Selling Space Force To The Public
Barrett, Rogers consider declassifying secretive space programs, Defense News
“As members of the Armed Services Committee and the defense appropriators, we get it. But we have to have our other colleagues in the Congress to be supportive of us making the changes we need and the resources we need into this,” he said. “It’s not going to happen until they understand the threat and the dependence we have. And I don’t think that can happen until we see significant declassification of what we’re doing in space and what China and Russia are doing, and how space is in their day-to-day lives.” Once Americans have access to that currently classified data, they will throw their support behind a Space Force, he concluded. “The lack of an understanding really does hurt us in doing things that we need to do in space,” added Barrett. “There isn’t a constituency for space even though almost everyone uses space before their first cup of coffee in the morning.”
– Space Force Is Worried About Being Called Silly Names, earlier post
– Cutting Deals To Get The Space Force, earlier post
– Dear Space Force Fans: Please Chill Out, earlier post
– Some Space Force Fans Actually Want To Build Starfleet, earlier post
– DoD Seems To Be More Interested In Space Futures Than NASA Is, earlier post
– More Space Force goodness
Join the U.S. Space Force! Great thought. But the image certainly isn’t anywhere near up-to-date. The image of the flier wearing a WWII (at the latest) leather cap and the star with the obsolete red dot in the middle, just doesn’t cut it! How about an astronaut wearing a pressure suit helmet, and update the star in the lower left corner?
As far as the classified data is concerned, the only reason to keep it classified is to hide the means we have for detecting China’s and Russia’s activities/capabilities. That may be valid to an extent. But the question is how much they may know about our detection capabilities, and what is the balance of that information versus the support necessary by the American people to advance and sustain the Space Force.
The military is all about tradition. The Army has brought back World War II uniforms. Even a space force will rely on elements of the past, as it moves into the future.
It’s simple. Ask folks if they like their Smart Phones. If they like the ease of electronic banking, iPay, debit\credit cards. If they like programs that guide them to where the want to go telling they what streets to take. Then just ask them what they would do if none of those worked anymore. No smart phones. No Debit/Credit Cards, no programs to tell them how to reach their destinations.
I do this to my students and I just get a blank stares. How do communicate without a smart phone they ask? How to use text or social media without it? How store registers would stop working and you couldn’t buy any food. How do you know which roads to take to go anywhere? For the latter I show them an old paper map from a gas station and you think I was showing them an ancient stone tablet and describing some ancient survival skill.
Then I explain that without GPS satellites all those things would instantly stop working. That its that thin thread that makes civilization (in their world view) possible. The looks get of horror and fear of how easy we could be plunged into a Stone Age of wired phones, paper media, cash transactions and no social media are a site to behold… None of them ever gave it a thought.
Of course most Congress Critters are old enough to have happy memories of those Stone Age days before twitter and smart phones, but their staffers are young enough to get it, and as we know it’s the staffers that run everything. The money will be provided.
Air travel. Ocean travel. Live TV. No Twitter. No Facebook. All gone or severely degraded.
Your presumption that only a Space Force can protect such technology is not a given.
Protecting IP is not the point. Protecting the physical and cyber capabilities of US MilSpace assets is the point. That requires both the coordinated combatant command known as US Space Command, to do the actual fighting, while Space Force, including its own Space Staff, plan and execute the training, R&D, logistics, and procurement to let US Space Command do its job at the drop of a hat.
The 15 years between 2003 and 2018 showed us that whenever the political pressure gets turned off, those Staffs whose careers are not directed at MilSpace will once again start ignoring MilSpace priorities. That will affect the ability of US Space Command to do its job in an increasingly non-permissive environment. A Space Force is needed to give the same backup to MilSpace as Stratcom gets from the Air Staff and the US Air Force.
*If* you could depend on one Staff to pay attention to *all* military needs, that would be nice, and we do have the Joint Chiefs of Staff to coordinate. The problem is that for long-term planning of training, R&D, Logistics, Procurement, and personnel issues, humans can stretch their attention only so far. So each problem area needs a separate permanent Staff, in a Separate Service.
This is *not* presumption, but experience. This is the history of the last 15 years.
Your description is entirely apt – and, as strongly as you portray the effect of losing satellites, the case is even stronger. Hw quickly could we see America on her knees?
It’s too awful to contemplate, in many ways. To some, it cannot be imagined because the actual facts of our internet society are poorly grasped by a poorly educated America.
While I know the consequences, I admit that I do not actually know how many critical satellites we have (not a quick search is what I mean). I suspect a fairly low number; not surprised if it is <20. Certainly there is redundancy, but still. And I wonder what the actual capacity is, too.
Maybe someone else is better informed?
“I suspect a fairly low number; not surprised if it is <20.”
The GPS system alone is 34. The total is 60-70, depending on how you count operational birds.
Yes, but I think they need 30 GPS satellites to provide normal capabilities. After that, performance starts degrading. Below 24 satellites and I believe the system isn’t mission capable. Something similar is true of surveillance satellites. Reducing the number produces coverage gaps which become easier and easier to exploit as the number of satellites goes down.
Quite correct, …as far as a layman like myself knows, anyway. It is the exploitable gaps that are the first desired result of any exploit against GPS. For smaller short-term operations. Taking out the whole system is a major geopolitical/military leverage operation, with high costs, so you don’t start, unless you intend to get worldwide benefits. The calculations of when that can be guaranteed in a scheduled combined arms operation are what the PLASSF is working toward being able to do. The Space Force’s job will be to move back into the future the time when such a calculation can be successful as a prediction.
“I do this to my students and I just get a blank stares. How do communicate without a smart phone they ask? How to use text or social media without it? How store registers would stop working and you couldn’t buy any food. How do you know which roads to take to go anywhere? For the latter I show them an old paper map from a gas station and you think I was showing them an ancient stone tablet and describing some ancient survival skill.” – Thomas Matula
What concerns me is the amount of dependence we have on GPS, etc. Granted, the newer ones are being hardened. But “someone” sends nuke up that sends an EMP around the planet, and we all better know how to read a map, and maybe figure out how to target our “smart” bombs!
It really does go as deep as buying food. I was once at a conference in Sweden, where just about everyone pays for everything with credit cards. Really. Down to one-way bus fares costing about a couple dollars and paid when you board the bus. After dinner one night, the waitress was extremely embarrassed when she had to tell us their internet connection was down and ask if we could pay in cash. Fortunately we were clueless foreigners who hadn’t realized what a cashless country it was and had taken actual paper money out of an ATM as soon as we’d gotten off the plane. We really are moving towards a world where even the simplest things become difficult without all that sophisticated communications infrastructure.
Yes, Tesla’s Cybertruck may look tough, but I wonder how many of its systems would survive the lost of GPS and/or an EMP strike. An old Ford Falcon would probably be more practical, assuming the gas pumps were working.
Well, those gas pumps are, for the most part, electronically controlled, so good luck keeping those old Ford trucks running if the power grid goes down. Let’s face it. The more advanced and sophisticated our technology gets, the more dependent it is on infrastructure. And that infrastructure gets more sophisticated and delicate. I hate to be pessimistic and this isn’t just a space issue. But we’re moving in a direction where anything (war, man-made accident or natural disasters) can take out the infrastructure we are rely on more and more. To take this back to something relevant to NASA Watch, this says something about space colonies. If you are critically dependent on the infrastructure, as a space colony would be, you really must make sure that infrastructure is robust to all sorts of problems.
Yes, and one of the spinoffs of doing research on how to design space colonies would be more robust technology to apply to infrastructure on Earth. This is actually how space colonies will save Earth, not by providing a backup to Earth, but by creating an Earth 2.0 by producing robust, independent, off grid technology that could make communities on Earth more independent in terms of energy, food, water, etc. And as a side effect likely reduce CO2 emissions while hardening communities to changes to the climate system.
“But “someone” sends nuke up that sends an EMP around the planet,….”
EMP is line of sight, and decreases in strength with the inverse square of the distance. It is generated in atmospheric pressures at altitudes between 0-5Km and between 25-250Km. Knowing all the rest is now being taught in the military. Naval officers are being introduced to that ancient device called a “sextant”, without a giggle, because they’ll have to pass muster on it before going to sea soon.
Civilians will be in “deep, …deepness” if the 34 operating GPS sats are disabled. Time, and past time, to start proliferating their successors by 1-2 orders of magnitude. Space Force must be spun up for that, and that in turn will require talking, legally, to people about what is done.
EMP is line of sight…
Apparently not. Fascinating stuff…
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
“I just get a blank stares”
And less than a single generation, too. iPhones were introduced in 2007! They weren’t the first cell phones, but in many ways they introduced ‘smart phones’ to the masses; I had an ‘internet capable’ Razr, a phone that I still admire, but it sure wasn’t a smart phone. In the 90’s we were only dreaming that phones and computers were addressable by voice.
Admission: I find myself using navigation in my truck between common destinations that I for sure don’t need it. But how else would I know my ETA? 🙂
I am fully and totally engaged in the ‘smart phone economy’ ; I feel entirely grateful that I live in this time and place and can take advantage of every possible technology. Apple Pay at Trader Joe’s? Check! Discount app at Whole Foods? Check! Notification of upcoming meetings and due dates? Check!
And, due to a recent change in status, I’ve been looking at dating apps, which scare the hell out of me!
FB excepted, of course, as well as Alexa, et. al. …I’m making some sort of fruitless privacy stand…
It appears the current and inevitably increasing criticism of black money of unholy amounts going down black holes no one knows about maybe has caught some higher ups attention. Umm…see where this goes.
Why bother paying for these expensive systems if you are going to ignore the data anyways?
https://www.popularmechanic…
It’s not hard to imagine as well, taking jammed GPS sats as a given, that pretty inexpensive ground based systems could just make all imaging sats useless, and that both sides being blind again like the old days is far worse for the US. Declassifying how the US gets around both will essentially transition space into a deterrent posture, where we show off the ships and potential adversaries know exactly how many carriers, cruisers and such are in inventory. Move into the world of cyber, signals and beyond and the challenges are obvious, how to take an NSA, CIA, no such agency culture and get it to think Navy, wargames as a show of force. This will not be easy, yet the alternative risk is distance, detachment, budgets eventually losing stakeholder interest and support for being akin to asking for blank checks for mystery meat of pork.
Explaining the need for some sort of space force will not be easy. As a nation, we’ve spent the past 20-30± years demeaning every single institution, characterizing honest civil servants as ‘deep state operatives.’ There’s no trust or respect in government. And while the military still enjoys a bit of love, senselessness like endless modern wars are not helpful. We even hate each other: which is why we haven’t figured out health care.
And this has real fallout, too. In a period where interest rates are stunningly low, for instance, we ought to be issuing bonds for infrastructure projects. Instead we have a Congress hopelessly locked up.
Sorry for the digression. I now return you to your regular programming…
Fair points.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Reminds me back in 1980s some of the SDI “star wars” program was declassified because of waning support. We see lots of interesting artwork and that Starship Troopers poster below with the analogies of previous recruiting and promoting. So far as one of you mentioned “I have yet to meet a civilian that has heard of SLS and Artemis.”
Seems to me SF is re-assigning existing personnel to a new branch which they will generally be sitting in front of computer monitors.
We talk about the airplane analogy, an interesting lecture is this about Hap Arnold on creating the Air Force separate branch from the Army which centered around calvaries. Not sure what is or is not applicable of today’s air forces and space forces, https://www.c-span.org/vide…
“Seems to me SF is re-assigning existing personnel to a new branch which they will generally be sitting in front of computer monitors.”
That is US Space Command, for the first few years. It will grow as the threat grows.
Space Force is all the support structure that US Space Command will need as the threats from PLASSF and Russia’s “Space Troops” grow. Space Force’s Space Staff will be doing the longer-term planning for training, R&D, Logistics, recruitment, procurement, and all the other support activities that a combatant command like US Space Command, won’t have time for when the alarms ring as alerts for 10-15 stalker satellites approaching the GPS system (for instance) satellites that will be servicing South China Sea for the next hour go off. US Space Command will *use* that level of “space situational awareness”, but it must be created first, by Space Force, because the Air Force has not done so.
If the Washington Big Dogs – meaning the Senators who count, the military, the upper echelon press, and others – if these folks decide a Space Corps is a necessary part of our future, or politically beneficial, we will begin to see a campaign starting small and ‘fring-y’, as the waters are tested.
This type of speech is just the beginning; trot out some right-leaning retired generals for gravitas. But the message will start to include the left, and center.
Crafted messages will become multilateral, a crescendo of seeming fear mongering. Indeed the messages must become more fearful, and with a shrill tone, to have a chance of cutting through the BS that is impeachment-crazed Washington.
Thus spake Zarathustra…
And thus the wheels go round and round, repeating the same old errors humans have always and will always make again and again.