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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 an
by pvarangot 5y ago
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.
- dsjoerg 5y agoIf you can substantiate your claims they would be interesting.
- hereforphone 5y agoThat's the benefit of being an early innovator. That doesn't mean threats don't exist.
- baby 5y agooh 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.
- colechristensen 5y agoIt’s not nowadays, it has sheets been the case.
- afterburner 5y agoSheets has been
- colechristensen 5y agoAlways.
- wolverine876 5y ago> 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.
- friedman23 5y agoThe 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.
- pvarangot 5y agoOf 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.
- fidesomnes 5y agowelcome to you're an idiot list.
- mrtnmcc 5y agoJoe 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-not-good-idea https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/space-based-missile-defense... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles (old project now rebooted with SDA) [3] https://www.nap.edu/download/13189 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.
- pvarangot 5y agoYeah 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.
- WFHRenaissance 5y agoI've often wondered whether this article was DOD fundraising propaganda: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the-u-s-and-the-pentagon-acts-like-theyre-ufos https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones...
- JackFr 5y agoReadership of The Drive ain’t where they get their money.
- WFHRenaissance 5y agoFair, but media headlines and intelligence agencies provide similar services.
- jacquesm 5y agoAn audience of 538.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoWhat 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.
- HideousKojima 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 That probably?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoWas 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.
- tjpnz 5y agoThis too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Chaser https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Chaser
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoStatus: in development
- Eelongate 5y ago> 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.
- temp_sat_123 5y agoRockets 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.
- tzs 5y ago> 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.
- pvarangot 5y agoNope, 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.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y agoThe 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.)
- elliekelly 5y agoHow 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”?
- pvarangot 5y agoNot 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.
- kelnos 5y agoI 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.
- Rebelgecko 5y agoThis 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
- wolverine876 5y agoFrom 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?
- knownjorbist 5y agoIf I had to pick among the space-capable powers in the world to be top dog, I'd stick with the US quite frankly
- mlindner 5y ago> 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-space-force/ https://time.com/5779315/russian-spacecraft-spy-satellite-sp... https://www.npr.org/2020/09/09/911113352/new-chinese-space-plane-landed-at-mysterious-air-base-evidence-suggests https://www.npr.org/2020/09/09/911113352/new-chinese-space-p...