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Mods, this is my 2nd post in thread, please let me know if this topic isn’t suitable for CW Roundup.
Relevant to the aerospace and defense industry is an executive order (or action?) signed on the 27th by Trump ‘The Iron Dome for America’. We should know far more soon as the order asks the Sec of Def to submit a reference architecture within 60 days. I won’t do an exhaustive run through of each of its key points but Sec. 3 Implementation holds some interesting demands.
a(ii) Acceleration of the deployment of the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor layer; My guess is that if this is a space based layer they will go with a standard ground observation LEO shell.
a(iii) Development and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors capable of boost-phase intercept; Space-based boost-phase interceptors? What does that even look like? These are again likely based on a platform deployed in LEO, which upon detection de-orbits in a manner which can intercept a missile in its boost phase. I will not beat around the bush this is a very hard problem to solve. And at the same time you likely need tens if not hundreds of the platforms to get good ground coverage.
aaa(viii) Development and deployment of non-kinetic capabilities to augment the kinetic defeat of ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks; Keywords ‘non-kinetic capabilities’, now this could mean EM (read jamming) but I seriously would not be surprised if a directed energy weapon was considered. It is not as far fetched as one may think. Note here this would also full-fill the boost-stage intercept requirement, however the a satellite with such a laser would likely have a huge power requirement.
This is my first real go round for following in-depth a defense project from the very beginning of implementation, where it goes from here I can’t say, but if 1/10 of the requested assets go into production there is going a huge market boost for contract winners and industry as a whole. And both the hard and soft geopolitical implications of such a program will be interesting to see shake out.
TLDR: The White House wants project Star Wars 2.0, kinetic fires and possibly lasers in space. If successful the true age of militarisation of space will have begun.
How is this even physically possible? What do you do against nuclear powered cruise missiles that can come in at low altitude and high speed flying nap of the earth? What do you do about nuclear powered torpedoes? Nukes detonating in space to blind your sensors and ECM your space-based interceptors? Decoy spam?
Missile defence does not work in the broad sense of 'we can shield our cities against missiles'. At most you can raise the cost of missile attack, defend some military targets against conventional attacks and deny much weaker opponents. See how Iran fired a couple of moderately small volleys and broke through Israeli-American air and missile defences that must've cost vastly more than the attacking force. Yemen (not usually considered a major power) can pierce Israeli air defences from time to time with fairly unsophisticated drones and missiles. Patriots have not shielded Ukraine from missile attacks. Russian missile defence lets things through too, it doesn't fully work like it would need to for 'defend its citizens and critical infrastructure against any foreign aerial attack'.
Mass is always a good countermeasure. Big rockets with MIRV and decoys aren't cheap but they're not very complicated to produce technologically. The Soviets churned out thousands of launchers. Warheads are cheap and only a few hundred need to get through to wreck even a big country like the US.
Unlike last time, the opponents are Russia AND China, who now possesses the largest industrial base on the planet. The US retains a significant lead in space thanks to SpaceX but it's not just space launch that matters. It's the full range of sensors, PGMs, hypersonics (where the US is behind) and mass. It's an inherently uphill battle against tough opponents with lots of tricks they can play.
From another angle, the Sentinel ICBM program is falling behind schedule and costs are ballooning. The Columbia-class missile submarines are eating up too much dockyard capacity and skilled labour. NGAD seems to have become a complete shambles, transforming from one to three aircraft last I heard. Does the US really need an even more ridiculously expensive aerospace program right now?
And the reward for finally pulling ahead (or even seeming to pull ahead) in this missile-defence game might just be a pre-emptive war before you can finish your defences and escape mutually assured destruction!
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I think it is highly probable such programs are already well underway in secret. Certainly it makes little sense for Russia to sink so much money and effort into building its new generation nuclear weapons and delivery systems (that are very obviously meant to be a counter to a missile shield) unless they think there is serious potential the United States might actually realize it. And this work has been going on for a while now, such that they've even been able to test some of them against Ukraine (the new hypersonic ballistic missiles)
Very much agree. What, I wonder, have the two examples of the X-37 done in their cumulative decade in space?
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America already has an Iron Dome, it's called the Atlantic & Pacific oceans. Any nation that has the resources to drop a missile on the American mainland is already budgeting for nuclear war. At that point, we're looking at a bad actor who wants the apocalyptic scenario. No Iron Dome is going to stop a player that powerful, motivated and off-their-rocker.
The paranoia is reminiscent of cold war era nuclear arms race. There is reason we stopped proliferating.
It aligns Elon's and Lock-heed Martin's joint interests. With a double whammy that powerful, I bet it goes through.
To indulge in a little bit of schizo-posting (steelmanning?) - there are (para)military forces in North America within rocket/mortar range of major US cities which the President has made his desire to attack militarily very clear. The Cartels. Now do I think the Sinaloas are going to start lobbing mortars at El Paso? Not really no. But if we're talking about things that an Iron Dome, not just Star Wars II, could theoretically protect against, well...
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Don't forget Canada! Maybe it's time to rebuild the Distant Early Warning Line of radar bases.
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I wonder if it would look like a modified AMRAAM with a LEAP [Lightweight Exo-Atmosphereic Projectile] kinetic interceptor (in fact I discovered while writing this that work was already done in 2008 on using an AMRAAM derivative as a boost-phase ballistic-missile interceptor). The AMRAAM weighs about 350 pounds, which makes it lighter than e.g. the original 500-pound Starlink satellite (current Starlink satellites are clocking in at almost 3,000 pounds, it looks like). I'm not sure you'd need anything in space besides the interceptor itself, so even if we assume an extra 150 pounds for comic radiation shielding you're looking at a smallsat sized package. (Incidentally, the AMRAAM has a 44 pound warhead, which should be plenty of mass to house the LEAP interceptor).
Of course Brilliant Pebbles interceptors as designed were apparently only about 3 feet long and it looks like there was at least some talk about making them, say, as small as 5 pounds plus fuel, so maybe a clean-sheet design would be a much better idea here – even 200-pound interceptors would have a significant advantage over a 350 pound AMRAAM-sized one.
Is it? I mean, yes, it is, but what I really mean is – is it harder than midcourse and especially terminal interceptions? Because we already prepare to carry those out.
It looks like Brilliant Pebbles contemplated 7,000 to, uh, 100,000 during maximalist conceptions. These numbers aren't insane if you consider that Starlink has put about 7,000 satellites – all probably heavier than a Pebbles interceptor – in orbit in about five years. Supposing you're able to put four "pebbles" in orbit for each Starlink satellite and you launch at a similar rate, you're looking at, let's say, 4,000/year – so you reach limited usefulness in the first year of operation, but it still takes 25 years to build "complete coverage" at that rate (longer if we consider that the service life of the interceptors might not be 25 years!) If we can get 10 pebbles in orbit for each Starlink satellite, now you're looking at full deployment of 100,000 in ten years, or five years if 20 pebbles-per-Starlink, etc.
Something that I think has escaped many geopolitical observers is that the United States has assiduously maintained the "high ground" – in this case, an orbital high ground – in anticipation of a future conflict. We can absolutely outcompete the rest of the world in getting stuff to orbit. Part of what has me interested in the utility of such a system (and hoping that you write more on it as you track it) obviously it is potentially amazing if it works, potentially rendering ICBM threats toothless. But it seems to me that any satellite is a potential target for surface fires, and there are lots of other ways to deliver WMDs, so I am not sure it's worth it, particularly in a maximal way.
It's all bunk because intercepting salvos of maneuvering hypersonic missiles is really, really hard. So while thing will result deterrents moving to something else..
Additionally, it's pretty destabilizing.
Well part of the benefit of intercepting them in the boost phase is that they aren't hypersonic yet. I don't think they are typically "maneuvering" either (at least, to defeat interceptors, although that's probably not hard to add in).
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One immediately thinks of ASM-135 but that's ancient at this point, I'm sure they've made lots of classified progress since. Although I'm just now learning that the US banned air-to-space missile testing as recently as 2022, maybe they finally had something that didn't require further testing?
The last time I looked into this was back in 2008 when they shot down USA-193 with a modified anti-ship missile. It doesn't seem that difficult to imagine that USSF has some plausibly deniable interceptors up there right now.
I do wonder if the recent advances in cruise missiles make all these ballistic shenanigans moot though.
My understanding is that there isn't much distinction between mid-course anti-ballistic-missile weapons, which the US has several advertised systems for (such as that used for USA-193) and targeting LEO satellites, which are at comparable altitudes, if somewhat higher velocities.
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The SM-3 isn't really an anti-ship missile - it is basically purpose-built as an anti-ballistic missile. I wouldn't be surprised if it has an anti-ship mode, but that's been a secondary role for all of the Standards.
I think Space Force has some non-kinetic ASAT weapons, plus I assume the SM-3s have some ASAT capability, but also there's the X-37 which I think could easily host an anti-satellite weapon.
An interesting question, particularly now that long-range maneuvering hypersonic missiles seem to be in play. Russia, of course, has already preempted an anti-ballistic-missile shield by making an intercontinental nuclear torpedo, which is honestly very cool in a "James Bond villain superweapon" sort of way.
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Cool stuff; please keep us posted.
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Already started years ago.
Even aside from last year's claims that Russia intent to put a totally-not-a-nuke nuclear device in orbit for anti-satellite EMP, the premise of 'move your satellite to crash into the other satellite,' i.e. kinetic, has been in play for some time. Just earlier this month the Chinese put out a 'look at we can do' study of how 99 Chinese satellites could 'approach' 1,400 starlink satellites in 12 hours.
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