China's Satellite Jamming Test Creates International Concerns

GPS Is Seen As A Prime Target For Interdiction China has beamed a powerful ground-based laser at U.S. spy satellites over its territory, a U.S. intelligence agency reported, in an action that exposed the potential vulnerability of space systems that provide crucial data to American troops and consumers...

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GPS Is Seen As A Prime Target For Interdiction

China has beamed a powerful ground-based laser at U.S. spy satellites over its territory, a U.S. intelligence agency reported, in an action that exposed the potential vulnerability of space systems that provide crucial data to American troops and consumers around the world.

The U.S. Department of Defense refuses to disclose which satellite was involved or when it occurred. As North Korea defies the international community with its nuclear tests, China's satellite jamming is exacerbating already high tensions in this trouble region of the globe.

The stakes are high. A space-blinded U.S. military would be left groping and largely incommunicado. A satellite-deprived commercial aviation sphere would soon see its accident rate escalate and its costs do likewise.

The U.S. military has rapidly grown heavily reliant on satellite data, for everything from targeting to relaying communications to space-based espionage. Critical space assets include 30 Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) that help target weapons and locate enemy forces and assets. This system is also widely used in commercial applications, ranging from car navigation systems to automatic teller machines, geological survey and aircraft navigation, terrain avoidance and landing systems. In fact, with the advent of ADS-B, the GPS satellite constellation will become the lynch-pin for air traffic control world-wide. That GPS is vulnerable to discrete EMI and laser attack is undeniable.

According to senior American officials: "China not only has the capability, but has exercised it." American satellites like the giant Keyhole craft have come under photography defeating illuminatory attack "several times" in recent years. Most satellites are especially vulnerable to attack because they have predetermined orbits, allowing an adversary to know when and where they will appear. "The Chinese are very strategically minded and are extremely active in this arena. They really believe all the stuff written in the 1980s about the high frontier," said one senior former Pentagon official.

The incident has provoked concerns among U.S. watchdog groups and defence think tanks about the U.S. ability to determine if satellite outages are being caused by onboard malfunctions, weather anomalies like solar flares, orbiting space debris or targeted attacks. The group-think anxiety is revolving about whether or not a potential adversary has now identified the GPS system as an unprotected Western solar plexus. Air Force Space Commander Gen. Kevin Chilton said it was often difficult to know exactly what had happened to satellites orbiting from 125 to 22,400 miles above the earth. "The capability for people to do things to our satellites is there." he said. The Center for Defense Information cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the latest Chinese incident. "Beijing may have just been testing its capability to track satellites, not damage them," a spokesman said.

A widely held view is that the Pentagon would be prudent to use lower-cost and lower-risk systems closer to earth for critical functions like surveillance and communications. Balloon, dirigible and solar powered stratospheric Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are being rapidly, yet covertly, developed with these applications in mind. However, as far as commercial aviation applications are concerned, there can be no replacement for the GPS and GLONASS satellite systems parked in their very tall orbits, and therefore able to be interrogated three or four at a time for otherwise incalculable global fixing accuracy.

It's claimed that U.S. scientists have not yet developed a system to disable a satellite with a laser. This claim and stance is due to a growing concern among lawmakers that any overt U.S. efforts to develop such anti-satellite weapons would spark a new "missile" race. Memories of the late President Reagan's bluster-borne successes against the Evil Empire with a mythical Star Wars program are very fresh up on the Hill. It was a bluff "that worked once and probably wouldn't work twice" is the widely held view.

China has started to launch a series of satellites intended to form a system called the Beidou navigation system. It is judged to be designedly unique, modern and capable. It will also be hardened against EMI and EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) - and conceivably, laser attack. The European Galileo system, a GPS lookalike, is just about to go into service. It will soon be crowded up there. If a capable nation were to see the U.S. space-based capabilities as a force multiplier that could be itself decimated (and so reduce the U.S. capability to respond globally), there would logically be contingency plans in place to engage U.S. space assets.

Congress has already tried to block a planned test of Starfire, a satellite and star tracking program, for fiscal 2007 after learning it could also be used as an anti- satellite weapon. Those funds were reinstated only after the U.S. Air Force assured lawmakers it would be used only for tracking. Of course, having a capability and voluntarily limiting its use is somewhat like a terrorist suspect assuring the FBI that his backpack flame-thrower is only for burning off the brush. Credibility becomes the first casualty of capability.

The next step may be to develop an international code of conduct for space. Currently, there are no specific rules or treaties governing behavior of the 40 odd countries that operate satellites, and the "about a dozen" countries that have launch capability. However, given the recently demonstrated North Korean disdain for the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, any such "hands off" pact or space-based truce might prove to be little more than pie in the sky. Just like the Global Warming initiatives, without a universal subscriber base, tokenism and lip-service would be rife - and covert anti-satellite weapons development would not have a MAD (mutually assured destruction) limiter upon its scope.

Somewhere, someone might already be dusting off plans for reinstating Omega/VLF, Loran A and C chains and brushing up on astro/celestial navigation theory. It never was a good idea becoming wholly reliant on satellite navigation systems for trade and commerce.

Unfortunately, once commercialized, the accuracy offered was a potent money-spinner, so innovation and usage has burgeoned at a phenomenal rate. Instantly being weaned off it is not a choice anybody would now want to make. And airline aviation would be pre-eminent in opposing that choice.