U.S. Space Force Is Arming to Jam Russian and Chinese Satellites

[skeezix]

https://www.bloombergquint.com/politics/u-s-space-force-is-arming-to-jam-russian-and-chinese-satellites

We do it and they'll do it, if they're not already doing it.

Time to get eLORAN in high gear and get more NDBs back on the air.

[Josh]

This may be in response to the soviets using their sats to closely examine ours, something they have done recently as well as in the past.
It's suspected the sats that can track and intercept other sats are also armed, or at least can be used to damage other sats by contact. That said, once one is destroyed and the orbital slot is filled with debris, it's all over. A paint chip moving at 18000mph does some impressive damage to solid state electronics.

[East Troy Don]

I just finished a very good book entitled "THE SHADOW WAR' by Jim Sciutto.  The book covers the "hyper-wars",which are aggressive initiatives  undertaken and conducted by US adversaries that implement propaganda, proxy state warfare, election rigging, NGO manipulations, etc.   There is an excellent section of the book that covers both the surreptitious as well as moderately overt offensives against us in Space and our  heretofore pathetic attempts to refute their campaigns. 
If you are into this labyrinthic and polymorphous aspect of foreign policy I strongly recommend this work.   The area analyzing the current ongoing Space Wars is, alone, worth the price of the book. 
Below is Wiki's CV summary of the author's credentials:

James Ernest Sciutto (born March 10, 1970) is an anchor and Chief National Security Correspondent for CNN, reporting and providing analysis on all aspects of U.S. national security, including foreign policy, the military, terrorism, and the intelligence community, a position he took on in September 2013. From 2011 to 2013 he served as Chief of Staff to U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. He was formerly ABC News' Senior Foreign correspondent, based in London.[1] He is the author of Against Us: The New Face of America's Enemies in the Muslim World.[2] Jim Sciutto is currently an anchor on CNN Newsroom, based in New York City and Washington, DC

[Token]

We do it and they'll do it, if they're not already doing it.

We, and they, have been playing with and had the ability to do it for years.  The only thing really new is the size of the equipment and the fact it is part of a specific Space force, instead of part of the Air Force or Navy.

The Chinese have had laser systems and EW systems aimed at sats for years, possibly decades.  There have been persistent rumors, most pretty hard to confirm one way or another, that US sats have suffered damage and degradation from both Russian and Chinese systems.

T!

[NJQA]

The attachment of MEV-1 to extend the life of IS-901 is a historic first.  I can think of several ways that this same technology could be used offensively.

https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/04/17/intelsat-satellite-returns-to-service-after-first-commercial-life-extension-mission/