Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States
Appendix III: Unclassified Working Papers


TOC / Previous / Next

Gil Siegert: "Potential Threats from Global Commercial Space Capabilities" Introduction Commercial space activity has shown steady growth in recent years and its pace is accelerating. By nature, commercial space endeavors serve multinational if not global markets. While this is good news for U.S. businesses, which lead the world in most space applications, it causes concern in the U.S. national security community. For the first time in 1997, U.S. private-sector spending on space surpassed government spending. This is the beginning of a trend, and the gap is expected to widen. As government budgets remain tight and the public sector continues its drive to use commercial off-the-shelf products, the result will be commercially available capabilities that equal or surpass what the national security community has employed to date. Global distribution of these capabilities, and their availability through foreign providers, could undermine the technological advantage that U.S. forces and intelligence services have relied on for decades. According to a recent forecast, 1 a total of 1,697 satellites will be launched worldwide over the next 10 years (1998-2007). The value of these satellites will be approximately $121 billion. Of the total satellites forecasted, an estimated 1,201 of them, or 70%, will be commercial communications satellites. The market value of these satellites will be about $58 billion. The remaining 30% will consist of military satellites, including communications, early warning, reconnaissance, and technology development; civil satellites, including Earth observation and scientific; and commercial Earth-imaging satellites. The market value of these satellites will be about $62.6 billion, with $30.6 billion for civil, $28.6 billion for military, and $3.8 billion for commercial Earth imaging. This report assesses the militarily significant commercial space capabilities that are or soon will be available on the global market and discusses their near- to medium-term impacts. LAUNCH SERVICES AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER Until recently, launch services were available for hire only from the U.S. and, since 1980, the European Ariane consortium. The commercial launch market today is much more complex, consisting of numerous providers in several nations, with more on the way. Some of these launch providers exist in non-market or transitional economies, and U.S. export restrictions are in effect. A number of international consortia have been formed, including collaborations between U.S. companies and organizations of former adversary nations. Arianespace pioneered the concept of a multi-national launch consortium, led by France along with other members of the European Space Agency (ESA). More recently, others have picked up the idea, especially since the breakup of the Soviet Union opened the possibility of employing mature technologies and systems from the Soviet launch fleet. One of the most prominent new providers is International Launch Services (ILS), a collaboration between Lockheed Martin, Khrunichev, and Energia. ILS markets the U.S. Atlas and Russian Proton rockets worldwide. Another effort called Sea Launch combines Boeing with KB Yuzhnoye/PO Yuzhmash of Ukraine, RSC Energia of Russia, and Kvaerner Maritime of Norway to launch the Zenit rocket from an ocean platform adapted from an off-shore oil rig. International cooperative ventures have also targeted the market for smaller payloads. Starsem teams Arianespace with Samara (Russia) Space Center and Eurockot combines Daimler-Benz Aerospace with Khrunichev. The world's top commercial satellite manufacturers-U.S. companies Hughes, Loral, and Lockheed Martin-established an industry trend to provide one-stop shopping for satellite buyers, allowing them to purchase turnkey on-orbit systems. One of the results of this trend is that satellite manufacturers, rather than satellite owners, have become the major purchasers of launch capacity for payloads bound for geostationary orbit (GEO). As satellite manufacturers compete for business worldwide, they seek to build a complete package that has the lowest possible launch price and the earliest feasible launch date. To achieve this they must be able to choose from among all the launchers on the global market that have adequate capability and available launch dates in the desired timeframe. Often this leads to U.S. satellites being carried on foreign launchers. More than just launch services have found their way to the world market. Subsystems and components for launch systems are available from a number of vendors. Propulsion systems, guidance systems, gyros, flight computers, and software are dual-use items that may be purchased ostensibly for non-military use and then be diverted to weapon systems. Applications and Impacts Commercial launch services are available in payload ranges from just a few kilograms to over 4000 kilograms. Orbits as high as GEO and inclinations from equatorial to polar can be accommodated. Lead times for launch bookings, typically two to three years, are shrinking as efficiency improves and more providers enter the market. Non-spacefaring nations have access to space through a variety of service providers. Military payloads (e.g., for communications or observation purposes) could masquerade as civil or commercial payloads, thus providing the satellite owner with capabilities that could be used counter to U.S. interests. It is unlikely that the existence of such capabilities could be hidden from the U.S., but our ability to neutralize them is not assured. The more serious near-term concern is transfer of launcher technologies to entities which may convert them to hostile use. This could occur inadvertently or intentionally. Not all launching nations are parties to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), China and India being the most significant examples. Development of a healthy commercial launch industry in these countries drives technology which can be used as a tool for revenue generation. The desire to earn hard currency may override concerns about the ultimate use of the exported technology. Alternatively, technologies could be exported with appropriate caution and the best of intentions but still find their way to unauthorized end-users in non-MTCR countries. With regard to inadvertent technology transfer, a recent incident is illustrative of potentially damaging scenarios. After the failure of a Chinese Long March 3B vehicle in February 1996, China Great Wall Industries Corp. invited Space Systems/Loral (which lost a satellite in the event) and Hughes to participate in the failure investigation. In the process, the two U.S. companies released information to the Chinese that went beyond the export licenses that had been issued for the launch, and interacted with the Chinese in ways that the USG had prohibited in the past with non-MTCR countries. Typical launch agreements permit transfer of information needed for payload/vehicle interface and safety requirements but explicitly prohibit any transfer that will aid in the design or upgrade of foreign launch systems. SPACE COMMUNICATIONS Global satellite communications began in the 1960s with Intelsat, a U.S.-initiated international consortium established with the goal of setting up a worldwide network including nations that would not otherwise have access to space technologies. In the late 1970s, Inmarsat was spun off from Intelsat to provide global mobile (at that time, primarily maritime) communications. Since that time, commercial satellite communications have become a phenomenal success because of expanding markets and the introduction of new services. A large number of profit-making service providers exist throughout the world today, and Intelsat and Inmarsat are in the process of converting from government-sanctioned international organizations to commercial entities. As international organizations, Intelsat and Inmarsat observed strict rules regarding the extent to which they could serve military organizations involved in combat operations around the world. As commercial companies, they and their competitors will provide fixed-base and mobile services at market prices on a first-come, first-served basis. The first generation of commercial (non-Inmarsat) mobile communications satellites is being launched during 1997-1999, led by Motorola's Iridium, Loral's Globalstar, and Orbital Sciences' Orbcomm. There will also be major growth in new direct TV broadcast satellites and replenishments for telecom and traditional TV broadcast satellites for established constellations. In 2004-2006, new high-speed broadband multimedia communications satellites will appear, such as Motorola's Celestri, Hughes' Expressway, Alcatel/Loral's SkyBridge/CyberStar, and Teledesic. This period will also see the second-generation replacements for the mobile communications systems. Most of the first-generation mobile comsats will have design lifetimes of 5-8 years. Applications and Impacts High-speed data and video are integral to C4I functions. They are also integral to a wide range of business applications, so service providers have created commercial packages suited to the task. Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) networks have been on the market for several years, and their purchase price and cost of operations have been declining. For a few million dollars, a potential adversary could set up an extensive VSAT network allowing centralized control of regional forces and distribution of intelligence. Potentially of greater concern is the proliferation of global mobile satellite communications using hand-held units. These provide "instant infrastructure" at low cost and can be used anywhere. In contrast to GEO commercial satellites, which have downlink footprints favoring heavily populated areas, global mobile systems are configured to serve all parts of the world equally (except polar regions) and specifically target customers in rural and under-served areas. While traditional GEO services may have limited bandwidth available in trouble spots such as the Middle East, Somalia, or Haiti, mobile systems would not suffer this drawback. SPACE IMAGING Beginning in 1972, NASA's Landsat series pioneered the availability of high-resolution Earth imagery from space for the civil and commercial sectors. Spatial resolution originally was 80 meters (Landsats 1-3) and improved to 30 meters a decade later (Landsats 4-5). Since the launch failure of Landsat 6 in 1993, the user community has been anticipating this year's launch of Landsat 7, which will improve resolution to 15 meters. The commercial and congressional interest generated by Landsat spawned an emerging industry. With commercial competition comes the drive to expand into global markets and offer more advanced products and services. The sharpest products currently available are Russian 2-meter images in the form of digitally degraded products from military archives. New satellites with one-meter spatial resolution being offered by U.S. companies are on the immediate horizon. The French company Spotimage has been offering high-resolution imagery from its series of SPOT satellites since February 1986. DoD has frequently supplemented its mapping resources by purchasing the 10-meter resolution images available from the first three SPOT satellites. Coalition military forces used SPOT and Landsat imagery during Operation Desert Storm to plan air strikes and to conduct mission training (e.g., ingress/egress routes). SPOT 4 was successfully launched on 23 March 1998. Following SPOT 4, service continuity will be maintained with SPOT 5, which will offer higher-resolution products. As in the case of the previous SPOT satellites, the French are developing SPOT 5 in cooperation with Sweden and Belgium. The payload consists of improved imaging instruments compared to SPOT 4, including ground resolution as sharp as 2.5 meters (instead of 10 m) in panchromatic mode, and 10 meters (instead of 20 m) in three spectral bands in the visible and near infrared ranges in multispectral mode. The integration of the flight payload and the satellite will be finished in September 2001. Commercial satellite imagery with spatial resolution as sharp as one meter will soon be available from Space Imaging EOSAT, the former operator of the Landsat system. The Ikonos satellite is set to launch soon to provide spy satellite-quality images. The company also sells imagery data supplied by the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite, which has 5-meter resolution. Earthwatch Inc. plans to compete with Space Imaging EOSAT in the one-meter resolution market. Despite loss of its first satellite in an early on-orbit failure, Earthwatch is pressing on with plans for its next spacecraft. Orbimage, a division of Orbital Sciences Corp., is preparing its Orbview system to join the high-resolution competition. It will collect images with 1-meter spatial resolution and will offer the first commercial hyperspectral data. Collaborations between U.S. and foreign companies are in various stages of development. For example, Core Software Technology of Pasadena plans to market 1.5-meter imagery from Eros-A, a derivative of Israel's Ofeq-3 satellite. Also, foreign entities have approached U.S. companies about purchasing turnkey remote sensing systems. When the United Arab Emirates did so recently, issues were raised concerning the degree of control that the U.S. should retain over the satellite's operation, and whether denying the sale would simply drive the customer to a foreign source over which the U.S. would have no control. A less mature but still promising commercial area is radar imaging. The first satellite radar images available on the open market came from the Russian Almaz, launched in March 1991. Since then, research satellites featuring radar imaging capabilities have been launched by ESA (ERS-1) and Japan (JERS-1), in part aimed at testing the waters for future commercial radar instruments. The Canadian government supported the development of Radarsat, which was launched in November 1995 and intended from the start to spawn a profit-making enterprise. Radarsat 2 reportedly with have 3-meter resolution. Table 1 is not a complete list of the imagery satellites that are (or soon will be) offering data around the world. More than 30 commercial or government-sponsored imaging systems are planned for launch over the next 10 years, many of which will provide image quality superior to the first U.S. spy satellites. Many of these new systems will be beyond U.S. ability to impose political constraints. 2 In the absence of a widely accepted plan to bar aggressors from data access, potential adversaries will have a number of sources for satellite imagery which they can approach directly or indirectly. Even if this avenue is blocked, there is still the possibility that a legitimate user, such as a news agency, could unintentionally aid an adversary by carelessly disseminating sensitive imagery. Applications and Impacts The two major military benefits available to adversaries from commercial imagery are (1) the ability to better visualize the battlefield, complicating U.S. efforts to achieve tactical surprise, and (2) precision targeting of weapons. 3 Commercial imagery providers are openly marketing their products to the world's militaries. For example, a recent SPOT Image ad lists the following military tasks supported: * Computer-aided photointerpretation * Threat analysis * Precision location * Target identification * Change detection * Intelligence collection * Surveillance database * Target dossiers * Mission planning * Route planning * Air defense penetration . Table 1. Technical Capabilities of Commercial High-Resolution Sensors for Existing and Planned Satellites. Max. Area High Ground Maximum Scan Coverage Revisit Digital Resolution Sample Spectral Viewing Line over a Photo-grammetric Orbital Orbital Period at Storage Sensors Distancea Rangeb Anglec Widthd Single Accuracyf Altitudeg Inclinationh Equatorial Capacityj Passe Latitudesi KVR-1000 0.49-0.59 NA (40 x camera <2 m mm -- 40 km -- -- 200 km 60 -- NA image) EROS-1 panchromatic 1.8 m 0.50-0.90 30 11 km 605 sq km <800 m 480 km 97.4 3 days None sensor mm EROS-2 panchromatic 1 m 0.50-0.90 30 15 km 605 sq km <800 m 480 km 97.4 3 days -- sensor mm EarlyBird NA (four panchromatic 3 m 0.45-0.80 30 3 x 3 km1,800 sq 40-50 m 470 km 97.3 4.75 days .2 Gbytes sensor mm images) km QuickBird panchromatic 1 m 0.45-0.90 30 10-20 km15,000 sq <20 m 470 km 97.3 4.75 days 33 Gbytes sensor mm km QuickBird Visible multispectral 4 m and near 30 10-20 km15,000 sq <20 m 470 km 97.3 4.75 days 33 Gbytes sensor IR km OrbView panchromatic 1 m 0.50-0.90 45 4 km 8,000 sq 10-14 m 460 km 97.3 3 days 32 Gbytes sensor mm km OrbView panchromatic 2 m 0.50-0.90 45 8 km 16,000 sq 10-14 m 460 km 97.3 3 days 32 Gbytes sensor mm km SIS panchromatic 1 m 0.50-0.90 30 11 km 20,000 sq 10-14 m 680 km 98.1 2 days <6 Gbytes sensor mm km SIS Visible multispectral 4 m and near 30 11 km 20,000 sq 10-14 m 680 km 98.1 2 days <6 Gbytes sensor IR km NA-Not Applicable a. The imaging sensor consists of a linear or 2-D array of pixels (square dots). Projected straight down, each pixel covers a square ground area. The ground sample distance (GSD) is the length of the square in meters. The size of the GSD is a key factor in the amount of spatial detail in an image. b. Imaging sensors are designed to be sensitive to light at particular wavelengths. The spectral range specifies the wavelengths (in microns) that can be "seen" by the sensor. c. Sensors can be tilted to view areas obliquely. The viewing angle is a measure of the tilt with respect to nadir (straight down). If the sensor is pointing straight down, the viewing angle is 0. If the sensor is pointing straight ahead (a "cockpit's view"), the viewing angle is 90. d. Scan line width is a technical parameter for a pushbroom sensor. A pushbroom sensor consists of a linear array of charge-coupled devices (CCDs). The two-dimensional image is acquired through the motion of the satellite relative to the ground, in a manner that is analogous to the track of a pushbroom across a floor. The scan line width defines the ground distance (in kilometers) that falls within the sensor sweep. e. This parameter specifies the maximum rectangular ground area that can be imaged as the satellite passes over a specific target. f. This parameter specifies the error in the measurement of geographic locations from a stereo pair of images without using ground reference points as locator aids. A stereo pair consists of two images of the same scene acquired at different viewing angles. A stereo pair is used to view scenes in 3-D and measure the height of imaged features. g. The satellites distance from the Earth's surface. All of the sensors listed in Table 1 will be placed in circular orbits. h. The angle between the equatorial plane and the orbital plane. A satellite that flies only over the equator has a 0 inclination. A satellite that flies directly over the North and South Poles has a 90 inclination. A satellite at a 97-98 inclination is in a sun-synchronous orbit, which allows a remote sensing satellite to image areas between 82 N and 82 S and view the Earth below at the same local time of day. All of the new satellites will be in sun-synchronous orbits. i. The revisit period is the minimum time that must elapse before a single imaging satellite can review a specific geographic point. It decreases at higher latitudes. At the North and South Pole, the revisit period is approximately the orbit period (about 90 minutes for a satellite in low earth orbit). j. The amount of data in Gigabytes that can be stored on the solid-state recorders. Table 2. Approximate Ground Resolution in Meters at Which Target Can Be Detected, Identified, Described, or Analyzed. Target Detectiona General Precise Description Technical IDb IDc Analysise Bridges 6 4.5 1.5 1 .3 Communications Radar 3 1 .3 .15 .015 Radio 3 1.5 .3 .15 .015 Supply Dumps 1.5-3 .6 .3 .03 .03 Troop Units (in bivouac or on road)6 2 1.2 .3 .15 Airfield Facilities6 4.5 3 .3 .15 Rockets and Artillery 1 .6 .15 .05 .045 Aircraft 4.5 1.5 1 .15 .045 Command and Control Headquarters 3 1.5 1 .15 .09 Missile Site (SSM/SAM) 3 1.5 .6 .3 .045 Surface Ships 7.5-15 4.5 .6 .3 .045 Nuclear Weapons Components 2.5 1.5 .3 .03 .015 Vehicles 1.5 .6 .3 .06 .045 Minefields 3-9 6 1 .03 -- Ports and Harbors 30 15 6 .3 3 Coasts, Landing Beaches 15-30 4.5 3 1.5 .15 Railroad Yards & Shops 15-30 15 6 1.5 .4 Roads 6-9 6 1.8 .6 .4 Urban Areas 60 30 3 3 .75 Terrain -- 90 4.5 1.5 .75 Surface Submarines 7.5-30 4.5-6 1.5 1 .03 Source: Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, NASA Authorization for fiscal year 1978, pp. 1642-1643; and Reconnaissance Hand Book (McDonnell-Douglas Corporation, 1982), p. 125. Table from Ann M. Florini, "The Opening Skies: Third Party Imaging Satellites and U.S. Security," International Security, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Fall 1988), pp. 91-123. a. Location of a class of units, objects, or activity of military interest. b. Determination of general target type. c. Discrimination within target type. d. Size/dimension, configuration/layout, components construction, equipment count, etc. e. Detailed analysis of specific equipment. Commercial providers will attempt to supply what existing and potential markets demand. High spatial resolution is a key feature for applications such as mapping, urban planning, and geographic information systems. Spatial resolution accurate to less than five meters is considered spy satellite-quality data. Table 2 provides some examples of approximate ground resolutions in meters at which targets can be detected, identified, described, or analyzed. While existing Landsat and SPOT data have military uses, higher-resolution images allow individual vehicles to be distinguished and vehicle types determined, troop movements to be tracked, and aircraft to be inventoried at airfields Spectral resolution is an important feature to some customers such as agricultural and scientific users. Different parts of the visible and infrared spectrum can reveal characteristics of the target such as the health of vegetation. Spectral information can also distinguish between real vegetation and camouflage. Current Landsat data divides the visible and infrared spectrum into seven bands-red, green, blue, and four infrared bands including one thermal. The next technological step is hyperspectral imaging, which divides roughly the same part of the spectrum into hundreds of bands, yielding a variety of more subtle features. Orbimage promises to be the first to offer this capability commercially. Revisit rate is another key factor for some civil and commercial users, particularly for agricultural and disaster relief applications. Frequent views of the same sites are also vital to military commanders and strategists. Revisit rate is determined by the orbital parameters of the satellite, and is significantly improved by simultaneous use of multiple satellites, as many commercial providers plan to do. Radar imaging from satellites provides information that overlaps and complements optical imaging. It provides high resolution, day/night, all-weather coverage, allowing it to function at times when optical imaging can't. Installations and movements can be viewed in darkness or through clouds, making them difficult to hide. Though new to the commercial market, radar data is likely to achieve wide acceptance, and therefore wider availability, as civil and commercial users discover its many applications: tracking ice flows in polar waterways, determining soil moisture content, penetrating dense foliage or sand dunes to reveal archeological sites, and others. Image collection is only one part of the process. A healthy and sophisticated value-added industry performs the processing, distribution, and interpretation of images. Commercially, this has been the most lucrative part of the remote sensing industry, and the world's militaries have been among the biggest customers. Delivery times are measured in weeks, so commercial imagery is not timely enough to give adversaries an edge throughout an extended campaign. But delivery times will gradually improve, and even at current response times the access to imagery information could make a critical difference in planning a single operation. National remote sensing centers exist in all regions of the world, including areas that are potential hot spots. The centers typically operate on a civil/commercial basis, but also have strong ties to military agencies of their governments. Most centers have the capability to handle imagery from two or more collection systems, giving them the ability to extract additional information using data fusion techniques. The centers have ongoing agreements with the operators of the satellites providing data, but policing these agreements is difficult at best. Satellite operators have little control over who receives data collected at foreign ground stations and how quickly they receive it. WEATHER SATELLITE INFORMATION Weather monitoring is a function performed by government entities and international organizations around the world, not an activity of the commercial sector. However, the characteristic it shares with commercial space products is the global, open distribution of information that can be vital to military operations. Weather information is shared widely between countries and through the World Meteorological Organization. Additionally, weather imagery with resolution down to one kilometer can be downloaded directly from satellites of the U.S., Europe, Russia, and China using readily available hardware and software costing from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. The U.S. weather monitoring system includes the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES), which give wide-angle continuous views of the U.S. and its adjacent ocean areas. More useful for military applications is the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), which merges the NOAA polar-orbiting satellites with those of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). 4 The polar orbiters provide periodic coverage of regional weather patterns with greater precision than GOES. Similar data is available from geostationary and polar orbiters of Russia, China, Japan, and the European consortium Eumetsat. Nations routinely help each other to fill gaps in coverage. For example, Eumetsat recently "loaned" its geostationary Meteosat to the U.S., moving it to a different orbital slot temporarily to supplement the GOES system, which was experiencing delays in launching a replacement satellite. Applications and Impacts Accurate weather information is vital to military mission planning. Commanders and strategists must know if rain or other inclement weather will hinder air, sea, or ground movement; if cloud cover will provide concealment from air or space observation; or if fog or other atmospheric distortions will interfere with laser targeting devices. Adversaries can use weather information for their own mission planning, or to judge the likelihood of U.S. use of various techniques, or to choose the best conditions to hide their movements. GLOBAL POSITION, VELOCITY, NAVIGATION, AND TIMING DoD invested around $10 billion over two decades to develop the Global Positioning System (GPS). The 24-satellite constellation delivers precise position, velocity, and time (PVT) data to an unlimited number of users with passive receivers anywhere in the world. The dual-use nature of the capability was obvious from the beginning, but no one envisioned the extent to which the civil and commercial sectors would embrace the system once it became operational. GPS receivers and augmentations for a multitude of applications have become a lucrative global business. Commercialization of GPS technologies has resulted in easy availability and decreasing prices. By 2000, industry observers estimate that military users will account for only 1.5 percent of the GPS market. It is U.S. policy to continue providing GPS Standard Positioning Service for peaceful civil, commercial, and scientific use on a continuous worldwide basis, free of direct user fees. Private sector investment and international cooperation in the use of GPS are encouraged. At the same time, DoD is directed to develop measures to prevent the hostile use of GPS and its augmentations to ensure that the U.S. retains a military advantage without unduly disrupting or degrading civilian users. 5 Applications and Impacts The military services use GPS to move and position troops and vehicles and to guide precision munitions. Precise PVT strongly augments command and control, battle tactics and support coordination, strategic and tactical air warfare, accurate and timely fire support, and combat service support operations. This increases the accuracy and availability of current weapon systems, thereby enhancing overall mission effectiveness. GPS receivers come in a variety of sizes and designs to serve needs ranging from individual soldiers to ships and aircraft. Under a configuration called Selective Availability, military users have access to a precision code that permits 10 times greater accuracy than the Coarse Acquisition (C/A) code available to civilian users. Currently, it is U.S. policy to phase out Selective Availability and make precision signals available to all by 2006. On 30 March 1998, the Interagency GPS Executive Board (IGEB) announced that a second civil coded signal will be added to GPS, a change that will take a few years to implement. The IGEB also directed that efforts to define an additional frequency for a third coded signal should continue. 6 In response to these changes, DoD must implement adjustments to the control, space, and user segments to allow U.S. military use of GPS in degraded environments while denying it to an adversary. Augmentations are available now to civilian users that improve accuracy dramatically by coupling GPS signals with transmitters at fixed sites. In some cases, the augmented signal is more accurate than the encrypted signal available to military users. Widely distributed knowledge of the capabilities and functional parameters of the GPS system presents two problems: 1. Ease of acquiring the ability to jam, deceive, or otherwise disrupt GPS use. The system's antijam capabilities have repeatedly been identified as inadequate. Performance can be severely degraded or provide erroneous information in high-noise (jamming) or scintillation environments. 2. Increasing likelihood that adversaries will use GPS for hostile purposes, especially as Selective Availability is phased out. Presently, the U.S. has no capability to deny adversaries the use of GPS Coarse Acquisition code without impacting its own use of the system. Countering hostile use would force the U.S. to deny use to friendly forces in the area of responsibility. 7 In response, DoD has initiated Navigation Warfare (NavWar) activities directed at three objectives: 1. GPS in an area of responsibility (AOR). 2. Prevent use by adversary forces of satellite navigation and its associated augmentations in the AOR. 3. Allow the civil and commercial community access to satellite navigation signals outside the AOR. 8 Jamming of GPS signals in a theater of operations would degrade or eliminate U.S. ability to accurately position the full spectrum of platforms and personnel, and would interfere with the delivery of stand-off weapons such as cruise missiles. Alternatively, adversaries might forego jamming in order to take advantage of GPS for their own purposes. The most threatening example is the use of GPS to improve the guidance systems of weapons of mass destruction, for which Coarse Acquisition code would be adequate. NavWar equipment is expected to allow access to GPS information for authorized users during periods of denial, and to function properly in the presence of spoofing or other injection of false or unauthorized information. The NavWar system will be designed to detect and locate spoofers. ACCESS TO SPACE SURVEILLANCE INFORMATION Space surveillance provides the ability to monitor, detect, track, identify, characterize, and catalog all man-made Earth-orbiting objects. There is currently no national or DoD policy guidance that addresses how to handle requests from commercial and foreign entities for space surveillance information. Support to the civil sector is authorized by a DoD/NASA agreement 9 which enables DoD to provide NASA with data from its space object catalog and permits NASA to disseminate the information on an unclassified basis to scientific and civil interests. The agreement states that space surveillance systems should be "responsive to all the needs of the scientific community and civilian interests, domestic and foreign," but does not explicitly address U.S. or foreign commercial entities. A subsequent MoA 10 broadens the earlier agreement slightly, but still doesn't define the terms of USSPACECOM support to commercial and foreign interests. Commercial or foreign entities without formal agreements with USSPACECOM must obtain space surveillance support through NASA Goddard Space Flight Center or their appropriate U.S. embassy. If surveillance centers receive direct requests from these entities, they must be forwarded to the USSPACECOM Space Operations Center for proper handling. The Space Operations Center will respond to emergency requests from the space vehicle's owner/operator if human life is threatened or if catastrophic failure of the space vehicle may occur. For emergency satellite anomalies where the vehicle is not subject to catastrophic failure, the Space Operations Center will direct the requester to NASA Goddard. Applications and Impacts Situational awareness in space allows a broad range of missions, including space control protection, prevention, negation, and BM/C4I. Launch support applications include collision avoidance and early orbit determination. Two potential negative impacts stand out. First, USSPACECOM could inadvertently provide aid to adversaries. Sharing space surveillance data without restrictions risks enabling foreign entities to deduce the accuracy, processing speed, and coverage of the U.S. surveillance network. Knowledge of these capabilities would enable potential adversaries to exploit weaknesses and possibly conduct space operations without U.S. knowledge. Another impact is the possible overburdening of DoD resources in support of non-DoD activities. DoD is expected to experience funding constraints in the coming years that will make it challenging to maintain and upgrade existing infrastructure, even without considering additional demands from non-military sectors. USSPACECOM must not compromise its primary mission by becoming a de facto space traffic controller. Adversaries could take advantage of an overloaded U.S. surveillance system when we can least afford it by submitting large numbers of spurious requests through various channels in an attempt to clog the system at a critical time. As the commercial and foreign satellite population increases, and DoD's reliance on space systems continues to grow, space surveillance becomes more critical for maintaining situational awareness supporting space control missions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Teal Group, "Worldwide Satellite Market Forecast: 1998-2007," 12 Jan 98 2. AFRL Directed Energy Directorate, Intelligence & Threat Evaluation Branch, "Aggressor Space Applications Project: The Military Impact of Commercial Satellite Imagery" 3. Ibid. 4. PDD-NSTC-2, "Convergence of U.S. Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite Systems," 5 May 94 5. PDD-NSTC-6, "U.S. Global Positioning System Policy," 28 Mar 96 6. DoD News Release No. 139-98, "Additional Civil Coded Signals on Future Global Positioning System (GPS) Satellites," 30 Mar 98 7. Air Force Space Command, Draft Operational Requirements Document for Global Positioning System-Navigation Warfare, 16 Mar 98 8. Ibid. 9. DoD/NASA Agreement on Functions Involved in Space Surveillance of U.S. and Foreign Satellites and Space Vehicles, Jan 61 10. Memorandum of Agreement Between NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and USSPACECOM, Mar 94


TOC / Previous / Next



TOC / Previous / Next