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WeaponiSation of Space Why Access to Satellites is so Crucial Along with cyberspace and Antarctica, outer space is a new frontier where the world's superpowers will wrestle for dominance. But space will not be a theatre solely reserved for the world's traditional military giants to flex their tech muscle, a senior analyst and space policy expert has warned. Ambitious middle and smaller nations are set to rise, Dr Malcolm Davis of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said, and even non-state actors like Al Qaeda and Islamic State will seek to cause chaos in space. With satellites so crucial to w e a p o n r y, c o m m u n i c a t i o n s , surveillance, transport and battlefield logistics, access to space has never been more important or contested. "Space is no longer the pure domain for the major powers," Dr Davis said, thanks to "the rapid growth of commercial space technologies, a falling cost of getting a payload into orbit (and) the cost of satellites dropping". In 2019, by launching a missile into space to blow up one of its own satellites, India signalled it wanted a place alongside the US, China and Russia in a league of global space powers.
Ensuring access to outer space is critical for the Australian Defence Force and other armed forces. Adobe stock.
India's "hard kill" of the satellite created more than just headlines. It drew anger from NASA, as the obliterated satellite resulted in hundreds of pieces of space junk left orbiting the earth, cluttering space. Hard kills like India's anti-satellite missile won't be the overriding threat of the future, Dr Davis predicted. Instead, soft kills, which disable or deny a satellite, will be the most common form of attack. Soft kills take place in a grey zone, where cyber attacks target satellites to jam vital communications or strip the device of sensitive information. "If a satellite goes dead, was it a technical fault with the satellite or was it the subject of some sort of hostile action using cyberattack or jamming?" Dr Davis said. "Soft kill capabilities I think, ironically, are the bigger worry. "Hard kills physically destroy a satellite (and) create a huge cloud of space debris. That ultimately means that the attacker has been denied access to space as much as the target state." Non-state actors, like Al Qaeda and Islamic State, or advanced ransomware hackers will also look for opportunities to exploit and meddle. "That's entirely within the realms of possibility," Dr Davis said. One such technique is called "spoofing", where false information is fed to a satellite. Dr Davis said the Russians used the spoofing method in 2017, "where they misdirected a commercial tanker off course to test out the system." One year later the Russians also spoofed satellites to interfere with NATO exercises off the coast of Norway. "Adversaries do have these counter space capabilities that are being developed all the time, getting more sophisticated," Dr Davis said.
Satellites play a crucial role directing weapons and deploying attacks on the ground. Defence image.
"And what that means is that our ability to rely on space support from satellites is going to be challenged. "If we lose access to space, then we lose our ability to fight war in a modern manner." Without satellites, Dr Davis said, the Australian Defence Force and other armies are sucked back into a "more brute force, industrialised level of warfare." "Think the first 30 minutes of (the movie) Saving Private Ryan," he explained. Satellites help armed forces manoeuvre, deploy weapons and attacks and understand exactly what is happening on a battlefield. "If we lose those space capabilities, then we're deaf, dumb and blind," Dr Davis said. "We can't see where the enemy is, we can't coordinate our forces, we can't use precision strike weapons." By Mark Saunokonoko Nine News
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