The Pentagon’s Space Jam
Twenty miles outside of Havana, Cuba, lies a small town called Bejucal. It is home to tobacco farmers, fields of sugar cane, and a Soviet-era electronic eavesdropping installation. In July, a transmitter from Bejucal began jamming all the United States’ satellite television transmissions into Iran as part of a joint effort by the Iranian and ...
Twenty miles outside of Havana, Cuba, lies a small town called Bejucal. It is home to tobacco farmers, fields of sugar cane, and a Soviet-era electronic eavesdropping installation. In July, a transmitter from Bejucal began jamming all the United States' satellite television transmissions into Iran as part of a joint effort by the Iranian and Cuban governments to hinder "Voice of America" broadcasts in Farsi.
Twenty miles outside of Havana, Cuba, lies a small town called Bejucal. It is home to tobacco farmers, fields of sugar cane, and a Soviet-era electronic eavesdropping installation. In July, a transmitter from Bejucal began jamming all the United States’ satellite television transmissions into Iran as part of a joint effort by the Iranian and Cuban governments to hinder "Voice of America" broadcasts in Farsi.
Jamming and disabling satellites is becoming a common practice worldwide. In the future, rogue satellites — nearly impossible to intercept or disable — could well launch similar attacks. Until now, plans to protect U.S. satellites in orbit have been more science fiction than reality. A 2001 commission, led by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, envisaged a space coast guard of robotic micro-satellites inspecting, intercepting, relocating, and, where necessary, destroying hostile orbiting satellites. However, this year the project — viewed by many inside and outside the Air Force as the first step toward the weaponization of space — was cut due to what a Pentagon spokesman described as technical "immaturity."
Theresa Hitchens, of the Center for Defense Information, agrees that the system is indeed technically immature; it depends on too many technologies still in the development stage. The ability to robotically attack another satellite in orbit is, by her estimation, at least 25 years away. But, Hitchens is convinced that the Pentagon is continuing to develop space-based anti-satellite technology. Witness the $30 million assigned in the Air Force’s 2004 budget for micro-satellite and counter-satellite development — funding for a project the Air Force claims to have "dropped."
Hitchens argues that instead of taking the offensive and starting an arms race in space, the satellite industry should shore up its defenses by developing better encryption for communication satellites and hardening them against radiation and other forms of attack. "I don’t blame them for being worried," she adds. "Consider the U.S. military’s global positioning system. That’s maintained by only five ground stations. If one of those were taken out by a truck bomb, the whole system could go down."
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