From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Subject: Re: DoD launcher use
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 14:41:35 GMT

In article <1992Dec13.212814.14887@iti.org> aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) writes:
>In article <1992Dec13.183545.9958@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes:
>>We're talking about Iraq right? No air opposition right? Complete Coalition
>>domination of the airspace right? 
>
>I would hate to base all US defense donctrine on the assumption that ALL air
>wars will be just like Iraq. BTW, despite our domination of the air, coalition
>aircraft WHERE shot down.

I agree that not all conflicts will be as easy as the Gulf War and that
satellite recon is very valuable, especially for strategic recon. But the
origninal message that I questioned said that the Space Command commander
during *Desert Storm* said he needed tactical satellite recon *for that
conflict*. And yes, A10s and Tornados doing low level attacks were lost
to ground fire in Desert Storm as well as a few other operational type
aircraft like an AC130, but as far as I know, no recon aircraft were lost.

>For many applications satellites are more productive. They provide faster
>responce and allow scarse aricraft to be better utilized.

see below

>>What can a satellite do for tactical recon that a SR71 can't?
>
>Updates of the tactical situation with SR-71 would take about 6 to 8 hours
>to get and would be several hours old by the time they get to the local
>commanders. Satellite images take seconds to get and are fresh. In the Gulf
>war, images just a few hours old would have been useless.

But this was exactly my point. LEO satellites pass over the same ground
track twice a day. So if you need pictures of a given battlefield, you
wait for the satellite to pass over the spot, up to 24 hours if you need
a daylight picture, up to 12 hours if you'll take any picture. Then, unless
you have realtime downlink in the footprint of the satellite, very close
to your target, you wait for the satellite to pass over your downlink station
and download the image. This can take up to another 12 hours. You can
launch ramp ready recon aircraft in 10 minutes if necessary, though 
normally you'd schedule recon as part of an operational timetable.
You can get back immediate Mark I eyeball reports during the mission
and photos as soon as the aircraft returns.

To return tactical target data, like a damage report on a bridge, you
need fairly high resolution. With a satellite, that's KH-11 or KH-12
class optics. That's still too expensive to toss up on whim for a one
shot look. Aircraft with mounted optics of much less precision and cost,
due to the lower altitude, can get a picture and come back to base to
be used again and again. Now if the threat level over the target is
*really* high so that not even a SR71 or F117 has a chance of survival, 
and the information is vital, then you could expend a KH-12 class satellite
to gather it. Seems that if DC-1 works, you'd just use *it* so you could
get your expensive optics back instead of expending a satellite.

I know there's lots of interest in lightsats and microsats for intelligence
gathering, but to date none have flown with the level of optics needed
for damage assessment on a tactical level. I'm guessing they *can't* because
the optical platform has to be too large. But that kind of information
is classified so I can't say that for sure. A GEO satellite with superb
optics might be able to give you realtime data, but that's not a DC-1
payload. That's at least a Titan IV payload and a large ground support
center to operate the satellite and process the data. It's certainly
not something you throw up on whim for tactical data gathering, it's
a major national resource costing at least as much as Hubble. Even if
the launch were free, it would still be very expensive.

Gary
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