Value chain · CLM-1040
In plain terms
The programme's first military study said the satellite could not be fully protected; its second said it was no softer a target than a power station or a refinery, that it could not be made to fall on anyone, and that the one real threat was the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear detonation in space.
The claim as recorded
The programme's two military assessments disagree on vulnerability. Ozeroff (1978) finds the SPS "vulnerable to military action of an enemy with good space capability", that "absolute protection of the satellite cannot be assured", that the non-redundant transmitting antenna "may be the most vulnerable component", and that hunter-killer satellites reaching synchronous altitude "almost certainly will be" available. Vajk (1980) finds SPS elements "inherently no more vulnerable than existing elements of the civilian economic infrastructure", that a disabled satellite "would take thousands of years to decay" so cannot be dropped on a city, that geostationary intercept "is extremely difficult with non-nuclear warheads" and that "even in thirty years, only a small number of nations will have these capabilities" (the page prints "will have will have"; tidied here), and identifies system-generated electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear detonation as the reference design's real vulnerability.
Evidence behind this: T3, the programme's two military assessments, at odds on vulnerability; both carried.
Scope and limits
TWO YEARS AND TWO CONTRACTORS APART; Vajk's is the later and longer study and sets out explicitly to refute "misperceptions". Neither is a threat assessment against a named adversary's capability, and both predate every anti-satellite demonstration the register's XC04 records cite.
What it assumes
No assumptions are recorded against this claim.
Where it comes from
PDF p.5 and pp.32-33, normalised: "absolute protection of the satellite cannot be assured"; "it may be the most vulnerable component of the satellite" (the latter a render reading; the text layer prints "the .most vulnerable" with a stray period); PDF p.32 (printed -27-): "Satellites with hunter-killer capability up to synchronous altitudes, if not operationally available today, almost certainly will be within the time span of interest here"; PDF p.18 (printed -13-) names "the so-called hunter-killer satellites" as a laser power-relay application, not the synchronous-altitude capability. SRC-542 PDF p.26, normalised: "inherently no more vulnerable than existing elements of the civilian economic infrastructure"; "vulnerable to system-generated electromagnetic pulse (SGEMP) effects"; PDF p.94: "The energy required to deorbit a power satellite, however, is enormous"; PDF p.96, Table 4-2 from the render: "thousands of years to decay".
Related records
- Answers question
- QST-011 not published in this releaseQST-036 not published in this release
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-1040
CLM-1040, Energy Aperture, as of 1980.
Connected records
Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.
- Also from SRC-503
- CLM-1039The programme's own military studies did not treat the beam itself as a real weapon. The 1980 study said one captured beam would carry...
- Also from SRC-542
- CLM-1039The programme's own military studies did not treat the beam itself as a real weapon. The 1980 study said one captured beam would carry...CLM-1408In the late 1970s, US studies sketched receiving stations raised on posts or legs so the ground beneath could still be farmed or built on...