Subject: Nuking LEO (again) From: thomsona@netcom.com (Allen Thomson) Date: 1995/05/13 Message-Id: <thomsonaD8IoKA.CE3@netcom.com> Newsgroups: sci.space.policy Some more details are starting to appear concerning DNA's worries about third world nuclear threats to LEO satellites: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Flight of Chip Makers Exposes Satellites by Pat Cooper and Jeff Erlich Defense News, 8-14 May 1995, pp. 1 & 29. [Excerpts] Without government intervention to stop the exodus of computer chip makers from the U.S. military market, the next generation of military satellites will be left vulnerable to a single nuclear strike, defense and industry officials warn. The U.S. supplier base for radiation-hardened microchips, used by the thousands to protect space-based systems from the effects of a nuclear blast, has dropped from 20 companies to four in the past five years... The market is too small to support even the remaining four companies, Robert Webb, Defense Nuclear Agency electronics and system technology division chief, said May 4 in an interview... Demand for radiation-hardened chips has dropped to about $100 million a year since the end of the Cold War [when it was around $750 M/yr]... Meanwhile, the commercial electronics market has boomed to $100 billion a year, leading suppliers to abandon hardened production lines for more profitable commercial chips, industry officials said. Even if suppliers survive, their products are in danger of atrophying, Webb said. Microchips are evolving so fast that technologies last just a few years before being overtaken by a new generation. With this turnover, some worry that companies will not want to make new investments to capture a fraction of a market that is so small. The consequences of losing a supplier base for radiation- hardened chips could be devastating. [DNA director Maj. Gen. Hagemann] painted this scenario in remarks to reporters April 26: A nation such as Iraq or North Korea could detonate a 50- kiloton nuclear warhead above its own territory at 100 kilometers. The resulting radiation and electromagnetic pulse could wipe out the electronics of satellites in the vicinity, and shorten the life of every satellite in low-Earth orbit. "We want to retain the ability to produce hardened electronics primarily so we are not vulnerable to a cheap shot," Harold Smith, assistant to the defense secretary for atomic energy, said April 26... As a weapon of war, such a blast could blind U.S. space- based sensors that are not hardened against the effects of radiation. As an economic weapon, it could destroy billions of dollars worth of satellites as radiation accumulates in them over a period of months.... Should U.S. suppliers stop making radiation-hardened components, DoD officials could turn to foreign suppliers, such as Asea Brown Boveri AG, Billingstad, Norway; GEC Plessey Semiconductors, Cheney Manor, England; or Thomson-CSF, Paris.