "Saddam is a threat".

Did anyone in the US seriously feel that they were in danger of losing something in America to Saddam?

Does anyone actually think today that China is going to invade and occupy the US?

Not saying NOBODY in the world has to feel this way. Taiwan surely does. Ukraine surely does. South Korea. A dozen other places in the world.

As a young gay man I got so much practice at avoiding rocks and other objects thrown at me that when dodge ball came up at school I was almost impossible to hit. This might have been a kind of victory, but being unable to hit others with projectiles means I was unable to claim victory and ended up being even more of a freak in everyone's eyes and thus even more of a target.

Now I am in my mid fifties and the accumulated assaults on my person have given me an immense amount of combat experience. It makes me sad that you are so unable to come to terms with the intense violence that is pervasive in your society. Perhaps you can work out your anger toward preparedness by throwing rocks at people.

“I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line—the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.” -- FDR

AFAIK, there is only one nation on this planet that has dropped a nuke on another country, that can put the rest of the world on edge.

Besides you cant rush globalisation, cultural differences take time to evolve over generations, we haven't had the internet and other forms of communication for that many years in the scheme of things and there are still many people on this planet who have not even used or regularly use the internet.

Whose culture is right? What is right in the eyes of the law?

Are other satellites from other countries also coming under attack and they are not talking about it publicly, making the US seem a victim when many countries are victims but also aggressors?

We are rarely in complete possession of the facts with any govt or big business or anyone else for that matter! C'est la vie

On your point about something being unsustainable, when it comes to nukes, there is more to this than meets the eye, namely energy density. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#List_of_materia...

So whilst Project Fear keeps populations in awe and fear with a big dangerous firework aka a nuke, its nothing near, religions have been putting the fear of god into people claiming things like thunderstorms and lightening are acts of God!

Sometimes its best to view the news as what are they trying to change here or get out of people.

Still interesting none the less.

> Whose culture is right? What is right in the eyes of the law?

Perhaps I’m the only one who feels this way based on the number of pro-China posts, but a Chinese hegemony would likely be a world of censorship and social credit. Compared to a flawed US democracy I’ll take the US democracy every time.

This is a good point. People often lose some perspective in their analysis of the U.S/Western European-based cultural, political and economic dominance that exists in the world today. And while it certainly is loaded with numerous flaws and misdeeds, the Chinese system of government, social control and cultural management is very easily far worse in so many ways (none of this is to even mention the absolutely grotesque modern political history of China, one on which the modern CCP is founded and still adamantly refuses to reject in any formal way). Choosing between two less-than-perfect options such as these, I have a hard time imagining any moderately rational person with a modicum of interest in basic individual and human rights choosing the Chinese state as their preferred global leader. All countries pay lip service to notions of human rights and dignity, but at least the western democracies somewhat take these concepts seriously, even if they often do so in a patchwork way.

This. I genuinely think that a China (CCP)-dominated world means the end of free thought, forget about free expression.

I'd take european democracy over US democracy any time

There is less freedom and space in old europe. 1940s 50s 60s US climbed up the power curve and then Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan happened.

There will never be a Chinese hegemony. The actual decision is between US hegemony and a duopolar or multipolar world. The latter are pretty obviously preferable if you're not American or not very closely allied.

The scale of China's economy and population is so massive that they're clearly capable of hegemony.

And as you say, it's good to be at the top.

It would be irrational of China's leadership to seek anything else.

No, they can never reach hegemony. The economy and population of the US would never have allowed it to reach hegemony if it wasn't for WW2 and it's extremely privileged position in North America. Geographically China will always have a lot of trouble projecting naval power internationally because of Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the Malaccas. Thus, even if it had 2x the economy of the US, the US would still be able to have a larger general international military reach.

To be the hegemon, you need to have a clear advantage over everyone else. China will never have that over the US+Europe. And by the time the US and Europe seriously decline, China will start declining too.

China's leadership would be foolish to seek hegemony. It's just not feasible short of the US going into a civil war, and if you come at the king, you best not miss. Becoming a second king yourself instead of trying to take his place is much less risky and has most of the same rewards.

Another way to look at it is that China will never have the same advantage over the US as the US gained over the UK before taking the lead. The US passed the British in economy and population much before it became the hegemon. You need more than an advantage in prosperity.

What does it mean to be an hegemony on your terms? Economically China being number one is just a matter of time, military I wouldn't count on them stopping short before US. Good luck trying to convince +1B people being fed government propaganda that they're not entitled to everything when they keep pushing 2 digits growth every year for 30 years.

You're also missing the long game of China. Probably on our lifetimes the economic focus of the world is going to move to Asia and Africa based on opportunity of growth and demographics, looking from this perspective why would they care about conquering the west when they can just position themselves very well for the long term and have a nice view watching the decline of the west society?

Hegemony means you are able to act mostly uncontested in most of the world. That's what the US can do today.

The economic focus in the world moved to the US for about 70 years before the US gained hegemony.

You can be number one without being the hegemon.

> you need to have a clear advantage over everyone else. China will never have that over the US+Europe.

"never" is a strong word here.

Tech and military wise they're catching up really fast. They have a much fitter and controlled population. Their economy is doing real good, they're spreading their influence over Africa, &c.

The US is crumbling on virtually every aspect, Europe isn't doing much better, if China and the US stays on their respective courses your "never" will be more like "in 50-100 years".

In 50-100 years China risks demographic decline. China will have an economic advantage for sure, just not enough for a hegemony.

Multipolar is going to be the most likely future, with at least 4 poles: China, India, US, EU. Probably more in far future. Talking about US/China hegemony is just delusional fearmongering.

Have you read 1984? Do you think the world is becoming like that book? Brexit would contribute to that idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

Because multipolar times have been sooo peaceful......

A duopolar system is the most stable.

Why is a Chinese hegemony impossible?

Because to have a true hegemony, you need to be able to project power around the globe mostly uncontested. This is very difficult for China as they are essentially boxed in by Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the nations of the South China Sea, even if they do take Taiwan. So they will never have fully uncontested access to the sea and thus to the world, even if they do surpass the US in military power abroad (which is doubtful).

China is culturally an ancient agrarian society focused more on defending farmland than conquering nations. This is not really comparable to the U.S. which is an ideology-based nation that inherited European imperialism traits. China is not interested in controlling or imposing beliefs in the same way it's rivals are so we shouldn't interpret their actions with the same lens.

> culturally an ancient society

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

> China is not interested in controlling or imposing beliefs

China is extremely interested in controlling and imposing the beliefs that the CCP is the best and should never be opposed and never makes mistakes, and demonstrates this daily within the great firewall and through threat of sanction against international media companies, nevermind the regular disappearance of high-profile individuals that cause "problems"...you know, to have a nice months-long chat with them that isn't about controlling or imposing beliefs.

> China has not had the imperial history

There are a number of formerly, currently, and soon-to-be-no-longer sovereign countries that don't want to be part of China, but China pretends they're not occupying/colonizing them by insisting they have always been part of China.

Control of actions and beliefs of citizens absolutely. But again that's to maintain internal stability. You'd need to give specific examples for the latter point.

forcing US airlines to label Taiwan as China in their maps? annexing Tibet? all the power they have over Mongolia? Telco equipment sold way underprice to members of the Belt and Road initiative? the South China sea? the power they exert over Chinese students studying abroad? none of those are internal.

maybe you're right, depending on how you define citizens - though taking a page from the British empire, maybe everyone's a citizen!

Taiwan

I'm Taiwanese, I don't agree.

But isn't that through the lens of of self-determinism? China sees Taiwan as a domestic conflict between ROC/PRC, i.e. that Taiwanese are Chinese ( Han). They would never say the same about the U.S. or Russia for example. Not saying China is correct, just that it's pointless to explain their actions or intent based on the wrong model of their values.

No.

>China is culturally an ancient agrarian society focused more on defending farmland

is nonsense just like all the Chinese netizens who keep saying that "We Descendants of Yanhuang have 5000 years of history". Non-sense, PRC happened in 1949, and before that, it's a History of ethnicities from all over the land Conquer, Massacre, Annex and Integrate each other.

EDIT:

> China is not interested in controlling or imposing beliefs

There are 56 ethnic groups in China, they may have different culture even religion, what do you think how China managed to make sure all 55 other then Han stay under control?

"The estimated 1.4 billion Han Chinese people are mostly concentrated in the People's Republic of China (Mainland China), where they make up about 92% of the total population.[2] In the Republic of China (Taiwan), they make up about 97% of the population."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinese

Is that incorrect?

That does not means the 3% just go "Yeah let's become Chinese".

And this is off-topic. The idea is simple: "China is culturally an ancient agrarian society focused more on defending farmland than conquering nation" does not stand. Conquering happens a lot on that land way before PRC is a thing.

Are the Hans like the Smiths in the 5 eyes countries? https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/qqunho/most_com...

It reminds me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nxqDHHORqg LOL

The people I know, who used to live in China, HK administrative region, or Taiwan, do not talk like you write.

China is an imperialistic hegemony. Just look at tibet or xinjiang. Completely with genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzungar_genocide and all. It is very easy to say that you are only interested in internal matters if you define as internal any territory your ppl had any interest in the last 2-3 millenia: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/how-china-bend... "Thus, Beijing’s narrative about its claims begins as early as the 2nd century BCE, when Chinese people sailed in the South China Sea and discovered some of the region’s land features."

Your response is some empty trite paragraph that doesn’t even make sense. “Don’t worry, it’s all fine”

I fear the US in war.

I fear China in peace.

This article presents some thoughts on how, if and when the US should or could strike (back) in space after summarizing the alleged current space combat capability developments of other nations.

You can easily replace "US" with other nations and the target audience with their citizens and allies.

By this logic, every nation needs to ramp up space combat capabilities, because their perceived or real enemies could also do so. This train of thought leads to a cold war 'space edition'.

In the long run it will boil down to disaster only preventable by some courageous individuals doing 'the right thing at the right time'. We should better begin stockpiling characters like Stanislav Petrov [1] to make sure we haven't run out of those by then.

Good luck to all of us.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

> By this logic, every nation needs to ramp up space combat capabilities, because their perceived or real enemies could also do so.

It is a typical arm race. It going on for other types of warfare at the moment, now there is another dimension.

Regarding Petrov, I think there were more than one such cases. I remember reading about a similar case on the US side, afaik the operator that decided against pulling the trigger was disciplined for not following protocol or disobeying orders.

This seems benign compared to nuclear though, as mutual strikes don’t lead to mutual destruction.

> This seems benign compared to nuclear though, as mutual strikes don’t lead to mutual destruction.

Not necessarily. A core component of the nuclear deterrent is the satellites that detect launches from Russia/China/etc. If someone took a bunch of those out, the fingers on the nuclear button would be significantly twitchier than usual.

It bears repeating that the US wanted Russia to have earlier warning of launches so that there was a longer time buffer built in before they'd have to decide whether or not a blip was real or not. They still only have five of the six satellites up they'd need to get full coverage.

There is no tactical advantage gained by your enemy having less time to react (we're talking minutes-hours right?) unless you are actually attacking, in which case civilization is "dramatically changing" very soon. If nukes are flying, people need to be on the red phone ASAP!!!

Any skirmish in space will give us kessler syndrome, destroy all satellustes and render nost orbits inaccessible for hundreds of years.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

As the article notes, blowing things up isn't the only option.

Blinding / hacking / deorbiting / etc. a bunch of early warning satellites of one of the major nuclear powers would be a majorly destabilizing move.

But it only takes one losing side to decide - Fuck it, we're losing so 'fire all your guns and explode all in space' to destroy everything in orbit with a massive amount of debris that'll last for years.

Russia's little test a few weeks ago showed how that might be.

So hopefully that's the MAD scenario that will keep peace in orbital space for a while yet.

Can't say we promote that anywhere though.

Did he rise to a high rank? Became a thought leader? He was reprimanded, and he considered according to him that he just did his job and nothing really (that is to his credit perhaps). I didn't see him getting a Nobel peace prize either, and it seemed it was the west that celebrated this years after he was retired his heroic decision.

We didn't really celebrate him, after all he could have been given a noble peace prize, that a western organisation. Average Joe in the street never heard of him, he is unrewarded and forgotten

This train of thought leads to a cold war 'space edition'.

We already did that with the Mercury and Apollo missions. The space race was all about who had the high ground.

And it never ends. So now we're shifting to hypersonic weapon offense and defense.

I'm also picturing something like selling anti-anti-satellite defense systems to US military allies to keep money flowing to military contractors.

Perhaps preferable to participating in an arms race, would be figuring out how to live without satellites. It occurs to me that the cell phone system can locate me without GPS, though I don't know how accurate it is.

> cold war 'space edition'

The Cold War was already a 'space edition'.

but will the next Petrov 'candidate' grow up on a diet of tiktok videos?

I don’t see why not. There’s a lot of good content on TikTok.

This is propaganda, the US is the only military with operational space drones and space planes. They have the technology and enough budget to defend military and commercial satellites and just looking for political support to actually do so.

The CCP military may be ahead in number of rockets but the US is way ahead in number of spy satellites by a far margin and can also commission civilian capabilities for this.

Joe at The Drive has been writing a ton of Space Force propaganda articles lately.

The Defense Budget is getting debated now and this "news" really does seem aimed at Congress.

Space Force and SDA want to fund their constellation of hypersonic reentry vehicles based on the SpaceX Starlink platform [1,2,3]. It would provide instant kill capability around the world. China is the justification for this massive buildup of weapons in space.

[1] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/space-based-missile-defense...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles (old project now rebooted with SDA)

[3] https://www.nap.edu/download/13189 (Details matching original Starlink orbits, click Download as Guest)

Even a few years ago the cost to launch all this would have been astronomical, but SpaceX has since brought costs down by 1 order of magnitude (or 2-orders with Starship). Still expensive, but within reach with a little warmongering.

+1 on this. Virtually all the sources interviewed are connected with the military or the government itself, which fits a propaganda model or at least a very one-sided view on the gravity of the threats. Not to say that the facts and incidents reported are false, but the framing of the narrative is problematic and missing key issues such as ---

1. To what extent are critical satellites already built to handle these threats?

2. How much of an offensive capability does the US already possess in terms of retaliation? [Edit : Seems like there are a ton of programs in existence already! How many more are actually needed?]

3. Are the views represented a minority or a majority view in the defense establishment?

4. Like [1], what do the JASONs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JASON_(advisory_group)) or other groups that do not stand to gain directly from a budgetary increase towards defending such attacks have to say on the opinions of the general quoted in the headline?

European governments were raising the issue of increasingly sophisticated attacks against their satellites earlier in the year, which makes it less likely it is pure propaganda (it might still be a budget shout though). The US is well-equipped for this, both defensively and offensively, but the frequency and severity of the attacks has been increasing by all accounts.

While not mentioned in the article, my understanding is that some of the current attacks are only quasi-reversible e.g. some appear to be specifically designed to cause satellites to waste all the fuel in their maneuvering thrusters, greatly shortening their service life.

If SpaceX can get Starship flying at the price they predict, it would be a game-changer. Presently that seems like a big 'if'.

It would pay to be the first nation with a Brilliant Pebbles installation, since such an installation could be used to deny any other nation the ability to create the same. Brilliant Pebbles isn't merely an anti-missile system; it could also be used to intercept rockets launching satellites, including the launch other BP systems. It's a winner-takes-all game.

If the strategic interests of America are not your own interests, all of this obviously seems very grim. If you think strategic defense is just a waste of money, then all of this is more of the same. But if you're the sort of person who thinks that billions of dollars spent on nuclear submarines is money well spent, then using Starship to launch a Brilliant Pebbles constellation is a no-brainer.

The Russians new ICBM don't go to space and fly a “low” altitude trajectory to avoid ABM defences. including, it seems, these pebbles.

Anyway, the Russians or the Chinese, if they reasonably feel they’re being denied access to space will trigger the Kessler syndrome. what happens if the Russians counter the 1000 mini-pebbles in space with ten massive satellites filled with TNT, ball bearings and a remote trigger?

Ultimately, thats what I would do if I got bored of the space race. Put enough TNT up there to deny space for everyone if need be.

ICBMs by definition go to space, the B stands for Ballistic. FOB systems aren't ballistic either (that B stands for Bombardment), but still go to space and Brilliant Pebbles is designed to intercept missiles during the initial boost phase, so it would work against FOB systems too. Brilliant Pebbles, once in place, can stop any satellite launch, including those intended to trigger the Kessler syndrome. Of course, Russia might have such satellites in orbit already...

What Brilliant Pebbles wouldn't be any good against is cruise missiles that remain in the atmosphere, and ultra long range nuclear torpedoes. Russia is working on both, doubtlessly for this very reason.

Ballistic doesn't mean space, it mean paraboloid trajectory. A baseball is ballistic. But I concede your point.

Its pedantic though. The new missiles do have a shallow trajectory specifically to avoid interception including in the boost phase.

Add to that, the Russians have hypersonic missiles.

Starlink wont checkmate the Russians.

I thought brilliant pebbles was long cancelled?

At the time the cost to launch it would have been insane since it called for ten thousand or more satellites in LEO. However with Starlink, SpaceX has been promising to demonstrate the ability to economically launch such massive satellite constellations. If they succeed, I expect Brilliant Pebbles to return, although probably under a new name.

Interesting take by one of the SDI/Brilliant Pebbles architects pitching Starlink http://highfrontier.org/january-8-2019-brilliant-pebbles-is-...

Hypersonic tech and reduced launch costs have brought something similar back if the funding keeps coming.

Yeah following that line of thought I think they are just scrambling for a piece of the budget that's "freed" now that the military doesn't have to sustain operations in Afghanistan anymore. That's what I mean with propaganda.

I've often wondered whether this article was DOD fundraising propaganda: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones...

Readership of The Drive ain’t where they get their money.

Fair, but media headlines and intelligence agencies provide similar services.

I mean of course it's propaganda. The military would have no need (or desire) to disclose this publicly otherwise. But what really matters is whether or not it's true; are there really reversible attacks on US satellites, or is this just saber-rattling and trying to pre-sell US citizens on a new enemy?

I have no idea if it's real or not, but it sounds plausible, at least the passive attacks. It's mere speculation, though, that this can or will escalate to physical, irreversible attacks.

I think it's also likely that the US is conducting the same kinds of reversible attacks on adversaries' satellites, too. Or at the very least, we have the capacity to do so, and have tested it on our own gear.

The conclusion that this is propaganda does not follow from the facts you stated. Anyway, I suspect everything an active US general says is in some form propaganda but the thing that matters is if his statement is true or false. And nothing you've said makes me believe that this general is lying about US satellites being attacked in some manner daily.

Of course he's not lying, the thing is it's his responsibility that they don't get attacked and he already has the tools to deal with it at his disposal and is not in any way explaining what new thing they need. Also besides the actual stupid test of firing a rocket at a satellite the US military flew and tested technology that's capable of satellite warfare multiple times but "it's classified", they are just being more subtle than others because they can afford to as they are already ahead on the game.

He's just sounding the drums and banging his chest is all.

> This is propaganda, the US is the only military with operational space drones and space planes.

That's blatantly false.

https://time.com/5779315/russian-spacecraft-spy-satellite-sp...

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/09/911113352/new-chinese-space-p...

> This is propaganda, the US is the only military with operational space drones and space planes.

The article is mostly about ground-based attacks, which pretty much everyone can do.

Nope, only two or maybe three organizations in the world can do that. It's not just firing a rocket if you want to hit a car sized target that's 400km away and moving at 7km/s, you need satellite navigation and global radar coverage to even try it and you are getting cut from that infrastructure way before you reach your target if you perform an unannounced launch that even looks remotely like an orbital attack.

The article we are discussing is about laser and EM attacks. Anyone with a software defined radio, a directional antenna, and some skillz can mount ground-based EM hacking attempts on satellites, and there are many academic astronomical facilities with artificial star lasers which could pull off attacks to disable the imagers of spy satellites. (Note that individuals don't because this is the sort of thing that gets spooks knocking at your door.)

Not sure about EM attacks, but I don't think disabling the imager of a spy satellite with a laser from the ground is feasible. If it makes it through the atmosphere it would just scatter or open up too much. Artificial stars shine by reacting with the atmosphere that kinda ends around 30km. LEO imagers fly as low as 240km but are even higher than that usually.

EM "attacks" wouldn't do much except if you are trying to spy on the EM spectrum in that are so they are more like a "defense". They won't make the satellite unusable.

If you're trying to blind a spy satellite, you don't need to focus your laser through the atmosphere. Focusing through the atmosphere is what the satellite is built to do! The better the satellite's atmospheric correction, the more effectively your laser will be focused on the imager. Sure, maybe you don't burn it, but if you can saturate the right pixels... (Although the wavelengths used to create artificial stars are probably not ideal.)

Similarly with EM, the holy grail would be to send valid control commands to the satellite, or to jam the satellite during some critical period. Satellites are already designed to receive the signals.

This probably moves it out of the realm of an "everyone can do this" thing, but there are also a couple of other approaches that the more advanced and decently funded militaries could use to deal with atmospheric correction. I first heard of tests of these in the late '70s or early '80s.

1. They made a laser that included a phase conjugate mirror such that if you hit the system with some incoming laser light it would greatly amplify it and send it back the way it came.

To use this as a weapon, you'd point it at your target, hit the target with a guide laser, some of that light reflects off the target and enters your phase conjugate laser, and your phase conjugate laser sends a much stronger beam back.

As long as your target is near enough that atmospheric conditions between your weapon and the target have not had a chance to change over the time of a speed of light round trip, all the atmospheric distortions that dispersed the guide laser's reflection to the weapon serve to concentrate the weapon's beam on the target.

2. You can make an energy weapon that uses a phased array of radiators to direct the beam. You aim it in the general direction of your target.

Then you can start varying the phase of each radiator, and you analyze the reflections from the target. If a given radiator happens to be at the right phase so that it is contributing toward producing a maximum or a minimum at the target you won't see much variation in the reflection at the frequency you are varying that radiator's phase. If the phase of the radiator is such that it is in between, you'll see more variation at that frequency in the reflection. (A graph of the radiator's contribution versus phase looks like a sine wave. When it is maximally contributing it is at the peak, when not it is near a zero. Near a peak wiggling side to side doesn't change much because a sine wave is flatter there. When near a zero the sine wave is steep so a little side to side wiggle changes a lot).

Use a different frequency for the phase variation of each radiator, feed what you see reflected into a Fourier analyzer, and use the relative strengths of what you see at the variation frequencies as feedback to adjust the radiator phases, and you can get the array to quickly adjust to by focused on and stay on the target.

They were playing around with a small one of these at Hughes Research Laboratories in the late '70s. I know because the professor [1] who taught APh 23 (Demonstration Lectures in Optics) at Caltech when I took it in the '79-80 school year was also a researcher at Hughes working on it, and one class he showed us a video of a test.

It was pretty cool. It started with a black background and a bunch of blobs of light moving around as the system has nothing to focus on. Then someone dangled a small metal model of the starship Enterprise in front of the background, and all the blobs instantly converged on it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_B._Bridges

How easy (or difficult?) is it to determine the origin point of a ground-based attack like the one you described? I imagine the time of day a satellite goes out narrows down the field of possible locations but is it something that can be quickly identified with pinpoint accuracy or something that can only be narrowed down to “it came from somewhere within this 500 mile radius”?

And I like how they call it an attack while openly saying they were operating spy satellites. Should a country not be expected to prevent spy satellites from spying on them?

No. Spy satellites are legally allowed to operate based on international treaty. Kinetic attacks on them by another nation would clearly be an act of war. RF and cyber attacks are kind of a gray area.

Can you point to a source in that I’ve never heard such an agreement. Interested to read about it. Thanks.

https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties.htm...

Honestly I gave it a good search on that site and could not find anything to what you claim. What I did find right away on the opening page was this as follows

"These five treaties deal with issues such as the non-appropriation of outer space by any one country, arms control, the freedom of exploration, liability for damage caused by space objects, the safety and rescue of spacecraft and astronauts, the prevention of harmful interference with space activities and the environment, the notification and registration of space activities, scientific investigation and the exploitation of natural resources in outer space and the settlement of disputes.

Each of the treaties stresses the notion that outer space, the activities carried out in outer space and whatever benefits might be accrued from outer space should be devoted to enhancing the well-being of all countries and humankind, with an emphasis on promoting international cooperation."

To me that last part is what I notice. Should be devoted to enhancing the well being of all countries and humankind, with emphasis on promoting international cooperation. So how would spying do any of that? It is more likely to get the other country angry and not cooperate. If there is relevant text that shows spying is actually legal please do show it, I am not saying you are incorrect but I am having a hard time verifying your claim. Do you have a direct source that spells it out? Again, thanks.

Rockets and spaceplanes are not the only threat model. We build commercial satellites that have to contend with jamming attacks and other intentional interference. I'm not one to carry water for the military industrial complex - they hype up threats for more money all the time (see: Hypersonics) - but I can assure you that these attacks are occurring right now.

> I can assure you that these attacks are occurring right now.

I can assure you we're doing the same thing, though.

Oh, ok, so I guess it’s all good then?

It makes the pearl clutching a little funny.

From the OP:

> The systems that Russia and China are known to be developing or have already fielded include destructive and non-destructive types that are deployed from Earth, such as ground-based jammers, lasers, or interceptors, as well as small "killer satellites" positioned in orbit. A killer satellite able to maneuver close to its target could use various means to try to disable, damage, or even destroy it, such as jammers, directed energy weapons, robotic arms, chemical sprays, and small projectiles. It could even deliberately smash into the other satellite in a kinetic attack.

Also, how do the US military's capabilities inform us about what other militaries are doing?

What space plane does the US have? What counts as a drone? Satellites can be steered, are those drones? The article states that Russia is trailing US spy satellites with their own. You make no sense.

> What counts as a drone? Satellites can be steered, are those drones?

Traditionally, any remote controlled aircraft is a drone, it seems fair to say any remote controlled spacecraft is also a drone.

The first drone, from which the term 'drone' came, was a radio controlled de Havilland Tiger Moth created in 1935, named "Queen Bee". It was a gunnery target drone, built for the purpose of being shot down, intended to fly only once. 'Drone' is a pun on that single-flight use and the name 'Queen bee'; male bees, which fly only once before dying, are called drones.

These days it's trendy for people to put forth their own definitions of 'drone' that have qualifiers like "it must have autonomy" or "it must be able to land". But the first drone had neither capability and the term itself is at odds with the latter.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

That probably?

This too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Chaser

Status: in development

Was going to say that the definition of spaceplane is iffy. It needs a rocket to reach orbit. That's the only one that came to mind.

oh man... it is really hard to see through news nowadays. What is real, what isn't? That's why transparency is such an important value in organizations and governments. The more transparency, the easier it is to move things in the right direction. That's why I'm confident that China will have a lot of trouble with corruption and long-term growth. But it doesn't mean that we're good at it, and we should strive for Democracy to also imply transparency.

> it is really hard to see through news nowadays. What is real, what isn't?

It's not a new problem. From the beginning of the Enlightenment especially, we have developed many tools for discerning truth from falsehood and thinking critically.

It’s not nowadays, it has sheets been the case.

Sheets has been

Always.

This is propaganda, the US is the only military with operational space drones and space planes

Can you expand a bit? It doesn't seem like the types of attacks the general mentioned require those capabilities, so the US monopoly on space drones* comes across as a non-sequitor.

* Which I would argue doesn't exist, due to the existence of autonomous vehicles like Буран and 可重复使用试验航天器

That's the benefit of being an early innovator. That doesn't mean threats don't exist.

If you can substantiate your claims they would be interesting.

If I had to pick among the space-capable powers in the world to be top dog, I'd stick with the US quite frankly

An audience of 538.

> “The threats are really growing and expanding every single day. And it’s really an evolution of activity that’s been happening for a long time,” Thompson, told Rogin. “We’re really at a point now where there’s a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened.”

Although the article doesn't mention it, the close integration between each country's nuclear force and satellites means that what happens in orbit affects survival on earth acutely. And the rate at which new technologies are enabling the militarization of space is shocking. That applies whether you believe Thompson or not.

See:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29045286

> "Both China and Russia are regularly attacking U.S. satellites with non-kinetic means, including lasers, radio frequency jammers, and cyber attacks, he said."

So, having a satellite is just like having a server on the Internet.

A bit of an aside to the exact article, but it makes me think about all the software attacks that might be made on satellites. It's kind of like they have an open port, small deployment, and no way to physically reset the machine. It seems inevitable that they have many serious and exploitable security flaws...

The USSF hosts Hack-a-sat at DEFCON! See here for details! https://www.hackasat.com/

This has been happening for decades at this point

https://www.wired.com/2009/04/fleetcom/

Regardless of the article, space superiority is the new air superiority in that if you don't have it, you only ever have permission from whomever does.

Over space scale distances, the only meaningful sovereignty is the cryptographic integrity of your networks, which, as it turns out, can have 20min or greater RTT latency, so you also need a high degree of autonomy. There's also the small matter of the entire substrates of those networks being produced by fabs and on equipment controlled by a rival superpower. Post quantum algorithms and key distribution are going to literally define sovereignty in less than 30 years, and we haven't landed on one for standardization yet.

I get that a lot of americans want to forfeit their governments role in the world, but I'd invite them to consider the alternatives. What bothers me is that we've seen supersonic missiles from both China and Russia in the last couple of months, and officially the multi trillion dollar US military is mystified by them, while some random guy on hackaday just built a supersonic trebuchet for two hundred dollars. Someone should call him and tell him his country needs him, because its military is too busy navel gazing to do its one job.

A computer in another country is running SSH brute-force attempts and random port scans (which hit pretty much every IPv4 address at least once an hour) - quick, ask for several more billions in funding and claim Russia/China is behind it - your wish will be granted without a second thought. Man, why is this propaganda on the front page of a "hacker" website?

This is currently a very active area of so-called grey-zone[0] warfare. It goes beyond the US, which is better prepared for this than most. Some European governments recently started investing heavily in their own satellite warfare capabilities as a response to increasingly aggressive and diverse activities targeting their assets as well.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey-zone_(international_relat...

The lack of public awareness of gray zone warfare is truly astounding.

It’s budget time again. Gotta get those billions!

The secrecy part of this game is infuriating, where the existence of some of these birds is not even acknowledged. Everyone knows that stuff is there, egs: stuffin.space and https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/satellite-database etc.

But if the US wants to respond to some wrong diplomatically, or in kind, there's no point to keeping it secret.

Similar things happen regularly between competing militaries in more atmospheric situations. Russia flies planes near or into NATO airspace; China flies and sails near Taiwan and various neighbors. The US spies everywhere and challenges Chinese claims to the South China Sea. Planes take dangerously close approaches to other planes and as we know well, cyber attacks happen constantly.

I wonder how the orbital activities described in the OP compare. Are they more or less consequential? Are the rules of engagement as mature? Are these just run-of-the-mill encounters?

I just love the complete lack of self-awareness. Russia and China bad, the US is good.

It's not a lack of self-awareness. It's propaganda. Of course the US military is going to paint the people attacking them as the bad guys, even though the US military is likely engaging in the same kinds of attacks.

I read it as: US complained that their spy sattelites got attacked for spying.

Generally speaking, yes.

You think that Putin and Xi are the good guys here? You really think the world would be a better place if the US let them be the world’s super powers?

i’m on the US’s side, but for the fun of playing devil’s advocate, it could be that the US resisting the assent of Russia/China is the very thing that unifies them under totalitarianism (common threat and all that) - China and Russia might have had their governments overthrown already if it weren’t for the US giving them something to fight against.

Every group turns toward infighting once the outside threat is defeated.

the world is not manichean, the superpowers are thorns in the side to "deal" with day in, day out, for smaller nations.

What's the point of view of the African nations where only China invests vs what the Uighurs think of the same government?

What's the point of view of a NATO nation vs the point of view of the Afghans on the US? It's the same country that blocked the westward moving of the USSR and gave an entire country to the Talibans after having upset them.

Or even worse, think of Irak, where nothing good came of the invasion, and nothing good was really foreseeable without the invasion anyways, no clear good vs bad here. Maybe a dictature kills less people and is more predictable than an open war, but that's hardly a manichean difference.

These types lock onto a bad thing the US has done as the be all end all, and completely ignore the logically conclusion of a world controlled by Xi and Putin types… for example, none of this quality HN discussion would be available in Autocratica.

I wonder how long it will be, before some government somewhere makes a high-powered maser type of device, which would basically be an electromagnetic attack.

Seems to me something like that would be very difficult to detect.

Forget radio waves and lasers, what would happen if someone aimed a particle accelerator at a satellite. Just a tight beam of relativistic protons fired from the earth's surface into the sky?

Not my area of expertise, but my guess is they'd heat the air near the accelerator. There's a lot of air between here and there.

Someone like Iron Man?

Is it really fair to say attack when they openly say “our spy satellites”. Is not spying considered an attack on those you are spying on?

> Is not spying considered an attack on those you are spying on?

It depends on the meaning of “attack.” Spying against a country inside their country is generally illegal in that country but is also not generally treated as an act of war. Spy satellites are not even in the target’s territory and are not doing anything to the target’s territory or their stuff. There isn’t really any rationale to call it an attack. Attacking the satellite though is attacking their stuff, of course everyone does it, but has a better rationale for the word “attack.”

Seems like there is a difference between passive spying (say monitoring radio transmissions from international waters or taking pictures from space) vs active spying (conducting intelligence operations on foreign soil or hacking a network)

It's not the job of any military to be fair.

Yawn. New US military branch that everyone wonders why it exists seeks to justify budget.

I'm sure the reverse happens too.

Am I the only one unable to see "Space Force" without laughing and thinking about the Steve Carroll show of the same name?

“Space Force” has been around for decades.

See the “National Reconnaissance Office” https://www.nro.gov/

NRO is different than Space Force. Space Force is relatively new and has a different mission.

> There may come a point where we demonstrate some of our capabilities so that our adversaries understand they cannot deny us the use of space without consequence

Obviously that time has come if they are attacking our satellites. Why is everyone in the US government so afraid to stand up to China?

To put it simply, the second we (U.S.) show what we can do, everyone else can start developing countermeasures. It requires a circumstance where the risk of exposing our capabilities is worth the deterrent or retributive effect. So far, throwing shit at satellites doesn't count.

I wanna see one of the USA adversaries magically lose a satellite somehow with firing a missile at it. Like a tractor beam or something. We need some good source material for our high tech, near future science fiction.

Wouldn't it be pretty easy to do that with a high powered laser? Thermal management in space is a pain without people adversarially adding more energy.

Everybody’s already demonstrated their ability to shoot down satellites.

Mysteriously deorbiting one with our mini robot shuttle though…

They’d see the X-37 sneak up. But maybe it could deploy a small, stealth drone to push a satellite down?

That's a good point but when pushed, you have to push back. Not necessarily with your most advanced tech.

Biting the hand that feeds you is typically frowned upon. You thought trade was disrupted by a mere global pandemic, wait until the disruptions from a global war kick in. We've fought wars for the past 20 years while spending on consumer goods has risen steadily and taxes have been lowered many times. Long has it been the populace has felt the pinch of giving things up to support the war effort, but go to war with the one place that supplies the majority of common goods, and the populace will get a rude awakening.

There's something interesting (I think, anyway) that goes along with this. Many times war is used to unify people and to distract them from other problems at home (failing economy, poor labor conditions, etc.). But a war with China would create so many problems at home that public support for such a war would die out immediately after Amazon packages stopped showing up.

Additionally, the status quo can’t sustain itself either. The current restlessness has a few (I only mean a few) notable similarities to the social context which led to WW1. A lingering ruling class who has outstayed their welcome and an alienated, devalued working class that feels they’ve lost any sense of purpose or belonging is a good recipe for starting a stupid and pointless war.

Corruption, incompetence, poor leadership, etc.

Exhausted too much political capital chasing dead ends in Afghanistan and Iraq. Far easier to focus on non-existential threats than to address the elephant in the room.

Don’t forget only existing as a separate department as an ego boost by the the idiot who literally tried to overthrow the government when he didn’t get his way in an election.

To me the Space Force is terribly tainted by association. I don’t know what will change that, but vague claims of threats doesn’t.

> Don’t forget only existing as a separate department as an ego boost by the the idiot who literally tried to overthrow the government when he didn’t get his way in an election.

While the description of Trump is accurate, that of the US Space Force is not: it does not exist as a separate department, it is a separate uniformed service within the Department of the Air Force, much as the Marine Corps is within the Department of the Navy.

That’s what I meant, sorry. Bring its own branch as opposed to when it was a part of the other branches.

My mistake in word choice. You’re correct.

I am starting to feel weird about this mentality, I.e.:

If someone is capable of attacking us, they are most likely already planning to attack us, and we must plan to attack "first". (Implied in "stand-up to China, as if US were already being put down...)

I mean, I was born and raised in China, CCP does not manage to install such mentality into adult Chinese. I never see anyone who say "we have to prepare to strike first".

Is this mentality real? Or I perceived wrong?

Everybody is preparing to attack everybody first strike or otherwise. The militaries jobs are to plan out attacks and contingencies.

I don’t think the average American is having this drilled into them as you suggest, but there are certainly military planners in the USA whose job it is to think about such things.

China works the same way.

Have you seen the statistics on American gun ownership, particularly handgun ownership? And what fraction of Americans have a concealed carry permit? And how many people carry a gun on their person when they are out getting a sandwich?

Yes, it’s real.

China's foreign policy has become very aggressive and the CCP fosters intense nationalism domestically (maybe after you left?). Look up 'wolf diplomats', for example.

> CCP fosters intense nationalism domestically (maybe after you left?)

I am pretty sure that the domestic propaganda is not too different from what it used to be.

When a nation grow strong, it naturally demands more space for its realm. And they are learning new skills to push back the things they used to feel incapable of (like China seems starting to cultivate an alternative theory on democracy). Also, you have to understand, any ambitious politician in China understand the immense power if the nationalism is used properly.

Imagine a nation back to its pinnacle in the Han and Tang dynasty, that's hugely attractive, and also to the people...

The issue the US media sees, it's essentially that China does not put herself as a subordinate of the US dominant international hierarchy.

If you think in that way, the wolf diplomacy is just normal tic to tac between two rivalry nations. And in fact, each instance of so-called wolf diplomacy action was never proactive. It was always some random Western guy or media provoked previously dormant issues, and the Chinese have to react...

Because I don't think one guy saying they're launching non-damaging attacks on satellites is worth making the lives of over a billion people worse.

If retaliation for an attack makes the lives of 1 billion Chinese worse, then that's on them for attacking, not on us for responding. A space force general is not "one guy saying"

I don't think temporarily stopping us from spying on them justifies potentially killing people, particularly as I'd bet we do the same thing. And no matter how important a guy is they still need to provide evidence for their claims.

>>>I don't think temporarily stopping us from spying on them justifies potentially killing people

Interestingly enough, Trump took the same position when the Iranians shot down an expensive spy drone, and Trump called off the punitive strike against Iran that would have killed ~150 people. Yet people maintained that he was an unstable warmonger. shrug

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/21/734683701/trump-reportedly-or...

Because he also made decisions like removing the Presidential approval for CIA drone strikes, dropped the "Mother of All Bombs," sold masses of weapons to the Saudis while helping them kill Yemenis, and many more acts.

That he claimed to have stopped one strike doesn't change his record, though his overall record was similar to other recent presidents.

>>>his overall record was similar to other recent presidents

That's kinda my point, he wasn't significantly different from the other idiots we've had in office but CNN et al. certainly didn't spend 8 years calling Obama an unhinged tyrant, despite him also being more of the same with regards to bombing brown countries.

>A space force general is not "one guy saying"

Yeah it was probably the CIA or another similarly reputable agency[0] that actually made the report.

[0]https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/cia-employ...

> then that's on them for attacking, not on us for responding.

and if the other party applies this same reasoning to your response? if your epistemics are at all self-consistent, then after the escalation you’re responsible for the negative impact on about half of all the lives impacted. the easy out you present is just self delusion.

It's distressing how casually people can suggest harming a billion people - for actions that the vast majority had nothing to do with.

Seems like a Pyrrhic dynamic. I can't see how to make the lives of 1 billion Chinese worse without having similar effects on the rest of the first world.

The objective of the game is making the other guy feel certain he can't win. The only winning condition is when both sides believe they can't win.

The people who did the attack aren't going to be the ones punished, which doesn't seem fair to me.

What are you referring to?

The US government is intently focused on competing with China, especially militarily. Agencies are dedicating themselves to it as the leading priority, especially the Dept. of Defense, which is rebuilding its forces specifically for conflict with China. It's in the defense and foreign policy news every day.

Well the official line is because standing up to China is racist or something. Really it's because so many rich people in the US are beholden to China via investment and other business interests.

Who says that?

Seeing a lot of could.

> In another prime example of the secrecy issue, when asked, Thompson could not confirm or deny whether any American satellites had actually been damaged in a Russian or Chinese attack. Beyond that, he told Rogin that even if such a thing had occurred, that very fact would be classified.

Ok. Can we go back to the UFO discourse now? Or maybe Havana syndrome? At least those are somewhat imaginative. Please come-up with something more interesting like Russia/China training space dolphins or something.

And why should we believe this?

Edit: The "space force" needs to justify its existence, and this is a way for them to do it. Why haven't we heard about this before?

Because in a Taiwan scenario, China almost certainly would attack US Satellites.

And vice versa: USA would want to stop Chinese Satellites, so that they are blind to the movement of our carriers.

-----

Frankly, I'd expect that the Space Force is already conducting testing-level operations against our opponent's satellites.

From temporary blindness (this laser-thing they're talking about), to permanent disablement (missile, like Russia's test). Maybe the US isn't so gaudy to publicly create space debris like Russia, but I'm sure we have weapons in development that can do the same thing.

-------

> Edit: The "space force" needs to justify its existence, and this is a way for them to do it. Why haven't we heard about this before?

"Space Force" always existed. Or do you think that the US Army doesn't use GPS or Spy Satellites?

The issue with before, is that we used to have a Space-component for US Army. Then a 2nd space-component in the US Navy. Then a 3rd space-component in the US Marines. Finally, we have a 4th space-component in the US Air Force.

This was stupid. We removed the space-elements in our 4 branches and combined them into a singular 5th branch. Instead of redundantly creating 4 different space branches subservient to 4 different organizations, we can have one branch focus on the space stuff, and the other 4 branches asking the 5th guy for support as needed.

If anything, Space Force is going to be a hell of a lot cheaper than the stupid organization we had before.

There's also the Space Force versus the National Reconnaissance Office versus the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

Anti-satellite weapons have been around for some time[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT

I can imagine lightweight semi-permanent disablement by spraying paint on lenses and wrapping the entire craft in aluminum foil. Zero space debris, and not even destruction of property.

This takes more fuel and an advanced robot craft, but should be preferable for a time when a fast all-out war is not being fought. And I hope both sides would like to avoid an all-out war.

Space rendezvous is really hard. Easier to get line-of-sight and then beam attack it

Hitting is easier of course!

The idea is to disable a satellite in a nicest possible way, in order to look good in the eyes of everyone but the adversary.

A laser-beam attack is when you shine a laser into the satellite's lenses, meaning its blind for the duration of the laser-beam.

As such, you can disable an opponent's satellite without destroying it. It just doesn't work for the duration of the laser-beam attack.

This works against optical surveillance.

My idea was also targeting e.g. navigation and communication satellites. Maybe coming close and drowning their transmission in white noise could work. It would take imitating their antennas' direction pretty well.

You’d probably have to hack it then. Getting there and wrapping it in foil / sabotaging it would be unbelievably hard and clearly visible to the whole world’s radar systems

I don't think that a rocket attack would stay invisible.

If the target satellite would start maneuvering to avoid capture, it's OK because now it's useless as a navigation satellite, and is harder if even still possible to use for communication and surveillance.

Do you really think after all these years of public hacking by state actors that U.S. satellites would somehow be off limits?

I agree we should approach this with skepticism. By their nature, a lot of these things are hard to verify independently, and the incentives are for the military to exaggerate them. This article doesn't seem to even attempt to independently verify the facts. This should be treated as a press release from the military, not journalism.

... didn't we just have a Russian ASAT test that had ISS astronauts sheltering in place? Is this that hard to believe?

In fact, that's why this statement is "50/50".

Space has been used for weapons of war since the V2 in 1944. The next Big Stupid War will certainly continue the trend.

Why not?

China and Russia are ramping up on military presence, maneuvers, and armament. Our top businesses are constantly under attack by nation state actors. I've witnessed a few attacks directly.

I'd be willing to bet that there will be some action taken in Ukraine and Taiwan within the decade, possibly simultaneously.

I feel like the best way to prevent a Taiwan situation is to give them nukes. China would never invade if it meant losing their 10 largest cities. And when they throw a fit just say "but China, you already had nukes. Which part of China they are in is no concern of ours."

Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are all considered latent nuclear powers; they each operate numerous nuclear reactors and likely have the material and expertise on hand to create nuclear weapons in a matter of months (if they ever chose to.)

Wouldn't Taiwan need a credible second strike capability as well? The US probably can't credibly guarantee their safety, so they'd need to be able to do that themselves, otherwise the threat is empty and useless.

But say the US really did arm Taiwan with first and second strike capabilities, I don't even think the US could stomach the reaction to that. How long could they hold out if embargoed by the PRC?

Wouldn't a PRC embargo of the US hurt the PRC nearly as much as the US?

More. Exports to the US are a much greater % of Chinese GDP, than Chinese imports are of US GDP.

The US Navy could block all Chinese exports and imports by sea around the world, not only those between China and America. This is why China's "Belt and Road Initiative" (aka the 'New Silk Road') is so important to China. It's meant to decrease China's reliance on shipping for international trade, by opening up land routes across Eurasia.

I always said the same thing. Give those 3 nukes and then declare defensive strike doctrine. My military friend says “it’s not a good idea” but I don’t see why. Call their bluff.

>I don’t see why

Because simply PRC has never been deterred by nukes over sovereignty issues. It has fought with nuclear US, USSR and India over core interests less interest than TW. Former two while PRC wasn't nuclear power herself.

Also because TW is thoroughly infiltrated by PRC spies, and TW even hinting nuclearizing gives PRC legitimate casus belli to go to war with relatively few consequences due to proliferation concerns. Not to mention US would be arming weapons of mass destruction to CCP's antagonist in domestic Chinese civil war. PRC would likely treat any nuclear US on TW's part as direct US nuclear launch. If it's going to trade Taipei for Shanghai, it's going to make sure US loses NYC as well for participating.

Reality is nuclear deterrence doesn't actually deter when core security interests are involved, i.e. USSR HAD nukes on Cuba during the crisis and US was still willing to invade.

So you’re saying CCP doesn’t care about getting nuked or doesn’t think Taiwan would use in a hot war.

Maybe they didn’t care about nukes in the 50’s and 60’s because they were just in the midst of war and suffering, and Mao was a fervent ideologue.

Plus Taiwan isn’t any material threat to the mainland. It’s not a core security concern, as seen by the mainlands transformation from 1970-now. If it was, and the US was using it to choke off and destroy the CCP - it would have done so decades ago.

I think their whole Taiwan thing is trash and we need to call their bluff on it. Arm all 3 and declare defensive use.

Year.

Possibly month.

yeah I rarely believe things that the US military industrial and political complex says. Bu this is not a hard thing to belive.

Does the space force need to justify its existence? Seems obviously justified to me, anything in space will be one of the first targets in any near peer conflicts and every state with the capability is working on and even openly testing space capable weapons.

Is there anything from the ground that can be done by Space Force to protect assets in space from direct attack from projectile weapons? Is there anything Space Force can to from space to protect them? No? Then what have they actually done except get new uniforms and patches?

Unified space command into a single branch. Also gives a way for Congress to appropriate funds to the USSF with the Department of the Air Force and not deal with the USAF wanting to repurpose the funds for aircraft, which apparently has been a problem for quite a while. Space is its own unique domain and should be treated as such.

The USAF have a love affair with fast jets (who can blame them?) but I have a feeling that using manned aircraft as the first stage of missiles is an anachronism that won't survive the next major war.

I mean those are the problems that are being worked on, I presume. Seems a little tautological to say we currently have no space defense/offense capabilities so it's senseless to invest in space defense/offense.

I see your point, but at the same time, whether it is a branch of the Air Force or its own branch, it's the same situation. I'm willing to stipulate that I'm basing my opinion at the farcical manner in which it was created, and how can we take anything seriously like that especially after their uniform design so clearly ripped off of scifi.

Edit: sorry, I meant logo/emblem in place of uniform.

>>>how can we take anything seriously like that especially after their uniform design so clearly ripped off of scifi

We have all sorts of neat things because people with real jobs "ripped off sci-fi". Plus I'm glad to see a military uniform that breaks with such conservative conventions, and if you are gonna steal style cues from sci-fi, TMP-era Star Trek & nBSG are some of the best to copy.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/tech-leaders-share-how-...

We're still waiting on our Starship Troopers power armor though:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/vikrammittal/2020/08/17/militar...

well, we can agree on the emblem lol

The parent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Space_Command has existed since 1982, so why do you think they need to suddenly justify their existence?

Is this just a stupid reaction to Donald Trump being the one to do the reorganization?

Putin has been talking up Russia's anti-satellite laser weapons since before the US created its space force. As xkcd[1] famously mentioned, just because you're learning about something today doesn't mean it's brand new

[1]: https://xkcd.com/1053/

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