Pentagon Has Defense Spacecraft in Works

[RPankn]

Pentagon Has Far-Reaching Defense Spacecraft in Works

Bush Administration Looking to Space to Fight Threats

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 16, 2005; Page A03

The Pentagon is working to develop a suborbital space capsule within the next five years that would be launched from the United States and could deliver conventional weapons anywhere in the world within two hours, defense officials said.

This year, the Falcon program will test a launcher for its Common Aero Vehicle (CAV), an unmanned maneuverable spacecraft that would travel at five times the speed of sound and could carry 1,000 pounds of munitions, intelligence sensors or other payloads. Among the system's strengths is that commanders could order a CAV -- an unpowered glide vehicle -- not to release its payload if they decided not to follow through with an attack.

The first-generation CAV, expected to be ready by 2010, will have "an incredible capability to provide the warfighter with a global reach capability against high payoff targets," Gen. Lance W. Lord, commander of Air Force Space Command, told the House Armed Services Committee last Wednesday.

Within the next three years, the Falcon program hopes to enter a second stage of the effort: flight-testing two versions of a reusable hypersonic cruise vehicle, sometimes referred to as a space plane, that could travel a suborbital path, about 100,000 feet high, carrying a CAV anywhere in the world. Unlike a missile, the vehicle could return to its base after releasing the CAV to deliver bombs or intelligence sensors.

The Falcon program vehicles "will improve the military's ability to quickly position intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance payloads, while reducing its reliance on forward and foreign basing," Anthony J. "Tony" Tether, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee last week.

While most public attention today focuses on meeting threats abroad with traditional land, sea and air forces, the Falcon program reflects how the Bush administration is increasingly looking to space to meet dangers it anticipates.

The use of space "enables us to project power anywhere in the world from secure bases of operation," says the Pentagon's national defense strategy, which Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed on March 1. Among the key goals in the strategy paper are "to ensure our access to and use of space and to deny hostile exploitation of space to adversaries." The strategy paper, done every four years, provides the policy basis on which the armed services plan their research, development and acquisitions of weapons systems. This year's strategy, Rumsfeld wrote, "emphasizes the importance of influencing events before challenges become more dangerous and less manageable."

In congressional appearances over two weeks, Lord, Tether and other senior Pentagon officials have described a variety of new space initiatives for meeting challenges such as updating intelligence and communications satellite programs and even fielding systems that would allow the United States to temporarily silence enemy satellites if the need arose.

Space communications have already become important to U.S. warfighting. As Lord put it, "Our most recent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq prove our nation relies on capabilities coming from and through space more than ever before." For example, more than 60 percent of all communications at the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom came through satellites, which also guided munitions to targets and today transmit intelligence from the United States directly to troops fighting in the field.

Looking to the future, the defense strategy calls for the use of space vehicles that provide capabilities beyond the current intercontinental missiles to thwart any future adversaries that move to prevent U.S. use of land or sea bases.

Such abilities, Lord told the House members, are dubbed "prompt global strike" and represent "a top priority for our space and missile forces." Because CAVs, unlike missiles, can be recalled, they could be launched toward a potential target even before a final decision was made to attack. The system could, Lord said, "deliver a conventional payload precisely on target within minutes of a valid command and control release order."

The capability offered by CAV would also reduce the need for overseas bases and enable the United States "to react promptly and decisively to destabilizing or threatening actions by hostile countries and terrorist organizations," according to DARPA's early solicitation for bids put out in mid-2003.

John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a nongovernmental defense think tank, said yesterday that the Falcon and CAV programs will allow the United States "to crush someone anywhere in world on 30 minutes' notice with no need for a nearby air base."

In addition to creating attack weapons, the Pentagon is working on new defense systems to protect the ever-more-important satellites the United States has in space.

"I think everybody that I know in the United States military and the Department of Defense understands the important role that our space assets play in our national security," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee last Thursday.

Last October, the Pentagon announced deployment of its first mobile ground-based system that could temporarily disrupt satellite-based communications from an enemy satellite. The counter-communications system uses powerful electromagnetic radio frequency energy to silence transmissions from a satellite in a way that is reversible if the need passes. Two more units are due later this year.


www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38272-2005Mar15.html

[Moses]

Holy Sh*t. Pincus just typed up a slick PR brochure for a dangerous and illegal weaponization of space.

Where in the budget is this activity? Aren't there treaties that might be violated? Proliferation concerns?

And what about the possibility of their knocking out broadcast communications satelites so that they control world-wide media?

Since they have established the pre-emptive strike as justifiable, I hardly think the word "defense" applies. Is Pincus trying to look like an anachronism?

[Moses]

Note how Pincus smoothed out the military-speak for us:

Near-Space Programs To Provide Persistent Space Capability

The driving force behind the exploration of near space programs is combatant commander feedback on space capabilities. In theater, combatant commanders say space capabilities need to be more tailored and responsive to meet their needs.

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i-Newswire, 2005-03-15 - As Air Force Space Command furthers its utilization of the high frontier it's looking for persistence that doesn't have to reside quite so far out of this world. The command is focusing on developing programs that will operate in the near space region, which is located between 65,000 and 325,000 feet.
The driving force behind the exploration of near space programs is combatant commander feedback on space capabilities. In theater, combatant commanders say space capabilities need to be more tailored and responsive to meet their needs. In response, Chief of Staff, Gen. John Jumper directed AFSPC to start looking at Joint Warfighter Space initiatives, including near space projects.
The CSAF assigned AFSPC the responsibility for executing all tactical and operational responsive space capabilities through the space and the near-space mediums.

CSAF stated that: "JWS takes the next step in transforming capabilities by operationalizing space directly to the benefit of the warfighter with an agile, responsive, commander-oriented, combat space vision focused primarily at the tactical and operational levels of war, but able to integrate with the ( National Security Space ) architecture."

This initiative requires space warfighters to integrate space-based capabilities in the tactical and operational levels of war in direct support of the Joint Force Commander.

The command anticipates meeting this near-term need with responsive near-space platforms operating communication and Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance payloads. Air Force Space Command will take immediate action to create warfighting capabilities that improve effects and situation awareness on today's battlefield.

"With our current space capabilities, it's not that the information isn't available; it's just that relevant Battlespace Awareness doesn't always reach our forces," said Lt. Col. Ed Herlik, an IMA with the Air Force Space Command Joint Warfighter Space division. "With near space, we believe we can provide persistence, payload and deterrence."

An in-theater example sighted by combatant commanders is that blue forces on the ground using line of sight radio communications are limited to a footprint approximately five to seven nautical miles.

One of the near space projects currently in the demonstration phase uses communication relay to extend the range of those radios out to nearly 300 nautical miles.

The capability would have a wide range of applications, such as close air support. Today, during close air support missions, the Joint Tactical Air Controller currently transmits information, from a ground radio, which may then be funneled through other aircraft before it reaches the strike aircraft.

The demonstrated near space capabilities can provide communication relay, allowing the JTAC to give the briefing to the aircraft well over the horizon, decreasing the time the aircraft would have been in range of enemy fire.

"[Near space capability] will provide dedicated communication where it's currently nonexistent," said Lt. Col. Toby Volz, Air Force Space Command chief, Joint Warfighting Space division. "We can provide communication to folks in theater to use when and where it's needed. It's directly in the hands of the warfighter."

Although near space project development has been previously unexplored by the military, civilians have been making use of it for more than a year. Commercially developed platforms have been used in Texas and Oklahoma to provide information on gas and oil sites throughout the states.

"Platform operations in near space can give space-like effects without a lot of the space disadvantages," said Lt. Col. Ed Tomme, deputy director, Air Force Tactical Exploitation of National Capabilities.

Some of those disadvantages are that low earth orbiting systems can't loiter above one spot and satellite programs are expensive and generally have a long lead time before capabilities are realized.

"Near space items in the future will be able to provide persistence for days, weeks and even months," added Colonel Tomme.
The near space projects discussed above are being developed and tested by members of the Space Warfare Center's Battlelab and Air Force TENCAP, both located at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo.

"The Space Warfare Center is uniquely suited for developing initial capabilities for near space because they can take concepts close to being ready and get them out to the warfighter quickly," said Colonel Tomme.

The command plans to continue demonstrations throughout the year. The final proof of concept demonstration flight of a free-floating, tactical communication relay is scheduled for March 16-18. Follow-on demonstrations with more sophisticated platforms and payloads will continue throughout the year.

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Press Release Date
2005-03-15


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[Moses]

Next big Usraeli-sponsored consolidation?

A centralized government organization focused on space access could provide an institutional memory needed to avoid repeating failures like the X-33. (credit: NASA)

Time for a space access organization?

by Taylor Dinerman
Monday, March 14, 2005

Before Ronald Reagan gave his famous March 1983 “Star Wars” speech, the Pentagon already had a number of missile defense projects underway, but they were scatted through the military. Some were in the Army, some were in the Air Force, and a few visionaries were actually in the Navy. Sensors were mostly under the control of NORAD, but some were run by the NSA. Reagan and Casper Weinberger set up the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization to bring them all together under one roof.

They were set to work on a number of technology and concept development tasks. Their immediate job was not, as so many critics believe, to produce hardware, but to answer some basic questions. Can this be done? What are the best ways to do it? What technology do we need to develop, in order to do it?[Bull nuts-- they wasted hundreds of billions of dollars knowing it couldn't be done-- at least all the physicists knew-- and still the government contracts were doled out.]

Today, it just might be time to begin thinking about a similar consolidation in the space access or reusable launch vehicle (RLV) area. Inside the Department of Defense, the effort to develop new and low-cost space launch systems, is scattered throughout at least a half dozen organizations and programs: DARPA, the National Aerospace Initiative, Air Force Research Laboratory, Air Force Space Command, Air Force Space and Missile Command in Los Angeles, and others. They are all, to one extent or another, working on the problem, as are a small and shrinking number of people at NASA.

The X-33, in particular, was the sort of traumatic shock that sent a number of good engineers and idealistic politicians of both parties, as well as NASA and corporate bureaucrats, into their shelters.

Bringing all these organizations and people together with the goal of, say, making expendable launch vehicles “impotent and obsolete” is not going to happen soon. The administration’s new space transportation policy has not yet been fully digested by government and industry. The EELV program is still pretty expensive, and the military’s reputation for cost-effective space systems acquisition is in tatters. Fixing these problems, and making sure that the reforms are actually implemented, will be atop the DoD’s space priorities, at least in the near future.

For the moment, the government is putting its major RLV efforts on the back burner. After so many failures this is understandable. The X-33, in particular, was the sort of traumatic shock that sent a number of good engineers and idealistic politicians of both parties, as well as NASA and corporate bureaucrats, into their shelters. While it was obviously more than a bit overambitious, it could have been a gold mine of new technologies and developments. It’s too bad that no one, outside of a brave band of California students, is pursuing aerospike engine development. The lightweight graphite epoxy and aluminum fuel tanks, which were designed after the original tank failure, showed some promise but, since the shutdown of the Next Generation Launch Vehicle program, these efforts, too, have been canceled.

A “Space Access Organization” would, at least, be able to gather all the hard-won data from these canceled programs and maintain a central depository of information and expert knowledge. Sometimes, it seems that launching rockets is as much an art as a science, and all too often the “art” of rocketry is lost, even if the hard data is preserved. Our national bad habit of starting and stopping highly challenging technology projects is becoming just too wasteful, even for a rich nation such as the US.

It will take a monumental effort to gather and assess what RLV information is available, and without a previously established knowledge base, it will be easy for the decision makers of the future to slip back into the wishful thinking that produced the X-33.

Meanwhile, of a number of small companies, the so-called entrepreneurial sector—which not only includes the Scaled Composites/Virgin Galactic venture, but also SpaceX and Kistler Aerospace (which seems to be emerging from bankruptcy) as well as smaller outfits like SpaceDev, TGV Rockets, and XCOR Aerospace—some are getting small sums of government money and others are making do with angel financing or whatever they can raise in the capital markets. If they do produce a suitable RLV before 2015, or thereabouts, the US government should be happy to buy its services. Even if they do not, the government should have some easy way to allow them to sell their expertise to the Air Force and NASA.

Indications are that some time towards the end of this decade, the military will, once again, become interested in RLVs and will be ready to invest a relatively small sum in one or two technology demonstration projects. If things remain as they are, the information needed for DoD’s leaders to make an informed decision will be scattered all over the institution. It will take a monumental effort to gather and assess what is available, and without a previously established knowledge base, it will be easy for the decision makers of the future to slip back into the wishful thinking that produced the X-33.

A Space Access Organization which has, as its principal goal, supporting a future RLV project, would be a small investment but one that would pay for itself, not only by making the long-term project a success but, more importantly, by helping a future Secretary of Defense avoid wasting money on great sounding but unrealistic programs.

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Taylor Dinerman is an author and journalist based in New York City.