Comment by remarkEon
9 days ago
I'm not sure about this. Space is big and these satellite constellations are getting very large, with lots of redundancy. I know I'm sort of arguing against my previous point, but bear with me for a sec. You'd need an anti-satellite system that either destroys them kinetically (accepting the cost of the debris field) or one that breaks them electronically (an EMP or another device that defeats them electronically). The United States' underlying philosophy on advanced weapons has, for a long time, been precision so I could see the emergence of in-orbit interception & defeat/disable platforms. But you'd need a lot of them for the doctrine to be effective, which means a lot of mass-to-orbit logistics. Adversaries do not have this, so I would expect e.g. PRC to have an alternate strategy of rendering entire orbits unusable or dangerous, which I think is easier.
Regarding your missile platform question, there are several companies that already manufacturing loitering munitions, and long-range loitering cruise missiles are on the roadmap, so to speak.
Interesting point re: satellites, I'd say the best tactic here is to presume all gone immediately. Eg, from a planning perspective. The reality may be that the war may need to stretch out a bit, before action is taken.
Of course any planned action would likely try to strike first, by some means.
If I look back on how the Ukraine War progressed, it's a little more nuanced than that. Basically, your advanced weapons, of which supply is limited or constrained in some manner, are all on the clock and have an unknown expiration date. This means that your plans need to assume this, and it makes sense at the strategic level to try to take time off of the enemy's clock, if that makes sense.
In practice I think this would look something like immediate launch of satellite interceptor spacecraft after a formal war kicks off, so the clock in this case is probably measured in days. If we already have these kinds of interceptors, and I think there's good reason to believe that the Americans have at least a few, then the clock probably has only 48-72 hours after launch on it before the enemy satellite network starts to see noticeable degradation. Returning this point to the original comment of mine in this thread, you would likely have only a few days to a week where you could continuously "pilot" these kinds of aircraft with a human operator before you'd need a fully autonomous system to at least supplement if not fully replace decision-making. Hope that makes sense, first time I've actually thought through how I would plan this if I was doing so in real life. I'm making a ton of assumptions here ... one of which is that the Americans, in this hypothetical, would have a highly accurate map of enemy satellite networks and their orbits (there's good reason to think this is true). Another is that the interceptor spacecraft are a) available (defined as either already in orbit or able to be quickly mated with a launch rocket), b) numerous enough that they can make an impact on a time horizon that matters, and c) that the enemy lacks the means to either intercept the interceptor spacecraft or maneuver their own satellites to make the interception itself difficult (or impossible, if you get the interceptor to burn enough DV that it can't continue mission).