National Space Policy: NSDD-42 (issued on July 4th, 1982)

"Stuf4" wrote in message
m...
From Ami Silberman:
"Stuf4" wrote
From Ami:
"Stuf4" wrote
snip
According to what you are saying, in the middle of a war, a group of
soldiers can put on civilian clothes and take a train ride into the
heart of the capital city of the country that they are fighting, put
on their uniforms, pull out their guns, and *then* initiate combat.

Yes, it looks to me like they can. However, if they are caught while not
in
uniform, they are not eligible for being treated as POWs. Furthermore,
if
they engage in espionage or sabotage while not in uniform, they can be
treated as spies. If, on the other hand, they just put on their uniforms
in
the train station when they arrive, well, they are legitimate
combatants.

Very curious! I wonder how much effort the Pentagon has invested in
pursuing such tactics.

Judging from the experiments with incendiary bats, probably too much. The
big problem with that strategem is that it is just too easy for a nation at
war to catch such troops at the border. They would need forged
documentation, and all it would take is one suspicious border guard to
inspect their luggage...
(Your point, by the way, would provide for a basis to argue that if
Muhammed Atta had slipped on a military uniform prior to impact, then
it was not an "act of terror", but instead a legitimate military
operation.)

If he had been a member of an organized military, and if he had put on that
uniform before hijacking the plane, and if there had been recognized
hostilities beforehand, why, then yes. The problem with fighting terrorism,
though, is that these things are murky.
SNIP
Civilian law is convoluted enough as it is. Military law can be
outright wacky. As the saying goes, "all's fair..."

But both FM 27-10 and the Geneva conventions say that all isn't fair. In
particular, both parties to war are expected to try to avoid civilian
casualties (both by not targeting them and by not placing military targets
in civilian areas), and you aren't allowed to violate the sort of
"meta-rules" which are in place to allow wars to start and stop, and reduce
needless suffering. In particular, feigned surrenders, maltreatment of
prisoners (including those who are not POWs), not accepting prisoners,
misrepresenting a flag of truce or a truce itself, targeting uniformed
non-combatants or falsely representing oneself as a uniformed non-combatant
(chaplain, medical personel), or the distinctive badge of the Geneva
convention. You also aren't allowed to use weapons which cause undue
suffering, shoot at persons descending by parachute from disabled airplanes
etc. As FM 27-10 states, "Treacherous or perfidious conduct in war is
forbidden because it destroys the basis for a restoration of peace short of
the complete annihilation of one belligerent by the other."
snip
snip

Furthermore, it was not engaged in
Air Warfare.

Aerial reconnaissance is included in the definition of air warfare.

But Air Warfare implies that there is war. The Cold War was not a war.

Early on it was noted that the US has stretched the definition.
Obviously they wanted to get protection for people like Gary Powers.
The current US definition, as I understand it, says that only a
prelude to combat is required. No declaration of war is required
either.

Well, yes. True there.
snip
And, according to the relevant UN treaties, this is not a violation
of
airspace. National sovereinty ends at some point below LEO.

The operative issue here is that by flying overhead, military shuttles
were in an excellent position for reconnaissance.

So? Sailing just in international waters gave military ELINT trawlers an
excellent position for reconnaissance, but they are not considered to be
violating the laws of war by being unmarked. Especially when there are
no
active hostilities.

Ok, now imagine if that trawler was designed and built to Soviet
military specification, it carried a Soviet military payload in its
cargo hold, and its crew was all Soviet military members wearing
civilian clothes...

What do you think I'm talking about? I'm talking about the Soviet spy ships
that used to sail up and down the US coast, and follow navy task forces.
(OK, they may have been militarized commercial designs, but they had lots of
radars and antennas and such.)
As soon as a foreign country arrives at the conclusion that the US
astronauts "detainees" have been out and about on a military
reconnaissance mission, it's easy to see that a conclusion will be
reached that it is the United States of America who is in violation of
the Outer
Space Treaty.

Um, and what exactly about Gemini III was a military reconnaissance
mission?

Any piloted spacecraft with a window and a radio could be used for
reconnaissance. If they take pictures then it becomes photo
reconnaissance.

And that is a violation of the Outer Space Treaty how?
Here is an excerpt from Article IX as a sample:

In the...use of outer space, ...States Parties to the Treaty shall be
guided by the principle of co-operation and mutual assistance and
shall conduct all their activities in outer space...with due regard to
the corresponding interests of all other States Parties to the Treaty.


I'm not inclined to say that spying on a country counts as a way of
showing it due regard.

You have yet to show that there was any actual spying by any NASA
spacecraft. Please give a citation or a pointer to where such
information
may be found. Capabilities for spying are not spying. Launching a
military
space satellite is not spying, thought the satellite might be used for
orbital recon. I don't see how it can be illegal if there is no airspace
violation.

Consider the recent case of the Navy EP-3 landing in China. There was
no airspace violation in its patrol. So why was it being harrassed by
Chinese pilot ("Wong Wei", as in "you're going the wong wei")?

This is because countries are not particularly fond of surveillance
they have not consented to. Whether the "intelligence gathering" is
legal or not, it is still bothersome.

Right. And the harrassment by the PRC certainly violated international law,
at least when it got to the point that Wong Wei interfered with the EP-3's
flight. Just because the intelligence gathering is bothersome, it is not
illegal by international law, and attempts to interfere with it by force
*are* illegal. There is also precedence that seizing the crews of vessels
engaged in legal intelligence gathering is also illegal. So, should NASA had
made the crew draw window blinds everytime they passed within site of a
country which had not given them specific permission to look at it?
From the 1966 UN Outer Space Treaty
http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/treat/ost/outersptxt.htm, Article IV,
"States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the
earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons
of
mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station
such
weapons in outer space in any other manner.
The moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States
Parties
to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of
military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any
type of
weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvres on celestial bodies shall
be
forbidden. The use of military personnel for scientific research or for
any
other peaceful purposes shall not be prohibited. The use of any
equipment or
facility necessary for peaceful exploration of the moon and other
celestial
bodies shall also not be prohibited."

This seems to allow for the use of military astronauts. There is not a
single word about "spy", "spying", "reconnaissance" etc. The treaty
seems to
allow for the military use of space in the fields of reconnaissance, and
transportation seems to be perfectly acceptable.

Agreed. A treaty that restricted such activity would not have been
signed, let alone ratified.

Correct.

[snip]

_________________

NavSTAR could easily have been named "Deathstar".


For anyone interested in a more detailed short history of GPS, here is
a link that includes the Air Force nuclear strike efforts with their
MOSAIC and 621B programs along with the Navy contributions:

http://www.aero.org/publications/cro...er2002/01.html


~ CT

Well, that's what they *want* you to believe. In fact, the top brass
in charge of these programs were avid fishermen. Despite all the
technology available at the time, there was no way for them to
positively return to that "sweet spot" on the lake. So...a hundred
million here, a billion there...and you got yourself one of the best
fishing navigation systems in the world.

NavSTAR could easily have been named "FishSTAR".

But they don't want you to know that.

-stmx3

(Stuf4) wrote:
But you could only expect to hit a silo if you knew exactly where you
were launching from. That's not hard if your missiles are on land, as
most of them were in the Soviet Union. But most of the U.S. nuclear
arsenal was at sea on subs. To maintain the balance of power the U.S.
had to
come up with a way to allow those subs to surface and fix their exact
position in a matter of minutes anywhere in the world.... Hello GPS!

The problem with that is... We had no need of such a capability.
What an SSBN needs is a method of knowing it's position *without*
having to surface, or preferably even coming close to the surface. We
already had that capability with SINS, SINS/ESGM, and with ESGN.
From the point of view of an SSBN, GPS is 'nice-to-have', not 'must
have'.

GPS along with LORAN and some other things is used to calibrate the
ships inertial navigators. Once the calibration is complete, we only
need access for a few minutes to *one* of the multiple reference
standards (GPS, LORAN, BQS-3) to ensure the calibration remained
accurate. At one point the D-5 operational concept included both a
GPS mast for obtaining the calibration update prelaunch and GPS
systems in the missile itself. Both were dropped because they added
very little to total system accuracy, though the capability to obtain
discrete updates from GPS as a calibration aid were retained.

NavSTAR could easily have been named "Deathstar".

For anyone interested in a more detailed short history of GPS, here is
a link that includes the Air Force nuclear strike efforts with their
MOSAIC and 621B programs along with the Navy contributions:

http://www.aero.org/publications/cro...er2002/01.html

That link is so wrong it's laughable.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

Steve Hix wrote:

From Ami Silberman:
"Stuf4" wrote
From Steve Hix:

What offensive weaponry, in particular?

This was addressed early on in this thread. Examples given from that
June 12th post are ICBMs as offensive space weaponry,

They're just *very* long-range artillery. Not space-based currently,
either.

The Soviets also considered ICBMs to be long-range artillery.

and GPS as providing offensive weaponry capability.

Pure baloney, any way you slice it.

Accurate ICBMs and SLBMs existed by the thousands, on both sides of the
Iron Curtain, long before GPS ever existed.

Among *thousands* of other uses.

You might as well class penicillin, ambulances, packaged food as
offensive weapons.

Also include computers, calculators, and microelectronics that makes
modern satellites feasible. :-]

: The problem with that is... We had no need of such a capability.
: What an SSBN needs is a method of knowing it's position *without*
: having to surface, or preferably even coming close to the surface. We
: already had that capability with SINS, SINS/ESGM, and with ESGN.
: From the point of view of an SSBN, GPS is 'nice-to-have', not 'must
: have'.

I'm not certain I quite agree with that. The USN definitely needed
such a capability. For starters, SSBNs launch from relatively close to
the surface, and in launching advertise themselves very well, and are not
supposed to be anywhere near an enemy when they do. Thus, coming close to
or at the surface is not such a liability. This is particularly true if
you are going to be using satcomms for any purpose - verification, mission
update, etc.
Secondly, the USN wanted to be able to use SSBN launched missiles
in counterfire, not a a countervalue, role. You can nuke a city without too
much accuracy, but if you want to plink hardened silos and buried targets
accuracy becomes much more important. This is particularly true if you want
to move to using MIRVs against silo fields, etc. In addition, during that
time the USN was greatly improving its modeling databases and incorporating
this knowledge into missile guidance (for example, more precise gravitational
maps, etc.). To fully utilize such data and calculate its effects over the
course of the launch it helped to have a much greater accuracy in launch
locations and, eventually, with onboard GPS updating aboard the missile.
A lot changed in the intervening years, but the USN was clearly
looking at increasing submarine ballistic missile accuracies by orders of
magnitude to allow new missions and employment models. If the USN wanted
to improve it capabilities, it needed GPS or some suitable replacement.
INS is great, and it has improved as well, but it was not expected to be
able to match the accuracy of the GPS system or allow the kind of precision
firing that the USN wanted. (There are continuing arguments over just how
much accuracy is really efficient/needed - but the military back then was
clearly of the opinion there could not be too much of it).

regards,
----------------------------------------------

From Scott Kozel:
Steve Hix wrote:

From Ami Silberman:
"Stuf4" wrote
From Steve Hix:

What offensive weaponry, in particular?

This was addressed early on in this thread. Examples given from that
June 12th post are ICBMs as offensive space weaponry,

They're just *very* long-range artillery. Not space-based currently,
either.

The Soviets also considered ICBMs to be long-range artillery.

and GPS as providing offensive weaponry capability.

Pure baloney, any way you slice it.

Accurate ICBMs and SLBMs existed by the thousands, on both sides of the
Iron Curtain, long before GPS ever existed.

I don't see how those facts refute anything I've stated.


~ CT

From Ami Silberman:
"Stuf4" wrote
snip
As far as "populating" in orbit, I was referring specifically here to
the constellation of GPS satellites that tie in to nuclear subs,
nuclear bombers, and GPS bombs themselves.

Which are in no way prohibited by the UN treaty, since they are not
conducting maneuvers on a celestial body, nor interfering with other
nation's use of space, nor are they weapons, nor conducting weapons tests.

snip
Yes, I see those as examples of space being militarized. Satcom gives
direct link to SIOP forces. WX sats give indirect link.

But those are not prohibited by the UN Treaty. To my mind, they are military
uses for space, but not militarization of space. There is a subtle
difference.

snip
You might want to consider the fact that satcom was designed as a
backup means for transmitting the Emergency War Order for the SIOP
(though I'm sure that SAC crews were hoping to get an Emergency Action
Message that recalled them).

As far as weather sats, they were not funded so that the president
could plan a vacation in Moscow. The data they provided was used in
strategic offensive plans.

Right, but their use in space was permitted.

I agree with all of your points here.

I was not saying that the US violated the Outer Space Treaty. My
point was that the US has militarized space. Many people are not
aware of that fact.


~ CT

From Ami:
snip
Civilian law is convoluted enough as it is. Military law can be
outright wacky. As the saying goes, "all's fair..."

But both FM 27-10 and the Geneva conventions say that all isn't fair.

Of course there are rules in war. Our discussion has centered on such
rules. There are rules in love too (else only "9 Commandments", etc).
That cliche seems to stem from the tendency for passion to override
reason in the heat of love/war.

In
particular, both parties to war are expected to try to avoid civilian
casualties (both by not targeting them and by not placing military targets
in civilian areas), and you aren't allowed to violate the sort of
"meta-rules" which are in place to allow wars to start and stop, and reduce
needless suffering. In particular, feigned surrenders, maltreatment of
prisoners (including those who are not POWs), not accepting prisoners,
misrepresenting a flag of truce or a truce itself, targeting uniformed
non-combatants or falsely representing oneself as a uniformed non-combatant
(chaplain, medical personel), or the distinctive badge of the Geneva
convention. You also aren't allowed to use weapons which cause undue
suffering, shoot at persons descending by parachute from disabled airplanes
etc. As FM 27-10 states, "Treacherous or perfidious conduct in war is
forbidden because it destroys the basis for a restoration of peace short of
the complete annihilation of one belligerent by the other."

These are some of the things I was referring to. It seems wacky to
declare treacherous conduct as forbidden when the very nature of war
is treacherous.

snip
So? Sailing just in international waters gave military ELINT trawlers an
excellent position for reconnaissance, but they are not considered to be
violating the laws of war by being unmarked. Especially when there are
no
active hostilities.

Ok, now imagine if that trawler was designed and built to Soviet
military specification, it carried a Soviet military payload in its
cargo hold, and its crew was all Soviet military members wearing
civilian clothes...

What do you think I'm talking about? I'm talking about the Soviet spy ships
that used to sail up and down the US coast, and follow navy task forces.
(OK, they may have been militarized commercial designs, but they had lots of
radars and antennas and such.)

(Yes, I knew exactly what you were talking about.)

As soon as a foreign country arrives at the conclusion that the US
astronauts "detainees" have been out and about on a military
reconnaissance mission, it's easy to see that a conclusion will be
reached that it is the United States of America who is in violation of
the Outer
Space Treaty.

Um, and what exactly about Gemini III was a military reconnaissance
mission?

Any piloted spacecraft with a window and a radio could be used for
reconnaissance. If they take pictures then it becomes photo
reconnaissance.

And that is a violation of the Outer Space Treaty how?

This is completely open to a wide variation of interpretation from
different countries. See the following as a possible example:


Here is an excerpt from Article IX as a sample:

In the...use of outer space, ...States Parties to the Treaty shall be
guided by the principle of co-operation and mutual assistance and
shall conduct all their activities in outer space...with due regard to
the corresponding interests of all other States Parties to the Treaty.



Consider the recent case of the Navy EP-3 landing in China. There was
no airspace violation in its patrol. So why was it being harrassed by
Chinese pilot ("Wong Wei", as in "you're going the wong wei")?

This is because countries are not particularly fond of surveillance
they have not consented to. Whether the "intelligence gathering" is
legal or not, it is still bothersome.

Right. And the harrassment by the PRC certainly violated international law,
at least when it got to the point that Wong Wei interfered with the EP-3's
flight. Just because the intelligence gathering is bothersome, it is not
illegal by international law, and attempts to interfere with it by force
*are* illegal. There is also precedence that seizing the crews of vessels
engaged in legal intelligence gathering is also illegal. So, should NASA had
made the crew draw window blinds everytime they passed within site of a
country which had not given them specific permission to look at it?

Well I'm sure that the USSR would have preferred that for those
military shuttle missions.

Perhaps when details from those missions get declassified we will
learn of many ways that the Soviets found to interfere with their
operations.


~ CT

From stmx3:
[snip]

_________________

NavSTAR could easily have been named "Deathstar".


For anyone interested in a more detailed short history of GPS, here is
a link that includes the Air Force nuclear strike efforts with their
MOSAIC and 621B programs along with the Navy contributions:

http://www.aero.org/publications/cro...er2002/01.html


~ CT

Well, that's what they *want* you to believe. In fact, the top brass
in charge of these programs were avid fishermen. Despite all the
technology available at the time, there was no way for them to
positively return to that "sweet spot" on the lake. So...a hundred
million here, a billion there...and you got yourself one of the best
fishing navigation systems in the world.

NavSTAR could easily have been named "FishSTAR".

But they don't want you to know that.

That was hilarious! Thanks for the laugh.


Maybe the reason why my ribs are in stitches right now is because I
can *actually* imagine that happening!


~ CT

From Derek Lyons:
(Stuf4) wrote:

(quoted)
But you could only expect to hit a silo if you knew exactly where you
were launching from. That's not hard if your missiles are on land, as
most of them were in the Soviet Union. But most of the U.S. nuclear
arsenal was at sea on subs. To maintain the balance of power the U.S.
had to
come up with a way to allow those subs to surface and fix their exact
position in a matter of minutes anywhere in the world.... Hello GPS!

The problem with that is... We had no need of such a capability.
What an SSBN needs is a method of knowing it's position *without*
having to surface, or preferably even coming close to the surface. We
already had that capability with SINS, SINS/ESGM, and with ESGN.
From the point of view of an SSBN, GPS is 'nice-to-have', not 'must
have'.

Derek, of course that is the grossly abbreviated version that they are
relating. Knowing the more complete history of GPS, it's easy to
infer that the folks at Trimble were referring to Transit as a
precursor to GPS. Note that Transit was first launched a mere two and
a half years after Sputnik.

GPS along with LORAN and some other things is used to calibrate the
ships inertial navigators. Once the calibration is complete, we only
need access for a few minutes to *one* of the multiple reference
standards (GPS, LORAN, BQS-3) to ensure the calibration remained
accurate. At one point the D-5 operational concept included both a
GPS mast for obtaining the calibration update prelaunch and GPS
systems in the missile itself. Both were dropped because they added
very little to total system accuracy, though the capability to obtain
discrete updates from GPS as a calibration aid were retained.

You could likewise argue that Air Force strategic bombers had no need
for GPS because they had INS supplemented with TACAN and RADAR.

But the fact is that many billions of dollars *were* spent. The
problem was that INS was far from perfectly reliable. Acceleration
errors accumulated in both air and sea navigation. This meant that
warheads would land *off target*.

There was a definite need to improve navigation.

Notice that even today the space shuttle is involved with a GPS
upgrade. For every flight to date it had multiple INS with multiple
TACAN. If this was deemed reliable and accurate enough then the GPS
conversion would be a complete waste of time and money.

Now talk to the astronauts and see how badly the want GPS.


The accuracy and reliability desired by astronauts today to reach
their touchdown zone follows the accuracy and reliability that the Air
Force and Navy wanted for their Triad back in the 60s when GPS
concepts were being brewed.

NavSTAR could easily have been named "Deathstar".

For anyone interested in a more detailed short history of GPS, here is
a link that includes the Air Force nuclear strike efforts with their
MOSAIC and 621B programs along with the Navy contributions:

http://www.aero.org/publications/cro...er2002/01.html

That link is so wrong it's laughable.

The Aerospace Corporation is one of the original players in GPS. I'm
sure they'd appreciate having any errors pointed out to them.


~ CT