Defend Against Hypersonic Weapons

The Military Wants to Use Commercial Satellites to Defend Against Hypersonic Weapons

Commercial satellite operators may not like the idea.

By Kyle Mizokami
GETTY IMAGES/VINCENZO PINTO

The U.S. military would like commercial satellites to aid in detecting an enemy hypersonic weapon attack. Speaking at a Washington D.C. event, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, suggested placing sensors on commercial satellites, enabling them to track weapons traveling above Mach 5. The Vice Chairman also suggested distributing military capabilities among civilian satellites, to enable the military to use them in emergencies. For their part, commercial satellite operators may not like the idea, as it would open their satellites up to attack.


General Selva made the suggestions at an event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. As reported in National Defense, Selva said, “You’re shooting a bullet with a bullet. And it gets worse when a bullet is going 13 times the speed of sound, and can maneuver,” he added. “Wouldn’t it be interesting if our commercial partners’ constellation of satellites actually had some capacity to contribute? And if that’s true, why would we build our own?”


Russia’s Avangard hypersonic weapon system.
GETTY IMAGES

Hypersonic weapons are fast, achieving speeds of five to twenty times the speed of sound. They could also be launched from aircraft, long-range missiles and submarines. The variety of launch platforms means hypersonics could be launched from directions other than over the North Pole—the traditional flight route of bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles. This could require a detection network spanning both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico. Hypersonic weapons would be easily detectable by space-based radar and infrared sensors, and relatively simple versions of both installed on commercial satellites could provide a quick and simple solution.

Selva also suggested that the military add a command-and-control capability to commercial satellites. “It’s not enough to just build elegant military constellations anymore,” Selva said. “The commercial company can build a satellite for $10 million and launch it for $1.5 million, and proposes to build 500 of them,” he said. “We need to figure out how to hitch a ride. We need to figure out how to engineer that data into the systems to help do command and control in warfighting.”

All of this is good from the military’s perspective—it would save the Pentagon a lot of money and provide a means of detection to a tricky new threat. Still, commercial satellite operators may not like the idea of wartime enemies considering their spacecraft legitimate military targets in wartime. Satellites are expensive, vulnerable and not easily replaced.

Source: National Defense