Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

thedrive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 292 posts

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#81

Post by WFHRenaissance »

mrtnmcc wrote: post #52
pvarangot wrote: post #28

This is propaganda, the US is the only military with operational space drones and space planes. They have the technology and enough budget to defend military and commercial satellites and just looking for political support to actually do so. The CCP military may be ahead in number of rockets but the US is way ahead in number of spy satellites by a far margin and can also commission civilian capabilities for this.

Joe at The Drive has been writing a ton of Space Force propaganda articles lately. The Defense Budget is getting debated now and this "news" really does seem aimed at Congress. Space Force and SDA want to fund their constellation of hypersonic reentry vehicles based on the SpaceX Starlink platform [1,2,3]. It would provide instant kill capability around the world. China is the justification for this massive buildup o…

I've often wondered whether this article was DOD fundraising propaganda: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones...

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#82

Post by tzs »

pvarangot wrote: post #28

This is propaganda, the US is the only military with operational space drones and space planes. They have the technology and enough budget to defend military and commercial satellites and just looking for political support to actually do so. The CCP military may be ahead in number of rockets but the US is way ahead in number of spy satellites by a far margin and can also commission civilian capabilities for this.

> This is propaganda, the US is the only military with operational space drones and space planes.

The article is mostly about ground-based attacks, which pretty much everyone can do.

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#83

Post by dragontamer »

nine_k wrote: post #78
FredPret wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space rendezvous is really hard. Easier to get line-of-sight and then beam attack it

Hitting is easier of course! The idea is to disable a satellite in a nicest possible way, in order to look good in the eyes of everyone but the adversary.

A laser-beam attack is when you shine a laser into the satellite's lenses, meaning its blind for the duration of the laser-beam.

As such, you can disable an opponent's satellite without destroying it. It just doesn't work for the duration of the laser-beam attack.

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#85

Post by pvarangot »

tzs wrote: post #82
pvarangot wrote: post #28

This is propaganda, the US is the only military with operational space drones and space planes. They have the technology and enough budget to defend military and commercial satellites and just looking for political support to actually do so. The CCP military may be ahead in number of rockets but the US is way ahead in number of spy satellites by a far margin and can also commission civilian capabilities for this.

> This is propaganda, the US is the only military with operational space drones and space planes. The article is mostly about ground-based attacks, which pretty much everyone can do.

Nope, only two or maybe three organizations in the world can do that. It's not just firing a rocket if you want to hit a car sized target that's 400km away and moving at 7km/s, you need satellite navigation and global radar coverage to even try it and you are getting cut from that infrastructure way before you reach your target if you perform an unannounced launch that even looks remotely like an orbital attack.

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#86

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

pvarangot wrote: post #85
tzs wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is propaganda, the US is the only military with operational space drones and space planes. The article is mostly about ground-based attacks, which pretty much everyone can do.

Nope, only two or maybe three organizations in the world can do that. It's not just firing a rocket if you want to hit a car sized target that's 400km away and moving at 7km/s, you need satellite navigation and global radar coverage to even try it and you are getting cut from that infrastructure way before you reach your target if you perform an unannounced launch that even looks remotely like an orbital attack.

The article we are discussing is about laser and EM attacks. Anyone with a software defined radio, a directional antenna, and some skillz can mount ground-based EM hacking attempts on satellites, and there are many academic astronomical facilities with artificial star lasers which could pull off attacks to disable the imagers of spy satellites. (Note that individuals don't because this is the sort of thing that gets spooks knocking at your door.)

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#88

Post by ceejayoz »

YeBanKo wrote: post #75
jand wrote: post #43

This article presents some thoughts on how, if and when the US should or could strike (back) in space after summarizing the alleged current space combat capability developments of other nations. You can easily replace "US" with other nations and the target audience with their citizens and allies. By this logic, every nation needs to ramp up space combat capabilities, because their perceived or real enemies could also…

> By this logic, every nation needs to ramp up space combat capabilities, because their perceived or real enemies could also do so. It is a typical arm race. It going on for other types of warfare at the moment, now there is another dimension. Regarding Petrov, I think there were more than one such cases. I remember reading about a similar case on the US side, afaik the operator that decided against pulling the trigg…

> This seems benign compared to nuclear though, as mutual strikes don’t lead to mutual destruction.

Not necessarily. A core component of the nuclear deterrent is the satellites that detect launches from Russia/China/etc. If someone took a bunch of those out, the fingers on the nuclear button would be significantly twitchier than usual.

Re: U.S. satellites are being attacked every day according to Space Force general

#90

Post by iends »

justicezyx wrote: post #55
fallingknife wrote: post #12

> There may come a point where we demonstrate some of our capabilities so that our adversaries understand they cannot deny us the use of space without consequence Obviously that time has come if they are attacking our satellites. Why is everyone in the US government so afraid to stand up to China?

I am starting to feel weird about this mentality, I.e.: If someone is capable of attacking us, they are most likely already planning to attack us, and we must plan to attack "first". (Implied in "stand-up to China, as if US were already being put down...) I mean, I was born and raised in China, CCP does not manage to install such mentality into adult Chinese. I never see anyone who say "we have to prepare to strike f…

Everybody is preparing to attack everybody first strike or otherwise. The militaries jobs are to plan out attacks and contingencies.

I don’t think the average American is having this drilled into them as you suggest, but there are certainly military planners in the USA whose job it is to think about such things.

China works the same way.

Post reply on HN