Originally published at: E-3 Successor Could Be Leapfrogged by Satellite Surveillance - AVweb
Current order for 26 Boeing 737-based E-7 ‘Wedgetails’ Is In jeopardy.
Another short sighted decision. Space based assets will be the first thing the Chinese and Russians will go after. Same dumb decision as getting rid of LORAN, but I digress…
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Anything the current administration wants to do is very suspect! With Pete Heggs worth running things Russia and China must be very excited!
Interesting choice of words by the defense secretary. On battlefield survivability, let’s assume a high-intensity, contested battlespace - war with Russia or China. Satellites on their own are sitting ducks and leaves the US vulnerable. For resilience, much better to have a mix (tw, the same goes for navaids!).
Further let me suggest that it’s true that in the long run, except for static and stable contexts, diversity confers general adaptability and resilience. You’d be wrong to think that the world order right now is static and stable.
I worked 40 years in the space industry, including 35 at Boeing. The only aircraft project I worked on was when I was on loan for three months to the P-8 Poseidon program.
They brought me in to analyze a new capability they wanted to add to the aircraft. But after a short time, the Government decided it was more cost-effective to forward the raw data to the CONUS via satellite than to add the capability for the aircraft to produce the results.
Having worked on studies to disrupt, kill, or defend satellites for many years prior to that, I tried to raise holy hell. Space assets are going to be the first targets in a war…communications links first of all. The Russians developed their first ground-based anti-satellite weapon about 50 years ago. Easy enough to jam signals from space or ground, it’s less easy to intercept and destroy satellites, but all it takes is a smart satellite or a “smart brick”… like WE demonstrated forty years ago (F-15 launched ASAT).
One factor people lose track of is the “political invulnerability” of space assets. If the Russians or Chinese shoot down a pack of E-3s or P-8s, they kill American service people, and the US Government will have little choice but to escalate.
But if they put a high-velocity BB into a reconnaissance satellite…or park a microsat singing “The East is Red” next to a US Comsat, jamming its communications links…the average American won’t see that as a threat serious enough to go to war over.