The Business weekly made a new report. The United States could attack Europe's planned network of global positioning satellites if it was used by a hostile power such as China. The paper reported a disagreement between EU and US officials over Galileo at a London conference which led to the threat to blow up the future satellites.

does this sound lika a new Star wars or Space wars ?

As some of you know there is a lot of international and jointed efforts in space. The Cassini-Huygens mission was a joint venture between the Europeans and the USA, with NASA launching the Cassini craft and the Eu giving 1 billion dollars to the mission. Also the Russians and Americans have worked closely on the Space Station mission of the past, and now the Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA) and ESA have worked together on the China-ESA Double Star project they were designed and lauch these spacecraft to study the Earth’s magnetosphere, in concert with ESA’s four spacecraft Cluster mission. The Double Star spacecraft are known as TC-1 and TC-2, or translating to English, as Explorer-1 and Explorer-2.
China last month became a partner in the Galileo program, which could help provide services such as communications for the 2008 Beijing Olympics but also has applications for strategic military use. According to a leaked US Air Force document written in August and obtained by The Business, Peter Teets, under-secretary of the US Air Force wrote: "What will we do 10 years from now when American lives are put at risk because an adversary chooses to leverage the global positioning system of perhaps the Galileo constellation to attack American forces with precision?" The paper also reported a disagreement between EU and US officials this month over Galileo at a London conference which led to the threat to blow up the future satellites. US officials have voiced fears that the rival system, which has also brought on board Russia and Israel in addition to China, could compromise US and Nato military operations which rely on GPS for navigation and combatant location and might also interfere with a classified Pentagon positioning system known as M-Code.
At one point, Washington suggested that Galileo was an unnecessary rival to GPS that merely duplicated the US system.
Analysts said the US threat to Galileo's future system exposed the true military value of the global navigation systems.
Previously, officials touted only the commercial benefit of Galileo, which is expected to tap into a burgeoning market for satellite positioning systems that doubled from 10 billion euros in 2002 to €20-billion in 2003. Brussels has also argued Galileo will create 150,000 new jobs across the European bloc.
8-[

It seems unlikely that they would try to blow them up (apart from anything else, there would be quite a few satellites that would have to be destroyed in order to make a serious impact on the constellation.) A more realistic scenario would be to try to carry out a soft kill through the use of jamming. This also seems to be consistent with the quotes in the article.

In terms of realpolitik, jamming versus destruction is an important distinction between a hostile act and an act of war. Physical destruction of the Galileo constellation may not even be within US capability even when Galileo is operational, but assuming it were, such an act would constitute a casus belli, in the old pre-nuclear days, that would entirely justify Europe declaring 'hot war' on the US :wink: :wink: :wink: Presumably China would have a case too. But the only reason I can see this happening is if such a state of war were to exist between the US and China in the first place.

A 'hot war' scenario is ludicrous, of course, for reasons of self-interest - on both sides - but there is nothing to preclude Cold War 2 arising from such acts. Certainly physical destruction would push the world in this direction - while unilateral jamming of Galileo, without consultation, is more likely to end up with many European nations deciding that they are no longer - even informally, let alone formally - US allies, given that their assets are to be treated in such a summary fashion. This eventually ends us up in another Cold War.

But let's all hope this is just weird sabre-rattling. I find it significant that such threats have even aired, frankly. This may seem mealy-mouthed, but I'd say that they would be 'acceptable' if contained within the diplomatic realm, but when they make the dailies, I worry...

I hope everyone calms down.

[edited to add: my comments are intended by way of analysis, not political opinion, except possibly to indicate that I think that sabre-rattling is not a good thing. But I think this thread (and some others here) would be better off in BABBling, now I come to think of it.]

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Speaking as a European I say if they blow ours up we take out Fox!
Ah what the hell lets do it anyways.... Seeing as they've stopped making new Futuramas there's nothing on worth watching.

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Only if Bush is reelected, right?

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Watch it cougar... Lets not go down that way, one of the reasons I like this forum is that it tries to stay away from politics.

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I take it this is a different "Galileo" than the one that parked in orbit around Jupiter for a few years taking pictures.

(In which case, they've gotta pick a better name. It must be some kind of bad luck to name satellites that have a communications function with the same name given to an earlier space probe that couldn't get its high-gain antenna working.)

Galileo is a nav system, no com. I'm also unhappy that they gave it this name so shortly after another Galileo mission, the one to Jupiter. The public may not remember so much, but I'm always a little bit confused. They should have named it after some historic figure who advanced the art of navigation a lot. Maybe "Harrison" would have been a good choice based on this (also because he used precision clocks for this, just as the nav sats), but then perhaps most people would ask "Ford or George?".

Harald

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http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/asat/almv.htm

ASAT was the only viable U.S. program to shoot down satellites. Of course, it couldn't fly anywhere near the altitude necessary to shoot down a geostationary satellite. A high-altitude nuclear detonation might do the trick, but then NOBODY would have satellites. Maybe a directed-energy weapon...

GPS isn't geostationary, and I wouldn't think Galileo would be, either. You can't get proper coverage from a geostationary system.

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Here's some (more detailed) info on Galileo...
http://www.esa.int/export/esaNA/GGGM...C_index_0.html

tvelocity appears to be living in the relms of fantasy here GeoSat orbit on a GPS system with enough systems in place could give you perfect cover to a few 10's of meters, the acuracy decays over longer distance. Try turning a light switch on with your finger and then try it with a meter ruler and you'll see my point.
A computer can be a lot more accurate but the triangulation it can do can only be so precise. ASAT would be able to get it as they can get at they could get at their own GPS.

Nope, USAF is military. They are talking about if "hostiles" (China) do anything against america they will take out their eyes first. This would be the Galileo system and down to a 1m range for civilians is extreamly accurate and would do for just about all military uses anyway. As in how many strategic military emplacements are smaller then 1m other then possibly a sniper but if your dropping a bomb i dont think he would notice the difference of 1 meter :wink:

I cant actualy believe america would be willing to make an act of war against the whole of the EU. I cant speak on the other countrys of the EU but when someone deliberatly shoots at the UK we tend to do something about it, we may be a humble little country but we still have the best trained army in the world and we still know how to use them. Germany knows how to use theirs, spain uses theirs everyone in the EU uses their army and with china and russia in i think america is digging the biggest hole ever created by almost saying "we'll shoot at you".

Im not too good at international relations but isn't the US a bit dodgy with the rest of the world on the relations side of things. I mean theres been the cold war with russia, then theres the whole communist china thing and then theres everywhere else in europe that aren't on the best of terms with america. But as i said im not too good with the whole international relations thing and i doubt opinion poles are either. :roll:

Am I missing something! :-?

There are tens of millions of GPS receivers out there that can use the US GPS system. I'm sure that the Chinese can buy them on the open market (assuming they haven't already). It seems to me, that in order to "blin d the Chinese, we would have to take out our own satellites as well.

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Correct me if im wrong but did not the US military bar/block civilian GPS receivers during the recent iraqi conquest and hostile occupation?

Cant recall all the details.

I thought I read that they didn't deem it necessary to do so, though I can't find any link confirming that.

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I don't think the distance is the problem, it's that geostationary requires equatorial orbits, and you don't get the coverage at higher latitudes, especially when the horizon is blocked. You need non-equatorial orbits.

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GPS has a military-only code that require keyed receivers to use, that gives improved accuracy over the civilian signal. I don't think Galileo will have that.

Galileo was (at one time, anyway) going to be exclusively built using technology from the host countries, which means developing space capable equipment, including clocks, on a short timeline, which might not measure up to what's on GPS satellites. So it's possible that their positioning will be inherently worse, but not necessarily something you might notice at the 30 meter level.

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