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Comment by setpatchaddress | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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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.

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> 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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