Orbital wars of France. Russian satellites, tremble!
Chasing fashion trends
Following the United States, France announced plans to create space troops. In the United States, it’s even “power,” that is, the type of aircraft, already the sixth in a row. (On the issue of our reforms of the air forces of the 90’s and the beginning of the “zero”, when, with an eye on the United States, too, under the slogan (sufficiently robust) to optimize the structure of the armed forces, or, say, “reduce the number of generals,” the country's air defense The Armed Forces have become part of the Air Force, the Strategic Missile Forces out of sight have become a separate branch of the armed forces, and so on.) That is, the Americans are now moving towards complicating the structure and bureaucracy of the Air Force. As for Russia and the USSR, space troops have existed for a very long time, and now they are part of the Aerospace Forces of the Russian Federation, whose abbreviation (VKS) became the next recognizable “Russian brand” after the Syrian events.
France did not lag behind the fashionable “trend” - by September 1 of this year, President Macron plans to create a Space Command as part of the Air Force, and then, after Russia (and suddenly the IRGC of Iran) rename the Air Force into the Air Forces. And immediately, under the structure that has not yet been created, they are trying to knock out funds for a large-scale project, that is, for "development" and "cutting." After all, the French Armed Forces have no other problems, where you don’t poke them - that's all, you can say how cheese is rolled in oil, so you just have to spend it on space wars. Of course, there are no problems not in reality, but in the inflamed imagination of the Minister of Defense of the country, Florence Parley. But in real life, the Armed Forces of the Fifth Republic have problems with financing, strength, combat readiness - more than enough, at least sell to anyone, but they don’t take it.
So, Mr. Parley announced a new plan for “near-Earth exploration” for military purposes, for which a military appropriation for outer space (which mainly includes expenditures on military spacecraft and maintaining their activities and the ground infrastructure serving them) is in the amount of 4 billion. dollars for the next 6 years will be added as much as whole 780 million dollars to 2025. Frankly, by Western standards, not even by American standards, it’s a penny. But the plans are huge.
Scary Russian hooligan companions
The French minister is very worried about the Russian inspector satellites, who can inspect the condition of their satellites and the status of strangers, and can harm other people's spacecraft (SC) and even ram them (in her opinion, in fact, we will not sacrifice a valuable apparatus, we have something to shoot down the spacecraft without without it). And they can hide among the various steps and debris left after hatching - which they once demonstrated.
Moreover, these “inspectors” are credited with the possibility of physically blinding the equipment of the reconnaissance spacecraft, and of interfering with it - in theory it is possible, but such a device is not rubber, where it has so much space for such equipment and where there is so much energy on board ? And, again, we have the means for physically blinding the spacecraft of optoelectronic reconnaissance and the means of interfering with satellites - ground-based and very effective. But even the presence of cylinders with paint and a spray gun on board is attributed to the “inspectors,” they say, they can paint over the enemy’s satellite and deprive him of both energy (with colored solar panels) and “vision”. In general, help, Russian space hooligans deprive of sight!
By the way, a few years ago the Americans developed a classification of the possible effects of one spacecraft on another. They got 6 main methods - kinetic weapons (this, apparently, includes automatic guns and space missiles based on converted air-to-air missiles, which were tested in space even under the USSR), lasers, powerful microwave pulses (EMP) , jamming, some influences robots and those same chemical paint sprayers. It is strange that there is neither a ram nor a grenade satellite, which were the Soviet spacecraft interceptors such as IS, IS-M, IS-MU and others. Perhaps this is relegated to the kinetic section.
Fears of Madame Parley
True, the level of knowledge of mr. Parley in the military-space affairs was demonstrated not so long ago, in 2018. And it was very unsuccessful, which is not surprising. Then, in September of last year, she stated that one of our military Luch-type spacecraft-transponders “committed an espionage action” against the French-Italian telecommunications spacecraft ATHENA-FIDUS in 2017. The name does not refer to the goddess Athena Pallas, it is an abbreviation meaning "Access to theaters for the European Allied Forces is a French-Italian dual-purpose satellite." Like, “Luch” specially got close to this spacecraft in order to intercept negotiations on secure lines.
True, there was no evidence, other than “the impression that he came so close on purpose,” but is “high-likly” already not enough? Firstly, if this is so, then why did Parley keep silent for a year and accumulate this in herself? Secondly, she, apparently, is not aware of the purpose and approximate load of the “Luch” spacecraft, not intended for such reconnaissance. Thirdly, to intercept someone else’s satellite communications, it’s not necessary to adjust your satellite nearby, there are other methods that are simpler and more efficient. And the last thing - Madame, if there is a man next to you in the bus, the Paris metro or elevator, this does not mean that he wants to get to know you better without your consent, maybe he just had nowhere else to get up and his affairs, but he did not look at you. In general, please leave the theory of “harassment” on Earth ... and in your West.
Decisive plan for a modest amount
To counter the scary Russian satellite inspectors, Florence Parley suggests the following. First, equip surveillance cameras with Syracuse-4 type spacecraft that are only planned to be launched, starting in 2021, with the number of 3 pieces, replacing the third-generation Syracuse. The rest of their spacecraft, obviously, do not need such cameras?
They also propose creating a successor to the ground-based bistatic radar monitoring system for spacecraft GRAVES (this cute name also has nothing to do with graves, cemeteries and zombies - this is an abbreviation). Like, the successor of GRAVES will have to have enhanced capabilities for detecting microsatellites and detect spacecraft the size of a “shoe box” (a woman at the MO post thinks in similar categories) in orbits up to 1500 km from Earth. But, given that the French themselves have been developing the GRAVES system for 15 years, and have been tormented for more than one year during the refinement, the fact that the system has been working for more than 10 years and the development of a new generation will be longer - this system will have to wait a lot long.
Protection from hooligans, or How to appear with a knife for a shootout
And Parly considered the following idea to be a cherry on a cake - the creation of a constellation of miniature spacecraft with laser emitters on board to blind or damage the enemy spacecraft equipment in case of its impact on French spacecraft. Formally, the 1967 Space Treaty does not prohibit the deployment of non-nuclear in space weapons, and France also has the right to do so, and with the conclusion of a tougher arms treaty in orbit, no progress has been made. Will France be able to create such a thing and start launching it already in 2023, as Madame Minister says? Very doubtful! According to her, France fell far behind the leading countries (Russia, the USA and China) in the field of high-power lasers. Also a small-sized device, but with a laser, and powerful enough to damage the equipment of someone else’s satellite, these are strongly mutually exclusive concepts. Well, and most importantly: there is a clear misunderstanding of where the potentially main threat to the space forces of the "forces of good" comes from, as they consider themselves.
All of these KA inspectors, armed with missiles and cannons, even with a spray gun that writes the same word on the lenses of equipment that can be seen in the toilets of Paris, are at best devices for sabotage and various small dirty tricks. It has long been understood in Russia that placing weapons in orbit proper is unpromising: it is unsuitable for hitting ground targets (low reaction speed, high spent mass of load, fuel, low accuracy, high vulnerability) and completely loses to missile weapons. And targets in orbit can be perfectly “torn down” or blinded and damaged from the Earth. Moreover, the weapons themselves will be much more mobile, and much faster, and much less vulnerable than various spacecraft interceptors. The exception can only be apparatuses for high orbits like the orbits of various global positioning systems or geostationary. It’s difficult to reach there from Earth (or there’s a way, but we don’t know about it).
Therefore, the main threat from the Russian Federation (in the event of a serious war) for the enemy’s orbital groups will be various ground and air anti-satellite complexes. Let’s say, those are the not so long ago “illuminated” anti-satellite missiles for the MiG-31BM, anti-satellite missiles as part of the A-235 or C-500 missile defense systems, laser airborne dazzle complexes, or ground-based ones, one of which, as they say, is the famous “Relight " And so on. But not the "inspectors." And you can’t dismiss them with lasers. And it will come out in the end, as in the famous film - the heroes of our story will come to a shootout with knives, that is, unprepared.
Nobody knows the scenario of conflict in space.
However, a misunderstanding of how the conflict in space can take place is observed not only in France, but also in the USA, and we probably don’t fully imagine the picture of such a battle - there is no experience. Despite the fact that we have an order of magnitude more experience in the anti-satellite field than the rest.
Americans generally now rely more on protecting the spacecraft from sabotage (after all, an open attack on an orbital group is a wholly “incident of the bell” of the level of a missile attack on a country, and is possible only in the case of the same level of conflict). Because they are afraid of various “tricks” in the form of failure of some key spacecraft in a key orbit, needed in a specific area where another “proxy clash” occurs between superpowers, or between Americans and countries such as the DPRK or Iran. Apparently, the French are also afraid of this. Hence the statements of Florence Parley. Or it’s all easier - to get financing now, and there you can continue to roll the roach for a long time, postponing the time, specifying the requirements and knocking out additional appropriations. Our current spacecraft inspectors may be out of date by that time.
In the meantime, the Russian Defense Ministry unexpectedly recently announced the purpose of two spacecraft from the launch of 10 on July, and they turned out to be the continuers of the “inspectors” line. In the text of the message, it sounds especially interesting about the “study of cosmic impact” - is it only cosmic, not man-made? Here is the message TASS:
The Russian military satellite inspector conducted orbital service of another military satellite registrar of the Russian Federation. This was reported on Thursday by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
The Ministry said that flight tests of the Cosmos-2535 and Cosmos-2536 spacecraft (SC) are currently ongoing, designed to study the impact on spacecraft of the Russian orbital group of artificial and natural factors in outer space, as well as to develop technologies for their protection and orbital service.
"The state inspection and orbital servicing of the KA-registrar was carried out using the KA-inspector, as well as the transmission of target and telemetric information about the state of the KA-registrar," the Russian military department said.
The Ministry of Defense also said that on Thursday, in accordance with the test program, the collection and processing of the orbital parameters of these satellites, the verification of operating modes, and the evaluation of the parameters of the target equipment were carried out.
"This equipment registers effects on a spacecraft - a registrar of space debris, electronic and proton radiation from the Earth's natural external radiation belt, protons and heavy charged particles, solar and galactic cosmic rays," the ministry explained.
The spacecraft were launched into orbit by the Soyuz-2.1В launch vehicle from the Plesetsk cosmodrome on 10 on July.
The Ministry said that flight tests of the Cosmos-2535 and Cosmos-2536 spacecraft (SC) are currently ongoing, designed to study the impact on spacecraft of the Russian orbital group of artificial and natural factors in outer space, as well as to develop technologies for their protection and orbital service.
"The state inspection and orbital servicing of the KA-registrar was carried out using the KA-inspector, as well as the transmission of target and telemetric information about the state of the KA-registrar," the Russian military department said.
The Ministry of Defense also said that on Thursday, in accordance with the test program, the collection and processing of the orbital parameters of these satellites, the verification of operating modes, and the evaluation of the parameters of the target equipment were carried out.
"This equipment registers effects on a spacecraft - a registrar of space debris, electronic and proton radiation from the Earth's natural external radiation belt, protons and heavy charged particles, solar and galactic cosmic rays," the ministry explained.
The spacecraft were launched into orbit by the Soyuz-2.1В launch vehicle from the Plesetsk cosmodrome on 10 on July.
For some reason, it seems that the “hysteria” in relation to “Objects E”, as a number of our spacecraft were called in the West, will only intensify now.
- Ya. Vyatkin, especially for "Military Review"
- Pete linforth
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