Nathan Eismont assessed the situation with space weapons
A large-scale offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is impossible without clear interaction and control, that is, without reliable communications, as well as without up-to-date intelligence. Both are provided by satellite constellations of the United States and Western countries, whose capabilities are many times greater than ours. Is it possible to oppose something to this total superiority? Natan Eismont, a leading researcher at the Space Research Institute (IKI RAS), Ph.D.
The expression «total superiority» is not used for the sake of a red word. It is no coincidence that on Cosmonautics Day the President spoke about the need for a sharp increase in the number of our satellites. We have about 150 of them, maybe a little more. It's all together — civil, military, scientific, communications, navigation, surveillance.
For comparison: China has 300-400 devices, including about a hundred military ones. The United States until recently had 1,400 devices. But after Elon Musk implemented his Starlink low-orbit satellite communications project, the number of American devices in orbit exceeded 4000.
Western countries have an order of magnitude more observation satellites than we do. The more of them, the more often they can fly over the desired area and take intelligence information about the location and movement of our troops. If our devices fly over some regions of Ukraine 2-3 times a day, then Western devices, changing each other, “hang” above us almost continuously, transmitting intelligence information online.
Not so long ago, by decision of the US Congressional Armed Services Committee, thanks to the widespread use of satellites of private American companies, the National Space Reconnaissance Office (NRO) increased the ability to provide up-to-date, real-time, high-resolution space imagery to Kiev and NATO allies. The APU employs Maxar Technologies, Planet and BlackSky and at least five other companies.
Everyone knows that Starlink terminals are actively used by Ukrainian troops to organize military communications. At the disposal of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are hundreds, if not thousands, of terminals that provide communications, intelligence transmission, and target designation at a tactical level.
In order to somehow get rid of direct participation in an armed conflict, Elon Musk said that he had blocked the capabilities of Starlink in targeting Ukrainian drones attacking Russian targets. However, this is hard to believe.
Do we have ways to jam, for example, Starlink? It was reported that our electronic warfare complex «Tirada 2C» or «Triada 2C» copes with this. But they can solve problems only locally, on a certain section of the front.
What if they act not on the signals, but on the satellites themselves? Moreover, they are located in low Earth orbits of 400-500 km.
Methods of influence are known. For example, our country, as well as the United States and China, conducted experiments to destroy a satellite in orbit with a rocket launched from the ground. It was announced, for example, that the new S-500 system would be able to work on objects in near space. And the Nudol complex not so long ago successfully repeated the Soviet experience in destroying an old satellite.
But this method has costs. When a rocket collides with an apparatus, a cloud of fragments flying at cosmic speed is formed, threatening all vehicles in this orbit. For example, after China's anti-satellite missile hit its old Fengyun FY-1C weather satellite on January 11, 2007, a cloud of at least 2,317 pieces of space debris a few centimeters in size or more was formed at an altitude of 865 km. Such «garbage» easily stitches the skin of a satellite or spacecraft.
There are other ways to deal with other people's satellites. So, since 2017, the Russian military department has been periodically conducting experiments in orbit with the so-called inspector satellites. This is when a small device, maneuvering in orbit, can fly up to another satellite. Our military stated that the purpose of such “flights” was to study the external state of the object. But, as they say, even a fool understands that by getting close to some apparatus, you can somehow influence it.
China has also conducted a series of such tests. So, according to US media reports, in 2013, three small Chinese satellites participated in the experiment, one of which was equipped with a manipulator. The manipulator can be used to capture or damage alien satellites. The device changed its orbit by 150 kilometers, approaching another satellite at a short distance.
But even this anti-satellite tool is not ideal. And above all, according to the criterion of «cost-effectiveness». Launching a «satellite fighter» into orbit is not cheap. If, of course, the object that needs to be neutralized costs under a billion dollars (and heavy military satellites have about the same price), then the game is worth the candle. Well, if the target is relatively cheap communications satellites, like Starlink, which are launched in batches into orbit with one rocket, then the expediency of using “satellite fighters” maneuvering in orbit is sharply reduced. In addition, any maneuver in orbit requires large amounts of fuel, and the satellite has a limited supply of it.
Former Ukrainian People's Deputy Oleg Tsarev proposes a generally radical way to deal with enemy spacecraft — the explosion of a tactical nuclear charge in space, «to destroy the constellation of foreign satellites directing the Armed Forces of Ukraine to our positions.”
“Yes, there are risks for us too, we need an accurate calculation,” he said. — For people on Earth, the risk is 0, but immediately a huge advantage for the troops on the ground. No wonder Elon Musk is so worried — his constellation of satellite communications and the Internet will immediately turn into a space constellation of flying scrap metal along with NATO satellites.
MK asked Natan Eismont, a leading researcher at IKI RAS, to evaluate the methods of anti-satellite warfare.
— In fact, if we take into account such a number of devices in orbit in one communication system, then he is a pioneer. But if we talk about low-orbit groupings in general, then it has predecessors. Our country is among them.
Everyone has already forgotten, for example, about the history of the Iridium satellite communication system. There are also low-orbit vehicles. It was a joint Russian-American project.
Why was iridium chosen for the name? Because it has an atomic number of 77. That is how many devices were originally supposed to be launched according to the project. They were launched. And who launched them? This, too, is interesting. Almost all of the satellites were launched by us with the help of the Proton launch vehicles of the Khrunichev Center.
I don’t know exactly which part of the satellites was in development and production. I think they were mostly American. And the launch was entirely ours. Our terminals in Moscow, in Fili, were built to control satellites.
Everything actually worked great. The devices are designed for direct communication of subscribers via satellite. There were no intermediate devices on earth that would relay the signal from the satellites or, conversely, to the satellite. It's just that the signal from the satellite goes to the user.
The idea is this: if you are God knows where — in the desert, taiga, the Arctic region — you can immediately call whoever you want, directly via satellite to the subscriber.
< p>Again, it all worked. At that time, and this is approximately the end of the 90s — the beginning of the 2000s, the parties invested a rather large amount. Several billion dollars. Our contribution was formed taking into account launch services. The cost of launching one heavy Proton is about $100 million.
And then everything went in a very unpleasant way. Creating such a system is not cheap. And I need to get my money back somehow. Therefore, the subscription fee was set at such a level that there were few people willing to buy the services of this system. They were not enough to pay for this project.
As a result, the business went bankrupt. Further, of course, everything looks extremely ugly, unpleasant and raises questions today. Some answers can be offered right away, but I don’t know how they will satisfy everyone.
Once the company went bankrupt, it means that it was sold under the hammer on the world market. I told you how much was spent on our side. Do you know how much the owner and operator company was sold for? Of course, no one can say the exact numbers. But the starting price was… 20 thousand US dollars.
— This is something else. The question arises: who bought the system and is still using it successfully? So, the final recipient of Iridium's services is the CIA. There, of course, there was originally a laying company, it still works, a private office registered in the USA. Performs, including US Department of Defense contracts.
Now it is a successful operator: 400 thousand users. Covers 100 percent of the globe. Everything works great. They, of course, replaced satellites that had exhausted their resources. Services are provided at affordable prices. Everyone is happy. There are enough subscribers to make everything pay off. The quality is acceptable.
There is no need to talk about bankruptcy or any problems for this company. Successful project. It is possible that the CIA still plays an important role there.
It seems that somehow our participants in this project were «scammed» for money. This is a problem that for some reason is not customary to talk about. I know this with a fair degree of certainty.
— His system is built a little differently. Another principle. The Starlink network still has ground terminals that provide satellite communications. Iridium, I repeat, has none of this. That is, if you are a subscriber of this system, then you do not need an intermediary, except for the satellite itself, which is always easy to find, because there are enough of them in orbit.
— Yes, then there were others. Including with the participation of Russia. For example, the OneWeb system. This is also a very instructive story. OneWeb is kind of like an international company. But it is registered in the UK. We launched practically all the satellites for this company with the help of Soyuz rockets. Under a hundred devices. The main partner of OneWeb was, in my opinion, the NGO named after Lavochkin.
The orbits of the satellites are slightly higher than those of Starlink. Everything was successful. It remains to launch a little less than ten devices. But then the SVO began, and what happened happened. The partnership has ended. We refused to launch the devices.
Of course, one can argue whether it was the best decision or not the best. I'm not afraid to say this, it seems to me that this is not the best decision of the former leadership of Roskosmos.
OneWeb devices are not simple. Like all satellites for this kind of tasks, they are all equipped with electric jet engines manufactured by a Russian company. When such constellations are created, one cannot do without engines on satellites. For at least one simple reason: when there are a lot of satellites, they must be controlled, otherwise they will start colliding with each other. To maintain an orbital grouping so that all devices are in their places, it is possible only with the help of engines.
— The main thing is to keep them in their places, they must be able, if necessary, to accelerate or slow down, to maneuver, to correct the orbit. The «grid» of satellites must be maintained, not just a hodgepodge. And Musk does the same. All devices are equipped with electric jet engines. True, they work for Musk on krypton, and for OneWeb they work on xenon.
So, OneWeb was critically dependent on Russian electric propulsion engines. They are the best in the world. In our country they were created and put into operation 30 years earlier than anyone else did something similar in the world. It is no coincidence that OneWeb decided to cooperate with us. Bought these engines from us.
Other firms made do with traditional chemical propulsion, which uses rocket fuel and an oxidizer. But this is extremely unprofitable, inconvenient. The solution is highly suboptimal. This is immediately evident, even if you look at the appearance of Soviet, Russian navigation and communication satellites, in comparison with foreign counterparts. The difference is immediately visible. Our foreign colleagues had to load a lot of chemical fuel to solve the same problems. There it was immediately clear that their tanks, compared to the tanks on our vehicles, are simply gigantic. And any extra kilogram of cargo increases the cost of launch.
Therefore, the British company OneWeb chose our company in this competition. Others still don't have such experience.
But we left the project, slammed the door. Most likely, they suffered some losses. In my opinion, not the best solution, at least not optimal. If only because now you can always find another partner in the launch services market. And, of course, OneWeb immediately found a performer — the remaining devices were launched by the Indians. Who does not want to earn money, everyone wants to.
We have lost something, but OneWeb has not lost anything. Here the question arises: where did OneWeb get correction engines for its satellites instead of Russian ones? They took it somewhere. And I suspect, acquired through intermediaries. Although it is possible that they bought the engines earlier, with a margin.
The situation looks something like in a joke: I will gouge out my eye to spite my mother-in-law, let her son-in-law be oblique. Initially, as far as I know, OneWeb offered us to be not only a participant in the launch, but also an operator of a satellite communications system. But it didn't work out…
— Of course, its satellites are smaller than those of other low-orbital systems. Therefore, there is a need for ground-based simple equipment. Musk himself said publicly that nothing would be used for military purposes. This, of course, is not true. Starlink is used by the Ukrainian military. They have more than 20 thousand terminals at their disposal, and their number is likely to increase even more.
There are some restrictions. To control the drones, some kind of lock is claimed to be installed. Like it or not — requires verification. Rather, it was conceived by Musk like this, but you can’t immediately say to what extent it was realized.
Starlink is a problem for our members of the NWO. Although Musk, apparently, does not want to spoil relations with Russia, there are, of course, grounds for blaming him as a party that is involved in the conflict. It is certain.
— Their darkness. Imagine: it is necessary to distribute in low Earth orbit not 24 devices, like GLONASS, but more than 3000. These are dozens of planes in which hundreds of devices are placed. If you look at the diagram of these planes, it's just a network.
Musk has made a new advance in rocket and space technology. In some respects, of course, he was ahead of everyone. His vehicles are also equipped with electric propulsion engines powered by krypton. They allow you to perform all the necessary maneuvers.
There is also the problem of decommissioning obsolete satellites. They need a «farewell» impulse towards the Earth so that they burn up in the dense layers of the atmosphere. This can be done, of course, only if you have an engine on the device, so that the removal is controlled and not chaotic.
Starlink satellites still fly in fairly low orbits. If left alone, such devices, then under the influence of the upper layers of the atmosphere, they decrease and, in the end, enter the dense layers of the atmosphere and burn out.
— All, of course. This is one network. Managed as a unit. The operator sees that some devices come to this area, some leave and are not able to provide subscribers with communication services. These are satellites in low orbit — they appeared above the horizon and ran away. Above the horizon, the device is less than ten minutes, then it is changed by other devices. Like the ISS, at the same altitude.
— Certainly. And rockets will cost much more than these satellites. What's so great about Musk? The fact that he built the system relatively cheaply. The initial investment, of course, was gigantic. But now they are very easy to pay off, give a huge profit. Users — an abyss. This idea of his is apparently very profitable.
There are figures — how much a piece of equipment, a terminal, costs. Well, just nothing. A lot of them. Everyone gets these services by paying a one-time fee and then another subscription fee. There are tens of thousands of terminals in Ukraine alone. But this is a drop in the ocean. After all, there is Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America.
— In order for such an inspector satellite to be able to get at least a few devices and disable it, it will have to maneuver a lot, that is, it will need to have a large supply of fuel. The one you shoot down is worth a lot less than the one who shoots down. You will go bankrupt very quickly if you go to the financial side of the issue.
That is, you will not solve the problem. It's the same with drones. You won’t shoot at a kilogram drone with an S-400 missile. Here the picture is similar.
She's not that exotic. In open sources, at conferences, such things were discussed. They came to the conclusion that, yes, one of the factors of a nuclear explosion — electromagnetic radiation — can affect the on-board electronics of spacecraft.
But here's the thing. After all, this is a device that affects, but it does not understand who it affects.
With powerful electromagnetic radiation, not only what we would like to disable will be disabled, but also our own devices, devices of friendly countries, for example, China or India.
I don’t know how to solve such a problem. And I do not know who can offer what solution. If these solutions exist, then they are not very simple solutions. It seems to me that this is not the direction that will allow us to solve the problems of combating enemy satellites. Maybe someone will come up with a non-nuclear source of electromagnetic radiation, some kind of powerful electromagnetic pulse. But it will affect everyone. That's the problem
— No, but it is quite possible to create local interference with the help of electronic warfare. In some place you can close the sky, set up an umbrella with powerful electronic warfare. It's only local. And that is difficult.
With the help of the same spacecraft, it may be possible to do this. So far, I have not heard about such developments in the public domain. There were no signs that someone managed to materialize this idea. I think it's really a dead end. The only thing available is local exposure.