A Brief Primer on Anti-satellite Warfare Tactics

A Brief Primer on Anti-satellite Warfare Tactics

Satellites make it possible for governments to provide essential services, such as national defense, navigation, and weather forecasting.  Private ventures use satellites to offer highly desired services that include video program distribution, telecommunications, and Internet access. The Russian launch of a satellite, with nuclear power and the likely ability to disable satellites, underscores how satellites are quite vulnerable to both natural and manmade ruin. See https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/14/us/politics/intelligence-russia-nuclear.html.

The Russian launch increases the risk that satellites can be disabled, immediately evaporating billions of dollars in value, while also adding to space debris that can collide with satellites, rendering them worthless.  Having a nuclear power source, extends the available time in space and probably the maneuverability of the satellite.  This capability arguably violates a treaty-level Russian commitment to keep space nuclear-free. Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, Article IV (1967); https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/outerspacetreaty.html.

However, the U.N. document lacks any enforcement option and Russia surely will characterize its technology as a source of operational power and propulsion, not weaponry.  

Set out below, I explain how the sun and manmade anti-satellite techniques can annihilate satellites.  Despite global consensus to promote peaceful uses of outer space for the benefit of everyone, the stakes have increased that space will become “weaponized” of as a new theater of warfare See Rob Frieden, Dangers From Regulatory Vacuums in Outer, Inner, and Near Space (Nov. 2023); https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4628699; https://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/resources/fact-sheets/critical-issues/5448-outer-space; https://armscontrolcenter.org/fact-sheet-space-weapons/.

Natural Risks

Satellites are launched into various locations above earth where solar radiation can rise to a level that disrupts circuitry and orbital stability.  The earth’s gravitational force, pulls satellites downward.  Satellites need on-board propulsion to offset gravity, but such “station keeping” capability is limited by available fuel and power.  Because satellites cannot be repaired or refueled in orbit, components, like batteries, eventually fail.  Satellites in outer space, from about 60 to 22,300 miles above earth, typically have a useable life of 10 years.  Low earth orbiting satellites, closer in proximity to earth and smaller in size, have much shorter life expectancies.

Human Risks

While satellite technology has vastly improved, roughly one in three launches fail to insert space objects into proper orbit.  Leaky rocket boosters, design defects, weather conditions at launch, and other factors can render a massive investment of time, money, and effort worthless.  Even if a satellite reaches the proper location, components may fail prematurely resulting in diminished performance and early end of life.

The risk of costly calamities in space has risen at an alarming rate, because national governments understand the importance of space orbiting resources, for surveillance, communications, earth observation, and navigation.  China, India, Russia, and the United States have developed so-called anti-satellite technologies designed to disrupt or eradicate operational satellites. See https://aerospace.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/Gleason-Hays_SpaceWeapons_20201006_0.pdf. The techniques include earth-based and orbiting resources that can directly impact a nearby target or do so from a distance. Currently available options include missiles and other projectiles, as well as using radio, lasers, and software to disrupt the satellite’s ability to receive instructions and perform as designed.

Nations can render satellites worthless in ways that limit the damage solely to the satellite, by nudging it out of a stable orbit father outward into deep space, or downward toward earth at a trajectory resulting in complete vaporization.  Failing to execute either of these two strategies can result in the creation of thousands of intact space debris that can later collide with other satellites.

Space Treaty Obsolescence and Ineffectiveness

Just as the private and public opportunities increase using space to benefit everyone, a chronic lag in government oversight, consumer safeguards, and essential operational guardrails, has the potential to frustrate and possibly thwart progress and stability. The five Space Treaties, administered by the United Nations, see https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/index.html; has not foreclosed the growing risk of catastrophic space vehicle collisions, the proliferation of space debris that increase the odds for additional collisions, and the incentive and ability of some to weaponize space.

Unless the nations of the world quickly revise the treaties to clarify what is meant by peaceful uses of outer space, some space faring governments will exploit ambiguity with potentially disastrous consequences.

A RUSSIA Acronym: Ruthlessly Undermining Small Satellite International Access

            In a universally contemned, knucklehead move, the Russian government used an anti-satellite missile to pulverize a deactivated satellite located in a low earth orbit 40 miles below the known trajectory of the International Space Station.  See, e.g., https://www.reuters.com/world/us-military-reports-debris-generating-event-outer-space-2021-11-15/; https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-5929910; https://apnews.com/article/space-exploration-science-business-697f5aa719331ab6e74102ebb06b52d8.

            Before explaining how this bonehead action did not have to risk life and property, let us make two contestable assumptions for the sake of argument:

1)         Anti-satellite technology has some legitimate and lawful, national defense uses, so the Russian technology test comports with the global treaty limiting space exploration and exploitation to “peaceful uses” “for the benefit and in the interests of all countries.”  See Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, available at: http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/introouterspacetreaty.html; and

2)         Russian personnel determined that the test would not damage the International Space Station, or trigger any other sort of liability for harm, even though over 1500 additional pieces of space debris were created at a location certain to fall down toward earth and cross over the Space Station orbit.  See Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects; available at: http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/introliability-convention.html.

Arguably, nations need to test anti-satellite technology under actual orbital conditions rather than blow up a mockup satellite on the ground.  There must be some benefit in examining the breadth and depth of a blown-up satellite debris field.  But did Russia have to target a dead satellite so close to, and above, the Space Station?

           News flash: both operational and out of service satellites experience gravity that pulls them down toward earth.  Most active satellites use “station keeping” fuel to maintain orbit, particularly geostationary satellites designed to last over ten years and to hover in a fixed location 22,300 miles above the equator.  Low earth orbiting satellites typically have short useable lives with no station keeping capability.  Their close proximity to earth offers a different value proposition: lower costs to build, launch and access, but short usable lives and the need to launch thousands of small “cubesats” to achieve ubiquitous coverage.

           Russian officials have yet to explain why they could not have identified and targeted a dead satellite located well below the Space Station.  Every other publicly disclosed satellite explosion has occurred in a location not likely to trigger any immediate collision, even though the debris field might eventually increase the odds.   The U.S., China, and India have complied with this safeguard.

            Luckily, the occupants of the Space Station, including two Russian cosmonauts, avoided harm, but the odds for a collision increase, even without the deliberate increase in the amount of space junk.  New broadband low earth orbiting satellite constellations, operate near each other and number in the thousands.  Even in low earth orbit, only a few hundred miles from earth, tiny specks of debris travel at speeds in excess of 15,000 miles per hour.

            If you have had a car windshield crack from a stone thrown at it by a truck, you can appreciate the potential for damage from small objects with high velocity. In low earth orbit low gravity and extreme speed combine to create the real potential for more than a crack or divot.  The worse case scenario, known as the Kepler Syndrome, (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome) renders most, if not all, of space unable to support satellite networks, because of the ever increasing risk of collisions.

            Way to go Russia!