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Given how easy it is to disable satellites, does the US military not have contingencies? In the case of all out war between super-powers, it seems to me that al

by rocqua 6y ago

Given how easy it is to disable satellites, does the US military not have contingencies? In the case of all out war between super-powers, it seems to me that all satellites would immediately be taken out. Not planning for that is simply stupid.

simonh 6y ago
It's very hard to track where all the satellites are. Military satellites generally have manoeuvre capability so keeping track of them can be quite challenging. Also launching an anti-sat missile is a comparable problem to launching a satellite into the target orbit. A bit cheaper, but within an order of magnitude. That makes high orbit satellites, particularly in GEO very expensive and time consuming to target. Put it this way, the US and Russia have had decades to put up all their satellites. You're not going to do enough launches to take all of that out in a few weeks, or even months.
_iyig 6y ago
I can’t speak for the U.S. military, but Google accounted for GPS satellite failure (in response to the actions of a hostile power, solar weather event, or any other reason) in their design of Spanner, which relies on precise time synchronization between geographically-distant data centers. In the Spanner white paper, the atomic clocks used in case of GPS satellite failure are called “Armageddon masters”: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/spanner-osdi2012.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...
3pt14159 6y ago
Yes they do. I don't know much about it, but it's been mentioned in some OSINT slacks that there are fallback terrestrial or sea-based systems for things like ordinance guiding. Also, ICBMs use star constellations and other sources of information for guidance. The military isn't so stupid as to ignore Kessler syndrome.
- Unklejoe 6y ago
  I know that at least the Minuteman III ICBMs are inertially guided. They program the coordinates into it and hit "send". No remote control, no flight termination.
bluGill 6y ago
I would be more worried if one party was not a super power. Disabled satellites are a danger to your own and your future space plans because the orbit of any part that breaks off becomes unpredictable. Non superpowers don't worry about how their actions will affect they future abilities, but superpowers do.

by rocqua 6y ago

simonh 6y ago

It's very hard to track where all the satellites are. Military satellites generally have manoeuvre capability so keeping track of them can be quite challenging. Also launching an anti-sat missile is a comparable problem to launching a satellite into the target orbit. A bit cheaper, but within an order of magnitude. That makes high orbit satellites, particularly in GEO very expensive and time consuming to target. Put it this way, the US and Russia have had decades to put up all their satellites. You're not going to do enough launches to take all of that out in a few weeks, or even months.

_iyig 6y ago

I can’t speak for the U.S. military, but Google accounted for GPS satellite failure (in response to the actions of a hostile power, solar weather event, or any other reason) in their design of Spanner, which relies on precise time synchronization between geographically-distant data centers. In the Spanner white paper, the atomic clocks used in case of GPS satellite failure are called “Armageddon masters”: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/spanner-osdi2012.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...

3pt14159 6y ago

Yes they do. I don't know much about it, but it's been mentioned in some OSINT slacks that there are fallback terrestrial or sea-based systems for things like ordinance guiding. Also, ICBMs use star constellations and other sources of information for guidance. The military isn't so stupid as to ignore Kessler syndrome.

Unklejoe 6y ago
I know that at least the Minuteman III ICBMs are inertially guided. They program the coordinates into it and hit "send". No remote control, no flight termination.

bluGill 6y ago

I would be more worried if one party was not a super power. Disabled satellites are a danger to your own and your future space plans because the orbit of any part that breaks off becomes unpredictable. Non superpowers don't worry about how their actions will affect they future abilities, but superpowers do.