NBC News
updated 4/11/2007 9:29:19 PM ET
Two months ago, China fired a medium-range missile into space to destroy one of its own weather satellites in low Earth orbit, attracting the attention of many in the strategic community.
For some, the Jan. 11 test revealed Chinas increasing military capabilities and an emerging threat to U.S. dominance in military space. For others, the test proved the need for a U.S. anti-satellite capability. The conventional wisdom was that the United States needed to create such a system to deter the Chinese from doing anything rash in an international crisis in effect, bringing mutually assured destruction to military space operations.
The reality is different from the conventional wisdom, according to knowledgeable space experts and former intelligence officials. They say the United States already has an anti-satellite capability just not the kind that China displayed in January.
Rather than a kinetic approach, say officials and experts, the United States has adopted a method that relies on spy satellites most vulnerable aspect: the need for constant housekeeping from the ground.
To maintain satellite orbits, particularly low Earth orbits, controllers on the ground must send their satellites a constant barrage of signals from ground stations around the world. For example, the United States maintains the Satellite Control Network, a string of eight tracking stations in places as remote as Thule Air Base on Greenland, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
By interfering with those signals called telemetry, tracking and control signals the United States can put satellites out of commission for critical periods of time or send them spiraling out of control. Intelligence experts call the strategy electronic negation or intrusion.
"The best ASAT [anti-satellite device] is not a weapon that detonates next to an enemy satellite," said William E. Burrows, a journalism professor at New York University who is also the author of "Deep Black," a book on spy satellites. "Instead, it would be a signal that would tell the satellite to take the rest of the afternoon off."
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But the idea of creating a electronic negation or intrusion capability never waned. And the United States had all the means necessary to carry it out. The U.S. military had its own electronic intercept satellites as well as worldwide network of ground stations.