MAY 2018 | 5280 | (^109)
Technical Sergeant David Salanitri/Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force
spooing a fake signal, though, can throw of the calculation
and, thus, the receiver’s ability to gauge an accurate location.
It’s not that diicult to do: Because GPS has largely evolved
with commerce—not covert ops—in mind, its frequencies
are readily available to anyone with a keyboard and decent
ability to use Google. For example, in June 2017, a commercial ship in the Black Sea,
near a Russian port, reported a GPS location that couldn’t possibly be right: he ship’s
own GPS pegged it as sitting at an airport about 25 miles from its actual location.
More than 20 other nearby ships all conirmed that their GPS, too, registered them as
sitting aground at the airport. (Russia denied allegations of misdirection.) While the
error might not have caused any issues for the ships in that instance, imagine a smart
bomb or drone being nearly 25 miles of the mark.
he incident came a month after director of national intelligence Daniel R. Coats
noted, in a May 2017 report for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, that the
global threat of electronic warfare against space systems will only expand in the coming
years. In his report, Coats cites speciic concerns about foes jamming military satellite
communications, imaging satellites, and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS)
like GPS. To that end, the nonproit Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation’s
2016 white paper about threats to GPS identiied terrorist and military jamming as
among the most signiicant. It’s a problem complicated by the fact that the same tools
China, Russia, and others might develop for peaceful purposes could also be used for
sinister ones. hat’s where the Space Aggressors come in.
RODRIGUEZ’S STARGAZING PLATFORM is also part of the Space Aggressors’ home, a
two-story warehouse dubbed “the Barn.” It gets its name from the fact that the systems
the Aggressors use to simulate enemy attacks on satellite signals once were given animal
names, and since you keep animals in a barn—well, you get the connection.
Most airmen who join the Space Aggressors squadron have some previous experi-
ence in space operations. Few people—enlisted or oicers—come straight out of their
initial military training. For example, Lieutenant Colonel Laura Kohake, commander
of the 26th reserve unit, joined the Space Aggressors after an inaugural stint with
the 7th Space Operations Squadron, the Schriever group responsible for operating
to a distance that would be capable of hitting some
of the United States’ farthest lung—and most valu-
able—satellites in 2013. (China denies testing such
a weapon and says it is developing tools for only
peaceful uses in space.) North Korea, Iran, and Rus-
sia, among others, have also demonstrated potential
satellite-killing technology.
But attempting to blast satellites out of the sky
falls into the cutting-of-your-nose-to-spite-your-
face category. Smashing satellites with missiles
would create a debris ield so massive and danger-
ous it would essentially render space exploration
and satellite function impossible for everyone for
decades to come—so nobody would be able to use
space. Like nuclear war, it’s a lose-lose situation.
So more insidious technologies have been born.
Russia has recently launched satellites with the abil-
ity to cozy up next to, listen to, observe, and (some
have suggested) even grab on to other satellites.
China and Russia both have been developing lasers
that have the ability to “blind” satellites by damag-
ing their imaging sensors. (he United States, for its
part, has acknowledged the development of similar
technologies but hasn’t divulged just what, exactly,
it’s got up in the great beyond.) Perhaps the most
concerning technique—one Russia has allegedly
already put to use in the Baltics—is GPS “spooing,”
or the ability to mimic or modify a GPS signal to
confuse or misdirect an enemy.
For GPS to determine a precise location, the
receiver on the ground must receive signals from
at least four diferent GPS satellites. An enemy
IN THE FIELD A Space
Aggressor prepares for
a mock battle against a
fighter squadron during a
2016 Red Flag exercise.
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