U.S. satellite shoot-down
Does he look nervous or bothered? He just had ten seconds to get it right — the relatively junior U.S. Naval Officer who launched the missile that apparently shot down a falling U.S. satellite.
The Defense Department photo caption reads: “U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Andrew Jackson activates a modified tactical Standard Missile-3 from the Combat Information Center of the USS Lake Erie as the ship operates in the Pacific Ocean, Feb. 20, 2008. The Aegis cruiser launched the missile at a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite as it traveled in space at more than 17,000 mph over the Pacific Ocean”.
The New York Times later reported that “During a Pentagon news conference Thursday morning, General Cartwright rebuffed those who said the mission was, at least in part, organized to showcase American missile defense or anti-satellite capabilities. He said the missile itself had to be reconfigured from its task of tracking and hitting an adversary’s warhead to instead find a cold, tumbling satellite. ”This was a one-time modification’, General Cartwright said. Sensors from the American missile defense system were an important part of this mission, though, he said“. This NYTimes report is here.
The U.S. Ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Christina Rocca, has sent out a statement today saying that “A network of land-, air-, sea- and spaced-based sensors confirms that the U.S. military intercepted a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite which was in its final orbits before entering the earth’s atmosphere. At approximately 10:26 p.m. EST today, a U.S. Navy AEGIS warship, the USS Lake Erie (CG-70), fired a single modified tactical Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) hitting the satellite approximately 247 kilometers (133 nautical miles) over the Pacific Ocean as it traveled in space at more than 17,000 mph. USS Decatur (DDG-73) and USS Russell (DDG-59) were also part of the task force. The objective was to rupture the fuel tank to dissipate the approximately 1,000 pounds (453 kg) of hydrazine, a hazardous fuel which could pose a danger to people on earth, before it entered into earth’s atmosphere. Confirmation that the fuel tank has been fragmented should be available within 24 hours. Due to the relatively low altitude of the satellite at the time of the engagement, debris will begin to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere immediately. Nearly all of the debris will burn up on reentry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days. The Department of Defense will conduct a press briefing at 7 a.m. EST to provide further information related to the operation. The briefing can be viewed live on www.Defenselink.mil through the Pentagon Channel”. (The DOD briefing is archived on the website and can be re-played.) This statement was received by email.
After clicking on the link to hear the Pentagon briefing, I heard General James Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, say that “This is a one-time type of event”.
(Just like Kosovo)
General Cartwright was referring mainly to modifications (mostly softwear, he said, associated with sensors, with weapons and the ship, as well as some wiring) made to the missiles and to the navel ships involved in this operation. “The technical degree of difficulty was significant”, General Cartwright said. “The consequence-management part of this…is critical”.
This is one of those moments when you can feel that the world has irretrievably changed.
The Associated Press reported that “Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said Beijing was asking the U.S. to ‘provide to the international community necessary information and relevant data in a timely and prompt way’. And the overseas edition of People’s Daily excoriated Washington for opposing a recent Russian-Chinese proposal on demilitarizing space. ‘One cannot but worry for the future of space when a great nation with such a massive advantage in space military technology categorically refuses a measure to prevent the militarization of space’, the paper said”. This AP report is posted here.
China Hand took a brief break from his/her nearly-obsessive coverage of the Pakistani political scene on Wednesday (20 February) to discuss this then-impending satellite shoot-down. In a posting entitled The Drunken Old Guy’s Mind Isn’t Really on the Wine…Is the Pentagon Really Worried About the Hydrazine? So asks the Chinese Internet, China Hand wrote:
“By questioning the Pentagon’s narrative, the Chinese want to undercut America’s pretensions to responsible and honest space power-hood that it has claimed with its prior notification and the relative transparency surrounding the planned shootdown. (And I wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. media campaign was carefully designed to draw invidious comparisons between Chicom secrecy and recklessness and America’s careful stewardship of its space turf.) There is also barely suppressed hope in China that the United States will screw up, either by missing the satellite or creating an embarrassing shower of wreckage, so that the Chinese, still smarting from the PR debacle of their own ASAT test, can savor the sweet, sweet taste of schadenfreud. I find it rather ironic that the public US disarmament community is also unable to divine the actual motives for the U.S. shootdown. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that there is still dispute over why the Chinese knocked down their satellite. America’s continued desire to treat its pre-eminence in space as beyond challenge or discussion is well illustrated by the shootdown of USA 193—a unilateral piece of public-safety policing by the world’s self-appointed space sheriff. It reminds me of Ronald Reagan’s invocation of Star Wars as humanity’s shield against invading aliens and angry asteroids. China’s awareness of America’s strategic dominance in space, its desire to be treated as an equal in space—and its desire to have both its role and the American presence in space the subject of peer-to-peer negotiation–should not be dismissed as a motivation for its test. And yes, America’s rejection out of hand of the Russian and Chinese initiative at the UN disarmament conference last week to ban space weapons does seem to be on China’s mind“. China Hand’s blog, China Matters, is here.
Russia has not commented yet.
Filed under: Space Race
” one-time type of event” may be but the know-how and how-to have already been proven for future use as required. Just be a rogue nation in the eyes of the supreme super power or the other P4 and one will pay the consequence. There is technology and then there are applications and deployment :0
An interesting article published in the McClatchy newspapers on Friday says (please note that it says the satellite would be traveling faster than a ballistic missile) that:
“The Navy’s ship-based anti-missile defense system required adjustment to strike the satellite, which would be traveling faster than a ballistic missile and would be difficult to track because its lack of power made it cold and not easily visible to a missile’s infra-red sensors. Pentagon planners timed the shoot-down for late afternoon so that the sun would have warmed the satellite’s surface. Cartwright said there’s little the military can learn from the shoot-down that could be applied to missile defense. ‘It doesn’t cross over’, he said”.
The same article reports these comments from Theresa Hitchins, along one of my lines of concern — Russia’s reaction, to what is clearly a shocking betrayal-like affront, after the U.S. overturned the ABM or anti-ballistic missile treaty and started developing a Missile Defense Shield: ” ‘I don’t see how other nations don’t see this as an anti-satellite test’, said Theresa Hitchens, the director of the Washington D.C. -based Center for Defense Information , a centrist national security policy institute. ‘They’ll see it as the weaponization of space’. China, which last year came under harsh U.S. criticism for using a missile to destroy an aged weather satellite hundreds of miles in space, was the first to react. The Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement demanding that the United States share details of the shoot-down … Secretary of Defense Robert Gates , on a visit to Hawaii , said the military would provide ‘appropriate’ data to the Chinese. Russia had no immediate reaction, though Russian President Vladimir Putin warned recently that the U.S. use of its anti-missile system against satellites would bring a response. Hitchens said she believed that both China and Russia would use the U.S. destruction of the satellite as reason to step up development of their own anti-satellite weapons. China , she said, is ‘likely to use this as an excuse to do what they wanted to do already’. Russia , she added, ‘will come down hard on this’.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20080222/wl_mcclatchy/2857146;_ylt=Ai76zVI2Jx3SbXfcUPHIQquve8UF
In an article updated overnight, the Associated Press’ military writer and another writer wrote: “The military was counting the pieces of debris caused by the satellite shootdown, which was an unprecedented use of components of the Pentagon’s missile defense system, but believed they were smaller than the Pentagon had forecast and that most of the satellite’s intelligence value was likely destroyed, Cartwright said”. [Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/dead_satellite;_ylt=AkFoIDKTaJ.v6ZfVAzGZGRBvaA8F
Note the phrase: “an unprecedented use of components of the Pentagon’s missile defense system” …
“Do like say not like I do” goes the saying. Just need to do some research and read on the projects ” Galileo” and “Radarsat” to experience how BIg Brother does some arm-twisting when some “rogue” (sic) nations decide to go their own ways
Russia is being very quiet. Maybe they calculate that, instead of making a big scene now, they can gain more real concessions by being quiet. The U.S. didn’t do anything illegal — they pulled out of the ABM Treaty according to the rules. They’ve just totally disregarded the negotiating interests of the world’s other two nuclear powers, instead of accomodating them in some way.