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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.
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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