Pentagon says debris from destroyed satellite being monitored, unlikely to cause harm

[thedrifter]

Pentagon says debris from destroyed satellite being monitored, unlikely to cause harm on Earth

By Robert Burns
ASSOCIATED PRESS

10:21 a.m. February 21, 2008

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/images/080221satellite.jpg

U.S. Navy
In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, a single modified tactical Standard Missile-3 launches from the AEGIS cruiser Lake Erie Wednesday.

WASHINGTON – Debris from an obliterated U.S. spy satellite is being tracked over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans but appears to be too small to cause damage on Earth, a senior military officer said Thursday, just hours after a Navy missile scored a direct hit on the failing spacecraft.

Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an expert on military space technologies, told a Pentagon news conference that officials have a “high degree of confidence” that the missile launched from a Navy cruiser Wednesday night hit exactly where intended.

It was an unprecedented mission for the Navy, so extraordinary that the final go-ahead to launch the missile Wednesday was reserved for Defense Secretary Robert Gates rather than a military commander.

Cartwright estimated there was an 80 percent to 90 percent chance that the missile struck the most important target on the satellite – its fuel tank, containing 1,000 pounds of hydrazine, which Pentagon officials say could have posed a health hazard to humans if it had landed in a populated area.


Alluding to a video clip of the missile smashing into the satellite, which he showed at the news conference, Cartwright said, “We have a fireball, and given that there's no fuel (on the tip of the missile), that would indicate that that's a hydrazine fire.”

The video showed the three-stage SM-3 missile launching from the USS Lake Erie at 10:26 p.m. EST, northwest of Hawaii, and of the missile's small “kill vehicle” – a non-explosive device at the tip – maneuvering into the path of the satellite and colliding spectacularly.

He said the satellite and the kill vehicle collided at a combined speed of 22,000 mph about 130 miles above Earth's surface, and that the collision was confirmed at a space operations center at 10:50 p.m. EST.

Asked about the satisfaction felt among those in the military who had organized the shootdown on short notice by modifying missile software and other components, Cartwright smiled widely.

“Yes, this was uncharted territory. The technical degree of difficulty was significant here,” Cartwright said. “You can imagine that at the point of intercept there were a few cheers that went up.”

He cautioned, however, that more technical analysis was required to determine for certain what debris was created and where it might go. The satellite was described as the size of a school bus and weighed about 5,000 pounds.

Unlike most spacecraft that fall out of orbit and re-enter the atmosphere, this satellite had an almost full fuel tank because it lost power and became uncontrollable shortly after it reached its initial orbit in December 2006. Cartwright said the hydrazine alone was justification for undertaking the unprecedented effort to use a Navy missile interceptor to attempt to destroy the satellite in orbit.

Cartwright said experts were still watching the debris fields and he could not yet rule out that hazardous material would fall to Earth. But he said that as of Thursday morning, debris had only been seen in the atmosphere – and none had been detected surviving re-entry. He indicated that debris appeared unlikely to pose a problem.

“Thus far we've seen nothing larger than a football,” he said, referring to debris in the atmosphere spotted by radars and other sensors.

The military concluded that the missile had successfully shattered the satellite because trackers detected a fireball. Cartwright said it was unlikely that the fireball could have been caused by anything other than the hydrazine in the tank.

And Cartwright cited two other sources of information that indicate the fuel tank was hit: the appearance of a vapor cloud and the results of spectral analysis, or the study of light emissions, from devices aboard two aircraft that operate from the Pacific test range associated with the Pentagon's missile defense testing.

Debris from the satellite has started re-entry and will continue through Thursday and into Friday, Cartwright said.

The size of the debris is smaller than the Pentagon had forecast and most of the satellite's intelligence value was likely destroyed, Cartwright said. Analysts had said one of the reasons for the shootdown was that officials worried that without it, larger chunks of the satellite could fall and be recovered, opening the possibility of secret technology falling into the hands of the Chinese or others.

Gates arrived in Hawaii less than two hours before the missile was launched. His press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said Gates had a conference call during his flight with Cartwright and Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of Strategic Command. They told him that “the conditions were ripe for an attempt, and that is when the secretary gave the go-ahead to take the shot, and wished them good luck,” Morrell said.

At 10:35 p.m. EST, Gates spoke to both generals again and “was informed that the mission was a success, that the missile had intercepted the decaying satellite, and the secretary was obviously very pleased to learn that,” said Morrell.

The elaborate intercept may trigger worries from some international leaders, who could see it as a thinly disguised attempt to test an anti-satellite weapon – one that could take out other nations' orbiting communications and spy spacecraft.

Within hours of the reported success, China said it was on the alert for possible harmful fallout from the shootdown and urged Washington to promptly release data on the action.

“China is continuously following closely the possible harm caused by the U.S. action to outer space security and relevant countries,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said at news conference in Beijing. “China requests the U.S. to fulfill its international obligations in real earnest and provide to the international community necessary information and relevant data in a timely and prompt way so that relevant countries can take precautions.”



Associated Press writer Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report from Washington.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Questions linger over U.S. mission to shoot down satellite
By Thom Shanker
Friday, February 22, 2008

WASHINGTON: Videotape of the navy mission to shoot down a dying spy satellite made available Thursday shows an interceptor missile ascending atop a bright trail of burning fuel, and then a flash, a fireball, a plume of vapor. A cloud of debris left little doubt that the missile had squarely hit its mark as the satellite spent its final days orbiting more than 130 miles above the Pacific Ocean.

A different kind of doubt still lingers, though, expressed by policy analysts, some politicians and scientists, and not a few foreign powers, especially China and Russia:

Should the people of the world be breathing a sigh of relief that the risk of a half-ton of frozen, toxic rocket fuel landing who knows where has passed? Or should they be worried about the latest display of the United States' technical prowess, and see it as a thinly veiled test for a shadow antisatellite program?

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who personally gave the order to go ahead with the satellite shootdown Wednesday, told reporters in Hawaii on Thursday that he was prepared to share some details of the operation with China to ease its concerns that the debris might still prove dangerous. Admiral Timothy Keating, the commander of American forces in the Pacific, has reached out to several nations in the region to explain the mission, as well.

Addressing the diplomatic concerns, senior officials dismissed questions raised by the Chinese and the Russians, and echoed by some arms control analysts, about whether the episode was really a test of space weaponry. They pointed out that the missile used in the operation, the navy's SM-3 interceptor, was designed to counter a limited ballistic missile attack and had to be reprogrammed for this unexpected task, the likes of which the authorities are unlikely ever to face again.

In missile defense, an interceptor must find a red-hot enemy warhead as it arcs on a relatively short ballistic path, a task often described as "hitting a bullet with a bullet." This time, the target —much larger then a warhead, almost the size of a school bus —was circling Earth predictably about 16 times a day.

It was still a bit of a long shot. The fuel tank that was the bull's eye was only about 40 inches across.

And although the United States has hit test targets in space before —including a satellite destroyed in 1985 in a demonstration of an antisatellite weapon launched from a fighter jet —the successful demonstrations have been relatively few and far between.

What Wednesday's successful strike in space conclusively proved was not infallibility but a robust and flexible military capability that can be cited by either side in what no doubt will be the ensuing debate.

The mission was conducted from navy warships. So the United States can move this capability at will over three-quarters of the globe.

The missile-defense interceptor was converted to an antisatellite capability in little more than a month. No expensive research and development program. No battles with Congress over money. No starting from scratch on white boards in some laboratory.

This demonstration of military agility has to cause any adversary to pause.

"This was uncharted territory," said General James Cartwright of the Marines, who is vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "The technical degree of difficulty was significant here."

Cartwright noted that important elements of the nation's missile defense system had been used, in particular the sensors.

"That was the key piece that we would take from the missile defense system," he said.

To ready the missile-defense rocket for the mission, he said: "We added a lot of instrumentation. We made some modifications to the software to be able to go after a satellite."

In somewhat theatrical language, the mission was hailed by Riki Ellison, president of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, one of the more energetic groups promoting the development of ballistic missile defenses.

"The factual reality of using deployed missile defenses to destroy a falling satellite or a ballistic missile or even a meteor from space that would risk human life is an achievement for mankind," a statement from the organization said.

Yet, even the successful mission in no way proves that the United States is safe from nuclear attack, or that it can do what it wants in space.

Gates, at the start of a weeklong series of meetings in Asia, said that the debate over whether the United States' missile defense system worked was "behind us" but that issues remained about exactly what types of missile threats the system could be used against.

"The question of whether this capability works has been settled," Gates said in Hawaii after a tour of the destroyer Russell, which participated in the satellite operation. "The question is against what kind of threat, how large a threat, how sophisticated a threat."

The White House and the Pentagon said the hazard posed by the failed National Reconnaissance Office satellite was from its hydrazine fuel. It may be 24 to 48 hours before officials can state with certainty that the fuel tank was punctured and that the hydrazine is no longer a threat.

But Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said, "The geopolitical fallout of this intercept could be far greater than any chemical fallout that would have resulted from the wayward satellite."

Markey said: "The Bush administration's decision to use a missile to destroy the satellite based on a questionable 'safety' justification poses a great danger of signaling an 'open season' for other nations to test weapons for use against our satellites. Russia and China are sure to view this intercept as proof that the United States is already pursuing an arms race in space, and that they need to catch up."

The Chinese warned Thursday that the United States Navy's action could threaten security in outer space. Liu Jianchao, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a news conference in Beijing that the United States should promptly share data about the passage of the remaining pieces of the satellite.

"China is continuously following closely the possible harm caused by the U.S. action to outer space security and relevant countries," Liu said, according to The Associated Press.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

OPINION


Don't Panic About Space Weapons
By ASHLEY J. TELLIS
February 22, 2008; Page A15

On Wednesday night (EST), the U.S. launched a missile and intercepted a dead satellite that would have otherwise uncontrollably re-entered the atmosphere, possibly threatening populated areas with a toxic load of hydrazine fuel. The mission has resurrected fears about the so-called weaponization of space.

The Chinese foreign ministry had earlier admonished Washington "to fulfill its international obligations in earnest and ensure that the security of outer space ... will not be undermined." Barely two days before Washington announced its intention to intercept the satellite, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and China's U.N. representative in Geneva, Li Baodong, introduced a joint draft treaty aimed at banning weapons in space at the Conference on Disarmament.

Mr. Lavrov argued that the treaty was necessary because "weapons deployment in space by one state will inevitably result in . . . a new spiral in the arms race both in space and on the earth."

The introduction of weapons in space would be deleterious to global security. But the treaty unfurled by Messrs. Lavrov and Li would neither effectively prohibit their deployment, nor conclusively annul the threat of force against space objects. It would only produce the illusion of security, while doing nothing to eliminate the counterspace capabilities currently present in many countries, especially China.

The Bush administration is right to reject this treaty, and any successor administration should do so as well. The hard, if unpalatable, truth is that a peaceful space regime cannot be achieved by any feasible arms-control arrangement. The long track record of diplomatic failures, going back to the 1978-79 U.S.-Soviet ASAT negotiations, amply corroborates this judgment.

The biggest deficiency in the Russian-Chinese draft treaty is that it focuses on the wrong threat: weapons in space. There aren't any today, nor are there likely to be any in the immediate future. The threat to space assets is rather from weapons on earth -- the land- and sea-based kinetic, directed-energy and electromagnetic attack systems. The treaty entirely ignores these.

So is the solution to expand the treaty to "cover ground- or sea-based weapons," as the New York Times suggests? Easier said than done. Attacks on space-based systems can be undertaken by a variety of weapons having multiple uses, including satellite launch vehicles, ballistic missiles, surface-to-air missiles, nuclear warheads, high- and low-power lasers, and electronic warfare systems. None of these weapons need have any distinguishing external characteristics if they were to be used for counterspace missions.

In other words, counterspace weapons are impossible to identify by national technical means, or even by intrusive inspections. A treaty-based solution to mitigating space threats will be useless because compliance cannot be verified.

How about the abolition of entire classes of weaponry because of their counterspace potential? While such an outcome would certainly be conducive to both space security and general disarmament, it is unlikely to be contemplated -- even by those states most committed to outlawing weapons in space.

Anticipating this possibility, many arms-control advocates promote another fallback option -- namely, an agreement banning only the use of counterspace weaponry. This solution would not be worth the paper it was written on. Any compact that prohibits the use of weapons against space assets, but does not eliminate their development, production or deployment, would only become a legitimate invitation to breakout.

Even worse, the very first treaty violation itself could prove debilitating and costly for the state that suffered from it. This is why no country, especially the U.S., which relies so heavily on space, ought to be beguiled by such false promises.

Given the problems associated with arms-control solutions to space security, the Bush administration's rejection of the Russian-Chinese initiative is eminently sensible. More curious is why the Russians and Chinese would introduce such a draft treaty. Three hypotheses come immediately to mind.

First, they genuinely fear an imminent American deployment of space weapons -- perhaps in connection with missile defense -- and want a treaty to impede that deployment. If this is the case, Moscow and Beijing should relax. Not only does current U.S. space policy not authorize such a deployment, but the physics and economics of space weaponry are sufficiently unattractive presently to justify any headlong U.S. rush in that direction.

Second, a space security treaty allows Russia and China to engage in some eye-catching histrionics. It enables them to dominate international public diplomacy and paint the U.S. as the irresponsible driver of a new arms race.

Such a strategy has its attractions. The former Soviet Union engaged in such tactics extensively during the Cold War, and Russia has occasionally lapsed into similar temptations while opposing U.S. plans for missile defense in Europe. China seeks to deflect international attention away from the consequences of its own 2007 ASAT test, and its continued opposition to other disarmament initiatives. If that is what's going on, it is all the more imperative for the U.S. not to indulge them.

Third, the Russian-Chinese draft treaty remains a splendid way for Beijing to draw international attention away from its own growing counterspace program -- even as it enables Russia to assuage its own discomfort with China's space-denial capabilities.

This calculus is perfectly understandable. But both states might have helped the cause of space security more effectively if they were to focus on transparency and confidence-building measures, rather than the chimera of weapons in space. By proposing to ban what is, at best, a distant danger, the current draft treaty only ends up promoting a solution that is irrelevant to the real problem.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

February 22, 2008, 0:00 a.m.

On Hitting a Bullet with a Bullet
Missile-defense naysayers were the ones peddling fantasies.

By Mona Charen


The Aegis-class cruiser Lake Erie (“Courage, Determination, Peace” reads her shield) was pitching and rolling in heavy seas west of Hawaii on the night of February 20. Her mission was to shoot down a disabled satellite that was tumbling toward the Earth’s atmosphere. The spy satellite carried a toxic fuel, hydrazine, that might — on the off chance it hit a populated area — have posed considerable health risks. March 1 was the deadline for action: on that date, the bus-sized craft would bounce against the outer reaches of atmosphere, thus sending it into a more erratic orbit. The firing window was only about 30 seconds long. At 10:30 eastern time, the USS Lake Erie was able to fire an SM-3 missile 153 miles into space and score a direct hit on a target that was traveling at 17,000 miles per hour. A fireball and vapor cloud testified to success.

General rejoicing? Not exactly. The Washington Post reports that “Scientists, arms-control advocates and others said the shoot-down was based on questionable modeling by the government of the risks to human health and was a danger to the future peaceful use of space.” Questionable modeling? Aren’t these the same people who argue that we must all abandon our passenger cars because computer modeling suggests the world may be getting a bit warmer? As for arms-control advocates, where were they back in January 2007 when China blew up a satellite that was orbiting the Earth? The Chinese were obviously testing military technology as the weather satellite they destroyed was in no danger of plunging to earth. Further, that satellite was orbiting at an altitude of 537 miles. Its destruction therefore spread debris through space, complicating the orbits of other satellites. But the arms control advocates were quiet.

They’ve been dreading a U.S. anti-missile capability since Ronald Reagan first proposed it in the 1980s. Then congresswoman (now senator) Barbara Boxer called the Strategic Defense Initiative “the president’s astrological dream . . . a dream of laser weapons powered by nuclear explosions, particle beam weapons, chemical rockets and space based interceptors parked in ‘garages’ in orbit.” Then-senator Al Gore called SDI “not feasible.”

Journalist Ted Koppel summed up the conventional wisdom among liberals when he declared “I think that what is being proposed for expenditure on Star Wars [sic] . . . is absolute nonsense. Anything like an SDI program is going to put us in a position where, naturally, the Russians are going to feel threatened.” Besides, he continued, reciting the then prevalent “It’s Dangerous and it Won’t Work” mantra, “There is no way it is going to work within the next twenty years and it is going to cost not billions, not tens of billions, not hundreds of billions, but trillions of dollars.” The New York Times labeled the idea “a pipe dream, a projection of fantasy into policy.” Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis was equally dismissive. He called SDI “a fantasy — a technological illusion which most scientists say cannot be achieved in the foreseeable future. The defenses they envision won’t make the United States more secure. . . .”

As recently as 1999, when Congress was considering funding for missile defense, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D., OR) once again invoked the old George Lucas imagery to debunk the idea. “Like the movie, this is a phantom solution — hitting a bullet with a bullet in outer space.”

But hitting a bullet with a bullet has become almost routine. On September 28, 2007, also high above the Pacific Ocean (75 miles), another “Star Wars fantasy” vehicle successfully destroyed the mock warhead of a long-range missile. Many other recent tests have shown similar success. In fact, the U.S. is joined by 30 other nations who are working on missile-defense systems. For those whose delicate constitutions forbid them to take comfort in military strength, they may consider that this same technology may one day save Earth from a catastrophic meteor strike.

Contra Ted Koppel, our capability to shoot hurtling satellites —and more dangerous flying objects — out of the sky did not cost trillions of dollars. Since 1983, we’ve spent approximately $100 billion on missile defense, a small percentage of overall defense spending during that period. And in the end, it worked.

American ingenuity can hit a bullet with a bullet. But there is still no cure for liberal short-sightedness.

Ellie