The US Wants to Build A Fence – In Space

The US Wants to Build A Fence – In Space

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As we’ve written here before, future wars could well be fought in space. The US Air Force is now looking for ways to protect crucial American interests in space.

The USAF is working on a project to build a so-called space fence that will be detect threats and protect American satellites from debris and other space faring powers that might want to harm them.

The fence in this case is no fence at all, but an advanced radar system that will be able to track objects in space the size of a baseball ball.

There are some 1,300 active satellites orbiting the Earth now, out of about 23,000 human-made objects in space. Existing systems are able to detect objects about 10cm in length, says Captain Nicholas Mercurio of the Joint Functional Component Command for Space at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The new system will be able to track objects less than half in size, Mercurio says.

While debris in and of themselves pose a significant problem, the Air Force is worried about more than space junk. Brian Weeden, the technical advisor for the Secure World Foundation, told Fox News of the danger that comes from recently developed cube satellites. These are about 10cm in length and possess sharp edges that could seriously damage a satellite.

“There’s a reason why the military is doing this,” Weeden said. “A big part of that is they are worried about not only debris collisions with military satellites, but potential adversaries using small space objects to try and attack satellites.”

The deterrence aspect of knowing who on Earth attacked your interests in space carries a noteworthy deterrence aspect, says Mercurio.

“The first part of deterrence is attribution,” said Omar Lamrani, a senior military analyst for Stratfor, an intelligence firm. The next part, of course, is retribution, and the fear of reprisal could prevent an adversary from engaging in space warfare.