General: Space Capability Integral to All Military Operations

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2012 — Space capa­bil­i­ties have become inte­gral to all mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, the com­man­der of Air Force Space Com­mand told reporters here dur­ing a Defense Writ­ers Group break­fast yes­ter­day.

“It’s hard to imag­ine what life was like before we had … GPS pro­vid­ing very accu­rate tar­get­ing capa­bil­i­ty, mil­i­tary satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­vid­ing all the reach-back that’s need­ed, [and] mis­sile warn­ing pro­vid­ing cov­er for our deployed forces,” Air Force Gen. William L. Shel­ton said. 

The Air Force launched and main­tains the 24 satel­lites that make up the GPS nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem. The all-weath­er, 24-hour sys­tem was intend­ed for mil­i­tary use, but in 1983 Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan made it freely avail­able to civil­ians, for the pub­lic good, after a Kore­an Air Lines flight car­ry­ing 269 peo­ple was shot down for stray­ing into Sovi­et airspace. 

The first GPS satel­lite was launched in 1989, and the 24th in 1994. In 2000, Con­gress autho­rized a mod­ern­iza­tion effort called GPS-III that will improve posi­tion, nav­i­ga­tion and tim­ing ser­vices and add advanced anti-jam capa­bil­i­ties to the constellation. 

“The biggest con­cern is that GPS’s sig­nal is a very weak [one],” Shel­ton said. “It’s a spread-spec­trum sig­nal, and it is not dif­fi­cult to jam. … In fact, you can buy [a GPS jam­mer] online, and we’re start­ing to see even crim­i­nal ele­ments use GPS jam­ming to cov­er their tracks. The game afoot here is to con­tin­ue to dri­ve a no-kid­ding adver­sary to high­er pow­ers of their jam­mers. Once you get to a sig­nif­i­cant pow­er lev­el, those are called targets.” 

The Air Force is crank­ing up pow­er on the satel­lites to force adver­saries to use high­er-pow­er jam­mers that can then be found and tar­get­ed, Shel­ton said. 

“One of the design fea­tures of GPS-III is high­er pow­er,” Shel­ton said, “and we also can do some things with anten­na tech­nol­o­gy and the way we oper­ate our plat­forms to pro­tect our­selves from jamming.” 

For the Air Force satel­lite effort, space launch — get­ting satel­lites from Earth to orbit — is tru­ly foun­da­tion­al, Shel­ton said. In 2011, the Defense Depart­ment and intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty suc­ceed­ed in all 49 attempts to launch evolved expend­able launch vehi­cles, or EELVs, that car­ried satel­lites into orbit. 

The Air Force EELV pro­gram, replac­ing the exist­ing launch fleet with two fam­i­lies of vehi­cles that use com­mon com­po­nents and infra­struc­ture, seeks to make space launch more reli­able and afford­able, the gen­er­al explained. 

Unit­ed Launch Alliance, which Shel­ton called “the only sup­pli­er of the full gamut of launch capa­bil­i­ties,” now han­dles space launch­es for the Defense Depart­ment, NASA, and the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty — includ­ing the Nation­al Recon­nais­sance Office, the gov­ern­ment agency that designs, builds, launch­es and main­tains U.S. intel­li­gence satellites. 

ULA, formed in 2006, is a joint ven­ture by Lock­heed Mar­tin and the Boe­ing Co. that uses Atlas V and Delta II and Delta IV launch vehi­cles to sup­port strate­gic U.S. space initiatives. 

“We are very proud of our suc­cess record in the launch busi­ness, unprece­dent­ed in the his­to­ry of space flight, … but at the same time, with costs spi­ral­ing like they are, we have to take action to reduce the cost,” Shel­ton said. 

One action, he said, is to ask ULA to come in with priced options for boost­er cores, or rock­et stages, over three to five years. “Some­where in there,” the gen­er­al added, “we believe there will be a sweet spot for us.” 

The oth­er action, Shel­ton said, is to use com­mer­cial ser­vices when­ev­er pos­si­ble, cit­ing mil­i­tary use of wide­band com­mu­ni­ca­tions as an example. 

“If all I’m con­cerned about is vol­umes of data mov­ing around in space and ulti­mate­ly down on the ground, com­mer­cial space knows how to do that very well and very eco­nom­i­cal­ly,” he explained. “If you look at the band­width com­ing back from Afghanistan, some­where in the 70 per­cent to 80 per­cent range is com­mer­cial satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions. We’ve already proven in war­fare that we can rely on com­mer­cial satel­lite communication.” 

But the ser­vices must be assured of world­wide capa­bil­i­ty, the gen­er­al said. 

“If you tell me where I’m going to fight, it’s easy,” Shel­ton said. “But if I have to pro­tect the capa­bil­i­ty to fight any­where, any time, can I do it com­mer­cial­ly, or do I have to have a ded­i­cat­ed mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ty to do that? Those are all the kinds of things we are explor­ing with the com­mer­cial community.” 

Using com­mer­cial space launch ser­vices for nation­al secu­ri­ty satel­lite launch­es is not an option today, he said, because the capa­bil­i­ty does­n’t yet exist in the com­mer­cial world. 

“A nation­al secu­ri­ty pay­load on top of a com­mer­cial asset has to be a proven capa­bil­i­ty,” Shel­ton said. “When you’re talk­ing $1 bil­lion for a satel­lite, as well as the nation­al secu­ri­ty capa­bil­i­ty that satel­lite rep­re­sents, as well as how long it would take you to get replace­ment capa­bil­i­ty for that, you just don’t want to take the risk.” 

Two U.S. com­mer­cial space com­pa­nies, Orbital Sci­ences Corp. and Space Explo­ration Tech­nolo­gies Corp., have the poten­tial to launch nation­al secu­ri­ty assets. 

Orbital, based in Vir­ginia, has deliv­ered or had under con­tract 1,000 satel­lites, launch vehi­cles and oth­er space-relat­ed sys­tems since 1982. The com­pa­ny says it pro­vides full-ser­vice engi­neer­ing, pro­duc­tion and tech­ni­cal ser­vices for NASA, DOD and com­mer­cial and aca­d­e­m­ic space pro­grams, and is sup­ply­ing com­mer­cial car­go resup­ply ser­vices for the Inter­na­tion­al Space Station. 

SpaceX, estab­lished in 2002, reports that it has devel­oped two new launch vehi­cles; has a man­i­fest for light, medi­um and heavy-lift space launch­es into 2017; and has received com­mer­cial off-the-shelf fund­ing from NASA to demon­strate deliv­ery and return of car­go to the space station. 

Shel­ton said the Air Force dis­trib­uted a step-by-step guide to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for nation­al secu­ri­ty launch­es in Octo­ber. Com­mer­cial com­pa­nies, he said, “just need to give us ade­quate insight to [their his­to­ry of] com­mer­cial mis­sions so we can assure our­selves that no cor­ners were cut, that we under­stand their process, the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the com­po­nents [and] their capabilities.” 

“Once they’ve proven that with a num­ber of mis­sions,” he added, “they’ll be ready to go.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →