{"id":120174,"date":"2021-12-01T13:05:55","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T18:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=120174"},"modified":"2021-12-01T13:05:55","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T18:05:55","slug":"ussf-general-details-how-us-space-assets-are-under-constant-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=120174","title":{"rendered":"USSF general details how US space assets are under constant attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Poetrooper sends in an article from The Drive<\/a> which discusses a Space Force general detailing how our satellites are under near constant threat from foreign governments, namely Russia and China.<\/p>\n

US Space Force’s General David Thompson, the service’s second in command, said last week that Russia and China are launching “reversible attacks,” such as electronic warfare jamming, temporarily blinding optics with lasers, and cyber attacks, on U.S. satellites “every single day.” He also disclosed that a small Russian satellite used to conduct an on-orbit anti-satellite weapon test back in 2019 had first gotten so close to an American one that there were concerns an actual attack was imminent.<\/p>\n

Thompson, who is Vice Chief of Space Operations, disclosed these details to The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin in an interview on the sidelines of the Halifax International Security Forum, which ran from Nov. 19 to 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada. The forum opened just four days after a Russian anti-satellite weapon test involving a ground-launched interceptor, which destroyed a defunct Soviet-era electronic intelligence satellite and created a cloud of debris that presents a risk to the International Space Station (ISS). That test drew widespread condemnation, including from the U.S. government, and prompted renewed discussion about potential future conflicts in space.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe threats are really growing and expanding every single day. And it\u2019s really an evolution of activity that\u2019s been happening for a long time,\u201d Thompson, told Rogin. \u201cWe\u2019re really at a point now where there\u2019s a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Right now, Space Force is dealing with what Thompson calls ‘reversible attacks’ on U.S. government satellites (meaning attacks that don\u2019t permanently damage the satellites) ‘every single day,'” according to Rogin. “Both China and Russia are regularly attacking U.S. satellites with non-kinetic means, including lasers, radio frequency jammers, and cyber attacks, he said.”<\/p>\n

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This is not the first time American officials have publicly accused a foreign power of conducting a “reversible attack” on a U.S. satellite. In 2006, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the U.S. government’s top satellite intelligence arm, confirmed that a spy satellite had been “illuminated” by a ground-based Chinese laser. “It was a test \u2026 It makes us think,” then-NRO Director Donald Kerr said at the time, adding that there had been no impact to the satellite’s intelligence-gathering capabilities in that instance.<\/p>\n

Thompson’s assertion that these kinds of attacks are occurring with extreme frequency is new. It underscores the rapid development and fielding by Russia and China, among others, of a wide variety of anti-satellite capabilities, something the U.S. military has called increasing attention to in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chinese are actually well ahead [of Russia],\u201d Thompson told Rogin. \u201cThey’re fielding operational systems at an incredible rate.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More at the source. This doesn’t really surprise anyone who has been paying attention. We, as a nation and a military, have become very reliant on satellite access. We use it for navigation, communication, and reconnaissance. Any adversary would certainly be targeting our satellites at the beginning of any major conflict.<\/p>\n

Space is very, very likely to be the site of any future Pearl Harbor. The only thing that prevents such is that it would result in retaliation (our opponents also use satellites for the same reasons) and that it would create a massive amount of space debris, which could be detrimental to their own operation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poetrooper sends in an article from The Drive which discusses a Space Force general detailing how … USSF general details how US space assets are under constant attack<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,476],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-policy","category-space-force"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=120174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120176,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120174\/revisions\/120176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=120174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=120174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=120174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}