U.S. favors stealthy anti-satellite strategy

Robert Windrem Senior investigative producer • E-mail

Two months ago, China fired a medium-range missile into space to destroy one of its own weather satellites in low Earth orbit, attracting the attention of many in the strategic community.

For some, the Jan. 11 test revealed China’s increasing military capabilities and an emerging threat to U.S. dominance in military space. For others, the test proved the need for a U.S. anti-satellite capability. The conventional wisdom was that the United States needed to create such a system to deter the Chinese from doing anything rash in an international crisis — in effect, bringing mutually assured destruction to military space operations.

The reality is different from the conventional wisdom, according to knowledgeable space experts and former intelligence officials. They say the United States already has an anti-satellite capability — just not the kind that China displayed in January.

Rather than a kinetic approach, say officials and experts, the United States has adopted a method that relies on spy satellites’ most vulnerable aspect: the need for constant housekeeping from the ground.

To maintain satellite orbits, particularly low Earth orbits, controllers on the ground must send their satellites a constant barrage of signals from ground stations around the world.  For example, the United States maintains the Satellite Control Network, a string of eight tracking stations in places as remote as Thule Air Base on Greenland, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

By interfering with those signals — called telemetry, tracking and control signals — the United States can put satellites out of commission for critical periods of time or send them spiraling out of control. Intelligence experts call the strategy “electronic negation” or “intrusion.”

"The best ASAT [anti-satellite device] is not a weapon that detonates next to an enemy satellite," said William E. Burrows, a journalism professor at New York University who is also the author of "Deep Black," a book on spy satellites. "Instead, it would be a signal that would tell the satellite to take the rest of the afternoon off."

Such a device is best for a number of reasons, experts say. Sending up a flurry of ASATS —missiles or space mines — would be obvious and could start an arms race in space or trigger a war in a crisis. Blinding an adversary has had that effect for eons. Using signals intelligence and intrusion is far subtler, and thus more difficult for the victim to detect.

Soviet-era skulduggery
The technology is not new. The Soviet Union first employed such interference against the United States more than 30 years ago — along with their own kinetic ASATs.

“In the 1970s, the U.S. noticed that once a Marisat satellite (a maritime communications satellite) was outside the range of tracking stations in the continental United States, it was turned off,” an intelligence expert familiar with the operations told MSNBC.com on condition of anonymity. “Once it came back into range, it was turned back on.”

The United States immediately suspected that the Soviets had sent signals to the satellite causing the outage, the expert said. (The choice of the Marisat was interesting. The Soviets suspected — correctly — that it was used by American agents operating in the Soviet Union to communicate with the CIA.)

Addressing the threat
Jeffrey T. Richelson, author of a dozen books on U.S. and Soviet intelligence capabilities, said the United States understood the threat.  He points to a 1977 memo from Brent Scowcroft, then national security adviser, to the secretaries of state and defense as well as the director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency on “U.S. Anti-Satellite Capabilities.”

The memo once classified “Top Secret” but now available at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library (and online) lays out presidential fears of Soviet dominance in the area and the means to counter it.  “The Soviets should not be allowed an exclusive sanctuary in space for critical military supporting satellites,” Scowcroft wrote.

Scowcroft, on behalf of the president, proposed a twofold strategy. The more obvious solution was to be pursued in the open—the acquisition of an low-orbit anti-satellite interceptor capable of destroying “a small number (6 to 10) of important military satellites within a period of one week.”

But the “fact of” an electronic ASAT capability — one that would  “electronically nullify critical Soviet military satellites at all altitudes up to synchronous” — was to be “classified and special compartmented,” meaning kept at the highest security level possible.  The reason: “to avoid stimulating” counter measures by the Soviets.

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