Thursday, September 29, 2022

Satellite Survivability

There are a lot of misconceptions about satellites in war.  So many people believe that they can be used to instantaneously target and attack ships at sea, as if the satellites are directly connected to the firing button of every missile shooting asset we – or the enemy – has.  That’s not even remotely true but that’s not the point of this post.

 

Another widely held belief is that every satellite in orbit will be destroyed in the opening hours of a war.  However, while the US and China have both demonstrated the ability to destroy satellites using missiles or orbital ‘seeding’ of debris, there is no evidence that either side possesses sufficient satellite destruction capacity to completely eliminate the other’s satellites in a matter of hours.  How many satellites will be destroyed in the opening days of a war?  5%?  50%?  90%?  No one knows, at least not in the public domain. 

 

What is certain is that many satellites will be quickly destroyed and that, due to depleted numbers, surviving surveillance satellites will be tasked with high priority surveillance, meaning nuclear monitoring and mass troop movements.  Individual ship movements will be a much lower priority, bordering on unavailable.

 

Everyone is focused on the physical destruction of satellites but what gets overlooked is that satellites are extremely vulnerable to being rendered inoperable (mission kill, in a sense) via software and communication attacks. 

 

All satellites depend on software control systems for guidance, movement, alignment, operation, data transmission, and data interpretation.  That represents a lot of opportunities for software disruption via cyber attacks, hacks, viruses, etc.  Every satellite that can receive a ground control signal (and that’s all of them) is susceptible to software attacks.  Just from the cyber attacks that have been publicly acknowledged, we know that China has thoroughly penetrated our industrial and military networks.  It is elementary logic to assume that China knows our satellite software systems and is prepared to cyber-disrupt our satellites the moment war begins.  Unlike the limited degree of physical destruction, cyber-destruction has the potential to eliminate nearly all our satellite capabilities.

 

The other vulnerability is communications.  After all, a fully functioning satellite is useless if its data can’t be transmitted and received.  Satellite data transmissions are vulnerable to communication link disruptions, jamming, false signal injection, etc.  We’ve seen examples of this for years with Russian interference and manipulation of GPS signals.  As with cyber-destruction of satellites, the potential for communications disruption is likely greater than the potential for physical damage.

 

It seems likely that the predictions of massive satellite ‘destruction’ in the opening hours of war are correct, however, the method of that destruction is likely to be software cyber attacks and communications disruption more so than physical destruction.  Nevertheless, the end result is the same.  We’ll have few remaining functioning satellite assets and those that survive will be tasked with only the highest priorities.  Searching for individual ships on the ocean will not be one of those tasks.

 

Satellite survivability is of immense importance for both offensive and defensive operational planning.  We have to know to what degree we can depend on satellite surveillance, if at all, and we have to know to what degree our forces will be susceptible to enemy satellite surveillance.  Hopefully, the Navy, who ought to have a much better informed grasp of all this, has taken satellite survivability into account in its planning … not that I’ve seen any evidence of war planning.

19 comments:

  1. Public knowledge article example: https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/02/politics/china-hackers-espionage-defense-contractors/index.html

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    1. Additionally: https://blog.knowbe4.com/china-finally-admits-it-has-a-hacker-army

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  2. Military satellites are still worryingly vulnerable to cyberattack.
    The article was published in 2019.
    https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/07/02/134314/military-satellites-are-still-worryingly-vulnerable-to-cyberattack/
    Hopefully since 2019 there has been improvement in this situation.


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    1. This article is from Space news and is dates 2021.
      https://spacenews.com/u-s-military-doubles-down-on-gps-despite-vulnerabilities/
      It appears that some improvement has been made with the latest GPS satellites.

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  3. Does the USN conduct regular training exercises where the assumption is that all satellites are knocked out on day one, so that older and more reliable skills have to be utilized? How many navigators/quartermasters, for example, are proficient at celestial in case GPS goes out? My guesses would be no and not many, respectively.

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    1. Institute some sort of bonus for every officer that can even locate their copy of Bowditch; double it if there's less than a quarter inch of dust on the cover.

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    2. A double bonus if they can do the calculations by hand without benefit of computer or calculator...

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    3. I haven't shot stars in 50 years, and I could probably still run circles around most of them doing celestial.

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    4. "I haven't shot stars in 50 years"

      Admittedly, there's some actors in Hollywood that are not very likeable but shooting them seems a bit drastic.

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    5. "...shooting them seems a bit drastic."

      We'll just have to agree to disagree on that one. ;)

      Lutefisk

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  4. Its not just cyber attacks that are going to cause problems.

    It will take relatively few LEO ASAT missions for Kessler Effect to make LEO completely unusable, probably for decades. The same problem exists in GeoSynch orbits which are already horrendously crowded.

    GPS sats live in MEO orbits, about half-way to GeoSynch, and are definitely vulnerable to ASAT attacks. And because of Kessler Effect in LEO, getting past LEO to place replacement GPS sats may prove difficult to impossible.

    There is a pretty good chance that a war with China will deny our access to space for decades. Kessler is in no way instantaneous, but the effects are very long lasting.

    Just another consequence to think about...

    George

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  5. There are many satellites, but few terrestrial uplink stations and they are vulnerable...

    Also, there are few places where submarine/fiber optic cables make landfall. Modern communications are shockingly vulnerable to disruption.

    But why disrupt when you can listen in, or better manipulate what the enemy sees, and communicates?

    GAB

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  6. We are simply too dependent on GPS.

    One of the hardest things to learn to do is to understand where you are and where you are going while using a map and a compass.

    An old joke in the army is to tell someone to go shake a tree so you can see on the map where you are.

    GPS is too easy. If you depend on it you never go through the difficult process of learning the difficult way, and when GPS is denied you'll, literally, be lost.

    Lutefisk

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  7. One solution is to make SW companies liable for faults. Get rid of EULAs and use the common man rule on SW companies. For example there are tools that scan SW for known security vulnerabilities, but they cost money (relatively small amounts) yet companies do not use them. Even the free ones are hard to get companmies to use becuase they slow down "production" when that is more important than quality. In a lawsuit the common man rule would ask did you use these tools to find your vulnerability? If the answer is now you pay. Until we start treaing SW like airplanes or cars or medicine we will continue to get the crap that is protected by the user agreed to use it. Start professionally licensing SW "engineers" and make them start carrying product liability insurance for the processes they oversee and this will reduce DRASTICALLY. But that would cut into the glamour of Silicon Valley and and make SW follow good engineering proctices.

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    1. I'm not as big a fan of using a stick as I am of using a carrot. Stock options and rising share prices are a powerful incentive to produce a good product.

      When I worked for Citrix, the corporate culture guaranteed pretty good software because everyone took pride in their work plus the test department was first rate.

      Unfortunate that culture doesn't extend across the industry...

      George

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    2. There are always outliers or new companies that have the culture to produce qulaity products. I worked at Mototora at the hieght of their cell phone glory. However, they do not seem to be able to last once the bean counters take over or you no longer have a product guy in charge. Capitalism in the West is focused on only proucing the biggest short term gain, becuase the managers get theirs and don;t care for the product or people that get burned. Human greed is the most powerful force in the Universe and we must factor that into the way we approach things.

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  8. Lose Sat comms at the start of hostilities - MG Isenhower, maneuver warfighter conference 2022, Day 3, Division Commander Panel (48 minutes)

    https://youtu.be/PzvY7eYq3y0?t=2849

    Though to have a US General come out and say that they don't have confidence in the existing satellite system to survive in the face of hostilities with a major world power, rather refreshing.

    Makes me wonder if the US Navy feels confident enough to post a similar conference for public consumption. From what I can find out, this conference happened a couple weeks ago, and was posted this past friday on the Fort Benning youtube channel.

    -DLF

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  9. You have to wonder if the destruction of inner satellites might create a "debris shield" that protects the outer satellites.

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  10. Let suppose if it is possible that satellite has the button to fire missile then what will happen?

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