A defunct Russian satellite has collided with a (formerly) operational Irridium satellite. It’s the first actual accidental orbital collision –the first in which ‘space junk’ (other than a paint chip) has hit a functioning satellite.  The 30+ years of fear & hype have finally come true.

Note the other category, for a moment. A year ago, China hit a satellite on purpose. A few months later, the USA did similar.  Both created debris clouds. Differences: 

 - China used ‘might’ as it used a purpose-built anti-satellite rocket to advertise its arrival on the Anti-Satellite Scene; USA used ‘finesse’ as it quickly reconfigured operational Air Defense assets for an ASAT mission

 - USA aimed at hitting a satellite at a point in the orbit where all debris would quickly de-orbit due to atmospheric frictional drag; most chunks would burn up in the atmosphere, the larger ones (if any) were aimed for an empty “broad ocean area”. China’s debris will be in orbit for a long, long time. Most media outlets have forgotten this simple orbital fact. [Most media personnel understand space issues less than they understand their own bias.]

Back to main topic.

 - LEO extends from the upper atmospheric fringes to about a thousand miles: 200-1,000 miles above mean sea level (MSL)

     - - some are in normally inclined orbits, like the International Space Station and (when flying) the space shuttle. Manned missions are the heaviest, so don’t generally go higher than they have to. ISL & space shuttle orbit at about 250 miles above MSL. Space Shuttle is literally incapable of getting higher than 800 miles ASL

     - - some are in polar orbits, such as the low-altitude high-resolution weather satellites NOAA operates.  These orbits allow overflight of all (or nearly all) of Earth's surface, with greater or lesser frequency depending upon altitude and inclination.

 - GPS satellites, and now a few other satellites too, are in the ‘medium Earth orbit’ (MEO):  8,000-12,000 miles above MSL

 - Most communications satellites, aside from Irridium, are geo-synchronous (GEO): 23,000 miles above MSL. 

     - - Most of the geosynchronous satellites are geostationary too:  23,000 miles above MSL and right over the equator.  Arthur C. Clarke was the first scientist to postulate a satellite could ‘hang’ in one place in the sky like GEO sats do in “the Clarke belt”

     - - The ‘weather satellite images’ we’re used to seeing come from the 5 international-agreement GEO satellites that are weather watchers, not comms satellites.

     - - for those who have direct-to-home satellite TV, the Dish Network and DirecTV satellites are in the Clarke Belt.

Nevertheless, for possibly the first time in the space age, there is an accumulation of debris that *may* have reached dangerous levels. Why? Earth has a ‘vacuum cleaner’, at least for LEO debris. Every 11 years, the Sun has a ‘solar maximum’, pumping its maximum amount of energy outwards, including to Earth. This energy collides with the Atmosphere, exciting molecules and causing Earth’s atmosphere to expand a bit. Atmospheric expansion functions to slow down functioning satellites & orbiting debris in a much faster timespan than satellites normally face.   

Most people don’t realize that the International Space Station requires, even during Solar Minimums, periodic boostings back to a higher orbit. Reason: Earth’s tenuous atmosphere, even at 250 miles altitude ASL, slows ISS down, and so ISS continuously loses altitude in deference to gravity’s inexorable pull.

The “solar max vac”, in fact, provides periodic disappointments as favorite satellites’ orbits decay faster than desired. Solar maximums were responsible, along with budgetary decisions to not intervene, in bringing down Skylab (1979) a mere several years after launch. There had been plans for the Space Shuttle to visit Skylab, rehabilitate it, and shuttle crews to it. The country didn’t feel the treasure expended in Skylab was worth saving. Instead, we later had to start all over; penny-wise, pound-foolish. Likewise, the Russian nuclear-powered satellite (Cosmos 954, 1978) and MIR (2001) were de-orbited during solar maximums. MIR was intentional, to control it’s impact location. Cosmos 954 and Skylab was completely uncontrolled. They are only 3 examples of deorbits during ‘solar max’.

The last solar maximum was several years ago, and we are currently in a rather extended solar minimum that *may* now be showing signs of giving way to the start of the next solar cycle. Old Sol is just taking his time in starting the new solar cycle. Our ‘spacecraft junk vacuum cleaner’ won’t kick in again for at least a few more years – it all depends on the timing & intensity of the solar maximum.

We have yet another ramification of “It’s the Sun, Stupid!”

 Question: As shown below, do most objections to the F-22 ultimately reveal themselves as: “in the future we can do it this way because we now do it this way”?

 Duck Archer challenges this blog’s readers to assess the thinking patterns in this essay, and then go forth to see if *any* F-22 objections don’t also end up putting cart before the horse!

 a. Some say the days of U.S. Air Force aircraft ‘going low’ are over. 

Maybe. But forever surrendering part of the atmosphere is a foolish – and needless -- concession to the enemy. 

Some have said, “Long-distance killing is the next-best thing to being there.” As ghoulish as the phrase may sound on first read, it has meaning. There will always be people wanting to do harm to others. The best way to be sure of ending the fight favorably is by being close enough for two very critical steps: to wield all possible force, and to be able to carefully assess the results. Long-distance ranges make things much tougher! Hence, “long distance” is merely next-best, something to do if you must. Another way to consider this point is the old adage, “Get there the firstest with the mostest” [emphasis added].

Also, how much of our fear of low flight comes just from a current inability to do so – with old-technology all-metal airframes?  Which is the cart, which the horse?  I bet there are circumstances today where we wish we had a real low-level ability with which to keep adversaries off-balance. 

Deciding to stay high, to hit targets down low; isn’t that too much cart in front, to protect a horse the hard way? 

 - Who’d have imagined in the 1970s:  an A-10 attacking from high-altitude?  But the A-10 story may not be over.  History teaches clearly “everything old is new again”.  Tools change, though basic concepts remain time-tested constants.

 - Consider the B-52: high, then low, now high again… (And the aviation enthusiast may note how the B-52’s history seems to mirror our aviation strategy generally … )

First, in the 1950s-1960s, the B-52’s combat realm was stratospheric, where it could operate essentially above anti-air weapons’ altitude limits. Then enemy air defenses shot down Gary Powers’ U-2, as the expanding network of SA-2 missiles gradually closed off the geography available to high-altitude airplanes. This development is what sealed the B-70 program at only 2 XB-70 aircraft. SoB-52s lost tail guns, but gained active electronic counter-measures (ECMs) to confuse radar signals – whether radars of ground units, of interceptor airplanes, or of air-to-air missiles. 

But then advances in those SA missile guidance systems got too good for ECMs. In this newly lethal second B-52 operational phase, B-52 crews found themselves training at hilltop heights in very uncomfortably large & lumbering aircraft -- most certainly not meant for flight in very dense air! B-52s trained to make very-low-level attack flights, to sneak under radars (and hide behind terrain). 

But this soon proved impossible, too, when enemy air defenses developed “look down see down” airborne radars – interceptors could now distinguish planes from ‘ground clutter’. So, in their third operational phase, smart engineers mated B-52s with stand-off weapons: air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs). The B-52s could again fly in their designed high-altitude environment, sending the ALCMs into the “penetrate enemy air defenses” regions. In these days of ubiquitous Global Positioning System, we tend to forget how hard it was to figure out how to send unmanned weapons at hilltop height against well-defended targets. 

b. Some say our obsolescent all-metal technology can keep going.

Three challenges: costs of misuse, everything ages, times change.

(1) What is the cost, paid by using a plane in ways it was never designed for?   

 - What of the A-10 today? It madly sucks air, in a limited flight envelope ‘up high’. Its wings were designed for very thick air, not sparse air ‘up high’. It senselessly lifts heavy titanium cockpits well above its designed thick-air realm, eating fuel not just at new altitudes, but in the very clawing for altitude. Besides the wear & tear on the engine, sucking in comparatively rarified air, what is the needless cost in fuel? What is the required maintenance & engineering, to discover and capture some efficiencies of fuel & engine wear? What are the operational/survivability costs, from trying to maneuver in atmospherics for which the plane was not designed?

 - Consider B-52 crews, going low. The plane was designed for warfighting from the stratosphere. So, down low, the B-52 crews got jarred nearly to death, yanking & banking among the terrain in a craft not designed for madly maneuvering in turbulent thick air so close to ground … Now, they can fight from designed altitude, but only in USA-controlled airspace. We don’t have enough airplanes, any more, to control all the airspace we’d like to all at the same time. And our combatant aircraft numbers keep dwindling.

(2) What is the cost, paid by using a plane for decades longer than originally designed for?

The answer must focus on a rhetorical question: How many air hours can we steal with good re-engineering & forward-thinking? 

(3) What is the cost we must pay to the adage ”times change”?  

The winning bet is that our future will include adversaries that close-off our current relative invulnerability ‘up high’. Maybe they will do it simply with overwhelming numbers of anti-air weapons – atop near-par aircraft in their own right.  Then what will we do?  That future may come sooner than we desire, if our adversaries have even half brains and even a little courage … which they seem to possess at the least.  So ‘going low’ may again become the survivable way - but only if we have equipment to do it. 

 - As we already must admit, our adversaries note we don’t go low today. Inevitably, they’ll develop & field weapons that threaten us ‘up high’. F-15s, F-16s, and A-10s will get chewed up – if the geriatric airframes don’t break apart in flight of their own accord. 

 - When the enemy denies ‘up high’, we’re back to trying to terrain-mask our aircrafts’ sight, sound, heat, and everything else. And, we’ll then have to reflect on what the B-52 crews learned (even as they suffered skeletal problems):  yank, bank, puke, crack apart. The Apollo 10 Crew may have pridefully radioed, from a few dozen miles above the moon:  “we is down among ‘em”. But a spacecraft in the airless void behaves far differently than an aircraft in an atmosphere – and likewise different are the demands on the human body, its sense of balance, and resulting ability to fly & fight among the mental & physical fatigue.

Tying Up 4 Parts.

Times change. Old stuff gets ever more costly to maintain. Old stuff can be used in only so many new ways. These three sentences are truisms. They are objective reality, regardless how we might wish the world to be.

 - Crossbows yielded to muskets, which gave way to rifles. 

 - Airships yielded to biplanes, which yielded to monoplanes; then jets pushed propellers aside.

 - Likewise, ‘all-metal airplanes’ are going the way of the Model-T. 

The F-22/F-35 is the next step in the see-saw between offense and defense. To see current success and project to a decade from now is putting cart before the horse: you cannot actually get there from here; the competition will definitely beat you to the destination!

One cannot expect a winning fight when one’s airpower is obsolescent – more-less obsolete or antique – but one can expect to live like rats scurrying from one cave to the next, and losing manpower all the way. The last century of warfare has taught clearly – without exception – that absent control of the air (today’s ‘high ground’), you have only one hope of winning: morale. It’s frightfully costly to win by wearing down the enemy’s will to fight. Indeed, across the board, it’s far easier to win by eliminating the enemy’s ability to fight. We sure lost in Vietnam, but don’t forget the Viet Cong suffered horrendous losses for their win. Note how quickly we won Desert Storm when we dominated the air – and with far fewer casualties (on both sides) than any ‘experts’ feared, going in. Saddam’s front-line forces were all reduced below 50% before the ‘left hook’ decked our adversary in just a few weeks. Indeed, the last century of warfare bears out a truth: absent air control, you can win only in the very costly arena of morale.

Remember the equation: Threat = Ability + Intent. 

The equation goes for assessing enemy threats. But it’s a 2-way equation. It also measures our ability to fight.

History marches on, whether we stay in step or not. We will abjectly need the F-22 in ten years, when its painfully slow production rates have fielded enough of the 183-airplane force in sufficient numbers to make a difference … at least, a difference in one spot of the globe. 183 is pitifully small. In objective reality, the USA is the richest country ever in world history – even after the mortgage balloon burst!

If the USA cannot afford an Air Force of F-22s (and an Air Force & Navy of F-35s), then it’s only because we foolishly THINK we cannot afford it! We need the F-22. We need to start & continue producing, now!

3. The burning need:  time marches on.

Metal fatigue will make our current aircraft completely incapable in another ten years.  Most would still be capable of flying, but not under combat loads.  Remember, longirons are failing, and old all-metal planes are already breaking up in mid-air.  Those that aren't breaking up are still requiring ever more hours in detailed maintenance and upgrade facilities -- reducing availability across the board.  Worse, retrofits only postpone the inevitable ...

Procurement Lags:

As to new aircraft:  remember we need time to get procured equipment fielded, into battle plans, and into exercises so we really know how to use them – not just theoretically (or even in computer simulations of theory). 

In a decade, could we win with current aircraft supplemented by F-22s?  I doubt it.  But I pose that the cost would be horrendous if we did win.  China in a decade will not be a pretty adversary.  Our current fighters will strain mightily by then;  'in a decade' is when China, Russia, and Islam all pose foreseeable threats far greater than today’s world poses:

 - China WILL seriously threaten our interests in Taiwan, not to mention Korea, Japan, Philippines, Singapore, et al.  China will threaten with quantity of modern aircraft and (more ominously) relatively inexpensive high-tech air defenses that will seriously hurt us.  Already, China possesses anti-carrier weapons that will keep our aircraft carriers at arm’s length.  With 1970s-era airplanes, plus a handful of stealth at far-away Guam, Air Force would have nothing to offer, to replace ‘persistent’ air presence China is increasingly forcing the navy to position ever more distant (in event of war).   

 - Russia’s re-emergence will have re-armed that country, which may not be all that friendly.  Worst case:  xenophobic ultra-nationalists (a Russian historical tendency), whether with a resurgence of 1900s atheistic communism or not.  Best case:  western-friendly leader like Gorbachev or Catherine the Great, who would actually trust and welcome a western alliance --- an alliance that maybe we could make actually useful to Russia and it’s long vulnerable southern borders.  As if Russia's gradual transition from President to Dictator isn't worrisome all on its own, recent international events in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Georgia, and Ukraine (among others) indicate Russia's western-friendly leaders are about as scarce as USA's conservatives have been in the last several years.

 - Islamic countries’ oil income could indeed well-fund militant Islamic resurgence like we’ve not seen in 600 years.  I propose this is an Islamic funding decision made more likely if we slide along with old all-metal fighters that they can counter with metal-seeking and heat-seeking hand-held SAMs.  That oil is also a potentially lethal chokehold on Japan, and would severely hinder us (the USA) and our European allies.  We have the ability to drill and solve that problem, except for environmentalists --- but that’s another dissertation.  We also have the spacefaring technical ability to dramatically reduce oil needs in non-vehicular uses, which would entirely remove the petroleum stranglehold by reducing the petroleum quantity needs mostly just to vehicles --- but this too is another dissertation.

c.  Why now??

Some say our current fighter aircraft fleet can serve us well for another decade.  Good!!

We will need that hypothetical decade, to acquire stealth aircraft in sufficient quantity for any big fight we hope to fight from navy carriers as well as from allies’ land bases.  A decade from now is when the current monopolar world doubtless will have changed again…

Again, most F-22 presentations concentrate on high-end threats.  Don’t forget the low-end!