Tag: war in space

Star Wars Sinks Summit

On By gyonas5 Comments

Time magazine For decades, the Soviet military lagged behind us technologically, and by dominating one half of the budget it fatally weakened their economy. The military was stuck in the quagmire of Afghanistan yet they remained committed to compete with us and maintain their control of Soviet society. A key element of their approach was stealing our secrets. We had discovered how they were shop lifting our technology, and we cooperated by “enhancing” the ingredients of their shopping bag. The chief Soviet thief was actually working for us, and he wanted to get even with his KGB bosses. Farwell Dossier

According to Thomas Reed, former Secretary of  the Air Force, we were “blowing up Soviet pipelines, infiltrating Soviet computers, bollixing  their software, …electronics infected with bugs, viruses, and Trojan horses placed there by the US intelligence community.”

Gorbachev wanted to terminate the arms race and turn his economy around, but in the fateful 1986, everything seemed to go from bad to worse: Gorbachev was planning an anti vodka campaign to deal with what he thought was contributing to his country’s mental and financial depression. His faulty governing plan was based on a commitment to a contradictory strategy of both entrepreneurial and communist economies that would become a worsening financial decline. Then the Chernobyl reactor explosion destroyed his confidence in Soviet technology, followed by the sinking in clear weather of their only luxury cruise ship Adm. Nakhimov. These accidents caused wide spread distrust of incompetent leadership and a growing level of anxiety in his country. Then just before the Reykjavik summit — one more stunning disaster. A critical component of their nuclear deterrent,  a rocket on the  k219 nuclear submarine with 30 nuclear warheads aboard caught fire and the sub sank with a trailing American sub watching the entire debacle.

With all of the Soviet catastrophes in mind, his military advisors told him we really had substantial advances in missile defense, yet his military industrial complex was on the verge of launching a space weapons race. He was convinced his country could not simultaneously compete and also salvage their disintegrating economy.

He was ready to make a deal and Reykjavik was the place to agree to end the arms race, but he could not close the deal with Reagan.  Above everything else he was determined to stop his own military industrial complex from launching their giant  Polyus space laser, and that meant he needed the leverage from persuading Reagan to keep SDI in the laboratory and not in space. He told Reagan after three days of back and forth arguing “It’s the laboratory or goodbye”.  Reagan, with his totally unrealistic confidence in near term SDI deployment, said no deal. The world leaders acting on their own walked away from changing the course of history.

Our own military and our allies breathed a sigh of relief since they were totally committed to a nuclear deterrent based on mutually assured destruction, and at the same time the press argued that Reagan had screwed up.

The deal was off, but their space laser experiment Polyus was not deployed because of a software problem. Negotiations continued in 1987 as both sides realized missile defense was not ready for any sort of deployment, and slowing the arms race was beneficial to both countries. An agreement was reached, by two politically weakening leaders, to eliminate intermediate range missiles. For a few years the Soviet Union continued to implode without our help, and then Gorbachev was removed by a coup, followed by the coup plotters jailed by the new Soviet leader Yeltsin.

Did Star Wars sink the deal? Will Star Wars ever become real? And what about the North Korea’s ICBM?

Robot space laser weapons

On By gyonas9 Comments
Gort_Firing
Gort

Gort was a 1951 sci-fi movie robot armed with devastating laser weapons…. now a not too distant future reality. The movie was about an alien visitor who came to earth to save the global population from self-destruction using its newly developed nuclear weapons. The spread of nuclear weapons has become a frightening reality long before an alien visit or the development of laser weapons, but after many decades, high power laser weapons are now on the procurement lists of many global militaries (see https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2017-04-laser-weapons-edge-military.amp.) In the movie, “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” Gort, the robot, was totally controlled by the command “klaatu baruda nikto,” the control of space based lasers will be a lot more complex. Systems of military systems in an escalating scenario of increasing violence is likely to be chaotic with a totally unpredictable outcome. Is it possible for us to look to technology for some way out of this mess?

A space-based defense consisting of a constellation of high power lasers that could zap any booster to a frazzle in a matter of seconds is certainly an exciting option. Decades ago the dream of such technology was too far off for us, but the Soviets took this very seriously and developed and began to test their own giant space-based laser called Polyus.

Polyus
Polyus on Energia

On their first test in 1987, it failed to deploy and now sleeps with the fishes on the bottom of the Pacific. Nevertheless, the technology did result in the deployment of an aircraft based anti-satellite weapon (“China and Russia Advancing Anti Satellite Weapons, US Intel Chief Says”…Space.com, May, 2017.) Then the United States Air Force decided to develop their own powerful 747 based chemical laser called the Airborne Laser or ABL. After racking up a bill of $5 billion over 20 years, the ABL now rests peacefully in the Air Force bone yard in Arizona.

So what are the near term options for missile defense? We could rapidly deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea. Defense against long range missiles was discussed in my second blog post.  As long as the attackers don’t employ complex countermeasures, another possible solution would be our Ground Based Mid-Course defense (GMD), which has recently demonstrated its effectiveness.

The dream of instantaneous space-based defense affords an attractive option for the future, but only if precision strike is accompanied by precision decisions. More than likely this would require autonomous command and control.

A much more desirable approach to missile defense would be to come to an agreement as proposed by President Reagan to Gorbachev at Reykjavik in 1986. Unfortunately, even though they came very close to agreement on abolishing all nukes, their negotiations broke down because of a lack of understanding and trust (as described in my soon-to-be-published book, “Death Rays and Delusions.”) It seems now that trust with North Korea is in even shorter supply, and the outcome of this rapidly changing scenario is very uncertain.

As the great American philosopher Woody Allen once put it, “”More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

OK Corral

North Korean ICBM test raises specter of escalating instability

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The shoot out at the OK Corral
An artist’s rendering of the shoot-out at the OK Corral

In my last post, I described a disturbing possible future involving a space version of the shoot-out at the OK Corral. The instability of the situation could be driven by speed of light weapons and swarms of small missiles ready to fire at each other. Obviously the quick draw and precise aim could win the day. With the recent realization of the North Korean development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (see https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/world/asia/north-korea-ballistic-missile.html), the possibility of a preemptive terrestrial strike to disarm the missiles before a launch, is being considered. Thus, the instability of a shoot-out is even closer to becoming a reality than anyone could have imagined.

missile test
A long-range ground-based interceptor missile launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The North Korean threat is undoubtedly an exaggeration right now, since delivering a payload to a long range target area is only part of the technical challenge. Successfully surviving the stresses of reentry into the atmosphere, and then precisely detonation the weapon are formidable problems, but North Korea is making rapid progress, probably with assistance from others.  So it is necessary that we get even more serious about missile defense. Unfortunately, we have already spent almost $200 billion during the last thirty years, and there is no guarantee even with enormous increases that we can ever have 100% protection against missile attack. I used to say there is no 100% guarantee in any complex system. There is no way to test a defensive system under a totally realistic war scenario. An actual missile strike could be preceded by deceptive tactics, conventional ground and cyber-attacks that would cloud rapid decision making with the thick fog of war.

I’ll discuss America’s missile defense options further in my next post and you can learn more about strategic defense in my soon-to-be-published book “Death Rays and Delusions.”

ground based laser

Advancements in ground based lasers could lead to space war

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“Cloudy Day Could Sink Star Wars, Scientist Cautions”

CloudsThis “fake news” headline appeared on a May 1985 article in the Los Angeles Times: http://articles.latimes.com/1985-05-28/news/mn-16287_1_star-wars. I was the scientist in the article responding to a reporter’s question about the ground based laser (GBL). At the time, using the GBL was our leading approach to energizing space mirrors to destroy attacking boosters. After seeing the negative article, the Secretary of Defense was not too pleased with my public relations gaff and I did not have time to get into the “I shoulda, coulda said” before he contacted the press to undo the damage that my remarks had caused.

Weinberger told the news media that the SDI had already bounced a GBL beam off ground based space wara mirror on the space shuttle, so I was not to be believed. Well, technically he was correct about what we did, but he neglected to say that our laser was on top of a cloud free mountain. So the real story should have mentioned that several laser locations would be needed in high altitude relatively cloud free areas, like in Arizona, or even a more futuristic concept would require a high power laser on an aircraft, which is not unrealistic in the near future. But these recent advancements in the GBL could pose a problem. What if the GBL, whose technical basis has advanced rapidly, is used by a future adversary to attack our defense satellites as the first or second step of an escalating global conflict?

Possibly such an attack would begin with a stealthy cyber attack against our satellite ground stations, communication links, and command structures. Once the fog of war is upon us, the lasers could then be used to dazzle, blind, disrupt, or even damage our defensive satellites used for detection and location of launches, and tracking of the threat cloud including a myriad of decoys, It is also realistic that enemy constellations of swarms of small missiles and directed energy weapons could be deployed in space even before we get there. This scenario sounds a bit like gunfight at the Space OK Corral. If attacked, do we dodge the bullets, or quick draw and shoot first. The space war could escalate in minutes and the outcome is likely to be chaotic at best. We might wish that the worst we have to deal with is a cloudy day.

Learn more about laser-based missile defense systems in my book Death Rays and Delusions, which will be available soon.