Space-based missile tracking sensors, high-energy particle beams that zap nuclear warheads and President Donald Trump’s call for a new “Space Force” branch of the US military.
For those who remember President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) of almost four decades ago, it sounds like déjà vu all over again. Reagan pitched building an ambitious anti-missile system in 1983 dubbed “Star Wars.” The R&D effort, which included space-based lasers, was sidetracked by funding shortfalls and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But it appears to have gained a new lease on life.
A conga line of generals and officials told Congress in late March that the US lags in defending itself against game-changing weapons such as Russian and Chinese hypersonic missiles. The testimony, aimed at securing more military R&D funding, follows a March 1 speech by Vladimir Putin in which the Russian president unveiled new ballistic and hypersonic cruise missiles that supposedly evade US anti-missile shields.
“No anti-missile system – even in the future – has a hope of getting in its way,” Putin said of a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) codenamed Sarmat that has maneuverable re-entry vehicles or MARV warheads.
Return of the Jedi
The alarm bells raised by Putin’s claims are pushing Washington to resurrect some of the space-based missile shields championed by Reagan. But several analysts, including Angelo Codevilla, one of the original architects of Reagan’s SDI, caution that nearly all the wonder weapons touted three decades ago never reached the experimental stage due to inadequate funding and political commitment from US officials. Most must be developed from scratch.
Codevilla says an example is a nuclear-pumped X-ray laser proposed for Stars Wars by US atomic scientist Edward Teller. “Not only did it not get to first base, it never made it out of the dugout,” he told Asia Times.
Based on current technology, Codevilla says the US also has little defense against low-flying hypersonic cruise missiles fired by Russia or China.
Others note new vulnerabilities for any revamped Star Wars system. These include cyber links that can be hacked and anti-satellite weapons that can “blind” US missile shields. There also are nagging worries about the reliability of such anti-missile defenses, their huge costs and the destabilizing impact they’ll likely have on existing arms control pacts.
“It’s a good way to spend a lot of money with not much to show for it,” John E. Pike, a military intelligence analyst who runs website globalsecurity.org, told Asia Times. “Large-scale missile defense against a determined peer adversary like Russia or China still poses the arms race and crisis instability problems that are inherent in such technology.”
A recent report from Chatham House, a London-based think tank, noted that new technology in the form of chips and other digital components has created “new threat vectors” for US missile defenses and nuke weapons systems. The dangers include the use of foreign-made digital components in such systems that makes them liable to cyber infiltration.
Russia and China can also be expected to wield anti-satellite weapons to bring down new Star Wars defenses. And some doubt if current US anti-missile technology, which requires “hitting a bullet with a bullet,” will work against hundreds or thousands of incoming warheads.
Space-based lasers
Codevilla is a former Navy officer and staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence who conceived many of SDI’s technology programs in the 1980s.
He notes that only two potential anti-missile systems: space-based lasers that hit missiles and orbital optical systems that detect ground launches, can counter a growing threat from Russian and Chinese ICBMs. But he emphasizes that both systems must be used to detect and destroy ICBMs in the boost phase – before multiple nuke warheads separate from their rockets – to be effective.
Lasers, according to Codevilla, wouldn’t be able to destroy the MARV warheads alluded to by Putin. But clear shots could be made from space at the boosters carrying the warheads without interference from the earth’s atmosphere.
Codevilla says a space-based chemical laser weapon with a mirror relay was the only Star Wars system that neared the testing stage. It was described in a December 4, 1994, New York Times article titled “Space-based laser nearly ready to fly.” A scaled-down, land version of the laser is said to have shot down Katyusha rockets over Israel.
“The technology for space-based lasers has improved dramatically in the past 30 years,” Codevilla said, noting that they are cheaper, easier to manufacture and lighter.
Another viable Star Wars-era system, according to Codevilla, is an orbiting, non-radar optical sensor satellite that can “see” enemy missiles from space regardless of where they’re fired from. The so-called SBIRS-Low system was designed to detect Soviet ICBMs on launch and to relay firing solutions to ground-based interceptors.
He says the technology, which was in the engineering stage, was mothballed because it violated the US-USSR 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty’s ban on systems that “substitute for” ground-based radars. The system wasn’t revived even though the US abrogated the treaty.
Other systems problematic
Codevilla cautions that other next-generation anti-missile systems are problematic. Space-based neutral particle beams, for instance, would require huge generators to power them in orbit.
Lasers mounted on Boeing 747 jets or drones would have to correct for atmospheric distortion in order to bring down enemy missiles soon after launch. “Lasers are notoriously ineffective in the atmosphere,” Codevilla pointed out.
Hypersonic missiles, Codevilla says, are an even tougher nut to crack since these air-breathing weapons fly close to the ground at phenomenal speeds, making space-based interception nearly impossible.
Plane or ground-based lasers, he says, also wouldn’t work against hypersonic missiles, especially over water, due to the light distortion caused by the ocean’s humidity. It’s also unclear if railguns or other hypervelocity weapons can be developed to bring them down. “The only thing you can do with a hypersonic missile is hit the launch pad,” Codevilla says, referring to airstrikes and ground-to-ground missiles.
Old policy dilemma
Codevilla worries that the policy and funding problems which dogged Star Wars will resurface if it’s revived by the Trump administration.
“Star Wars is back, but in the worst possible way, in the form of a lot of research projects that aren’t actual (weapons) engineering projects,” Codevilla said.
“Policy is the problem, not technology. Space-based missile defense and anti-satellite warfare has been possible since the 1960s with ever-increasing sophistication. Problem is, the US government has sought every means of avoiding the fact that this is so. In that regard, absolutely nothing has changed,” Codevilla added.
Current US antimissile interceptors based in Alaska and California, Codevilla says, are thoroughly inadequate in dealing with the new threat from Moscow and Beijing. He asserts the US abandoned efforts to develop a serious anti-missile defense from the 1990s in order to sign arms control pacts with Russia. He argues this left the US virtually defenseless against Russian and Chinese missiles – a situation that continues to this day.
Pike takes another view. He says the biggest argument against reviving Star Wars is the fact that Russia, China and the US, despite differences, aren’t one step from Armageddon – as was the case during the Cold War.
“No one is lying awake at night worrying about Soviet tank columns driving to the Pyrenees,” Pike said.
High energy laser system consumes a lot of energy as well as produces lot of heat. In case of space laser, one can speculate nuclear power source. Unlike nuclear bomb, nuclear reactor needs to be cooled. How to do that in space where there is no medium to dissipate heat?
Which countries occupied and continue to rule another country or part of another country?
The sky is falling, the sky is falling…Big bad mother Russia is going to kill us all while the weak little USA just sits there like a helpless lamb and does nothing! What a load of bullshit! I was talking recently to an old retired American military veteran aircraft mechanic. He told me that in the mid 1990’s he had helped install an incredibly powerful chemical laser on a government-owned 747 that was also loaded with state of the art surveillance, missile tracking and weapons targeting electronic equipment. He told me that he had taken part in the testing of this 747 and its onboard systems. He said that in 1995, the 747, which was in flight over the state of Kansas, was able to target and destroy a missile that had just been launched from an airbase in California while it was still in the air over California, a kill distance of almost 1200 miles! He also said that at that time, the military had identical systems installed or being installer on not less than 4 other jets; that this weapon was unbelievably powerful and accurate; and that this was 22 or 23 years ago! Imagine how advanced and powerful such systems are now!!!
I also know as a repeated eyewitness for at least 5 years (over Camp Bullis and Camp Stanley, Texas) and from many other sources that the USA has incredibly advanced backwards-engineered fallen- angelic (“alien”) aircraft such as the TR-3B and TR-6 (and probably others) with exotic electrogravitic drives, amazing cloaking/ light-scattering, light-bending and or image projecting invisibility and extraordinary weaponry (directed energy weapons, scalar energy, god rods, clean nukes, dirty nukes, railguns on steroids, sonic weapons, electromagnetic pulse generators, weather control, and so much more…) that are MUCH faster than ANYTHING the Chinks or Ruskies can launch at us… These thing can leave Texas, be over Beijing and Moscow in 20 minutes, place a cloaked hydrogen bomb on the lawn of the Great Hall of the People and the Kremlin, leave the area, detonate them and return to Texas without ever being detected! Of course, we have MANY of these, each capable of almost instantaneously delivering multiple warheads and many other exotic weaponry…
The only technology any other country in the world has that is even close to as advanced as our most advanced secret stuff was stolen by spies/hackers and/ or treasonously sold to them by American traitors…Don’t worry, the USA can easily match and surpass any other weaponry in the world…Besides, us believers don’t have to rely on “the arm of the flesh” to save or deliver us…We have the Living God to protect, direct, save and deliver us! If He chooses not to, we’ll just get to see Him a little sooner! After all America has been and remains the base of operations for the vast majority of missionaries fulfilling the Great Commission all over the world…It is a lead-pipe cinch that at least His faithful remnant will be protected, delivered and prospered!!!
Not only, but they are improving and building their own LASER weapons, where they can knock out the US missiles in their boost phase. The american writer of this article writes things where the US is always somehow ahead, and always assured to win any war against either Russia or China with a typical US delusion based on immortality.
With all that shit stuff at your door side, Osama kicked the nut out of you! Learn the other way, people will use your same weapons to hit you. No need even to develop other weapons.
John Kittinger, maybe the only "thing" that those ’90s 747 can hit is a 2018 F35… You bloody evangelists, baptists, morons, crappy religious scum are like nazis " gott mit uns ", or US$ " in god we trust ". Go see Him a little sooner, like John Mc Cain
Doods Barrameda , the answer is Israel.
It’s only American greed that makes the possibility of Armageddon. Where do they think the Evil axis gets it’s funds to threaten the rest of the peaceful world? Right from the ol’ US of A. It is greedy Americans like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Ivanka Trumps of this world, all those sending manufacturing to China including gift wrapped Blue prints just so they can obtain Massive profits at the expense of the original honest hard working Simple Western Folk. It is these guys funding the Chinese and Russian war machines. Just cut off that money and see how they crumble!
Russian troll anyone…..?
If Russia and China can develop hypersonic offensive missiles, it’s time for US & Allies to jointly develop both offensive and defensive missiles that are both land based and sea based. Better allocate funds or be victims of these giant war freaks.
It is all over in September when oil is priced in yuan : -)
How can China dictates oil prices when the are net consumers?
The only solution left to all warring states is to come down to the negotiating table and agree to a non-violence, non-agression policy agreemenet so that nations’ resources are saved for solving other problems such as health and food needs.
They know nothing, John!
The end result is annahilation of earth species including human!I Its madness!
There are so many ironies here. For one, how did Africa even get into the conversation. The post cold-war agressive Western tools, from IMF to other neoliberal loan schemas, plus the destruction of sustainable economies — brought the misery beyond comprehension to Africa. The contient as a whole, with many exceptions — was caught in a difficult time, not yet organized enough to have control of their destiny, and falling for the many Western schemas that pitted one against another.
But to the topic at hand: how to respond to the change in technology and science, applied to the new class of weapons, just announced by Russia. Most of the possibilities mentioned here are oddly enough the same old ideas, reexamined. For one, there is no systematic review of what was announced, not just pick and chose some weapons, and then pull out of mothballs the ideas that MAY work against them. That is no way to analyse such a serious matter. Yes, one can contemplate the issues of ballistic missiles. But the proposed ideas for countering them, are hardly adequate, and that is assuming that all of these ideas can be brought to production in a short time. If there are other things in the R&D pipeline, still, time to address the need for scientific input, testing and production, is not trivial.
But what author does not even mention, is the real breaktrough, the hypersonic cruise missiles with unlimited range and time in air. With nuclear power engine, it can skim waters, go high and low, stay up for years, come from any direction, and no known technology can intercept it. Also, the MIRVs mentioned are Mach 20, all individually maneuverable, in atmosphere, in a near plasma state, due to the new alloys technology. But almost never is mentioned the weapon which actually may be already deployed in numbers, and that is drone submarine. Being considered without any weakness. Quiet, faster then any submerged or surface vehicle, and capable of staying at extreme depths — no known naval object can be safe. But it also has the capability to target coastal infrastructure, from bases to ports, bridges and plants. The recent security conference held in Moscow was attended by the new Chinese head of armed forces. He was rather blunt in his statement: "We came to show Americans the closeness of cooperation between our two countries militaries".
The tendency to think China as weak power is dangerous. China and Russia have been for years running joint military research projects, space projects and university research programs in both countries. Lomonosov opened in Beijing more then a year ago. It will be well worth paying attention to statements coming from both. The Western analysts have become rather relaxed and complacent. For example, back in 2014 China and Russia announced military cooperation on the basis of complimentary strenghts, to "avoid duplication of effort". What is in practice means to me is the following. The nasty little drone submarines may have been already produced in huge numbers in many factories across China. Most of the new weapons systems announced are being touted as modular, so that components can be transported via standard containers, using train, trucks or just plain container ships. Given how critical to both Russia and China is to have means of destroying any forward places assets with short-range cruise missiles, the priority is locating and shadowing nuclar armed submarines close to their landmass. I would not be shocked if these are alrady down in the oceans already. Both South China Sea, Russia’s Pacific coast, Black Sea, Baltics and any approach from underneath North Pole — were critical threats to Russia. The absence of the short-range cruise missile treaties, made Russian defences vulnerable. The land based forward positions, in Poland, Romania — are easy targets when other dangers are neutralised. Russia placed a premium in developing air defence systems, and they are effective.
Now that the limitations of cruise missle techology has been eliminated, and its maneurevability is combined with hypesonic spead, and the elimination of time limit in air — this presents an entirely new set of difficulty for US. Add to this Russia’s determination that it will never allow a war to be fought on its soil — we see the making of a systemic aproach, not just a weapons systems. My prediction is, based on followiong both Russia and China for years, is that they are producing jointly many of these weapons. China certainly has the factory capacities, and thus making the ingtelligence difficulties for those whose job is to keep up with what is going on in Russia.
I read with amusement the mention of the satelite tracking missiles from space. On March 18, this satelite was actually launched. It was launched using Atlas-5 rocket, powered by — guess what — Russian R-180 rocket engine! Musk alternatives are not reliable yet, obviously.
And forgot to mention, deployed is already Kandzar, short range supersonic missile, Mach 10, in southern Russian region. Which adresses the Middle East theater, as well as East European land based forward deployed assets.
Mnngoe-ime Banks Do not underestimate China. Always a bad idea.
Mohammed Karim it’s true the price of war is our lives,before these RH people spend money ta bring peace to this world them planing how ta kill them
seems like a lot of commenters are warmongers than tha author whose intention is just to earn money. if those moron in government knows the capability of their opponent and persist in spending peoples money developing arms that will kill all the people 10 times more than all living beings, then is it not a better option for you guys to exert pressure on your leaders to think instead of options to better the world rather than to develop arms that the enemy can surely ovtain and develop also.
to the commie lovers here: I still have to know discoveries and inventions made recently by these countries which greatly benefit the world and mankind. discoveries the likes of cellphone, internet, computer etc…etc…instead we read of discoveries and manufacture of WMD, rail gun and all these high tech weaponries. is the priority of these state to annihilate mankind or better the world? commie lovers: what are your priorities? learn from the past!!! you can count commie countries left because the idea is garbage. the remaining ones are run by despots and tinpot rulers. do you believe when war starts the soldiers of these warlords will fight for their countries? they might instead kill their corrupt leaders and make their country great by doing the right thing
Rudi Matich Russia has less patents in one year than Microsoft
L John Gittinger Dear John, you seem to be non technical in Electronic Warfare Systems.
We have to look at the cause which is "who is stronger than who" irrespective of the consequences to the entire Ecosystem.
A lot of creations including the space and it’s forces of nature and Gas elements are in danger hence all consequences turn around Mankind..