Space Warfare, with Paul Szymanski

long range strategic planning, and command and control. I do want to advise listeners that this one gets a little more into topics of contemporary and near future warfare. I realize that is not everyone's cup of tea, so just fair warning about that. But without further ado, let's get right into this fascinating chat. Well, Paul, welcome to the show. The new book is The Battle Beyond Fighting and Winning the Coming War in Space, co authored with Jerry Drew.

It's a detailed breakdown of the emerging technologies and ideas that are going to define war and warfare in space. And you've certainly a great deal of expertise in this field. How did you become interested in outer space and how did your career end up moving into this domain of space systems and space warfare.

option of either working nuclear war or space war. And for a space war, you know, sounds like the what do you call it? Star wars and sort of thing you know from when I was growing up. So is that sounds cooler? I guess I'll go that way. So it was almost a random sequence of events.

the battlefield. We're about to do a sneak attack. We better take out the guy's imagery, you know, So you need to take out the mission. Oh, by the way, the commander in the particular theater is going to say, deny the adversary imagery of the battlefield over these latitude launch coronets and resolution over the next seventy two hours. You know, you figure out how to do it within

the laws of armed conflict. So you not only have to take out that satellite, you have to take out the drones you know, doing the same mission, or the guy on a camel with binoculars, So you have to think that bigger picture. And you know, the guys I've worked with, they love the technology. We love the technology in this country. But the whole point of war, and even the ancient Greeks understood this two thousand years ago. The whole point of war is make the other side

change their mind, you know. So getting back to you're not attacking the satelle attacking the mission, and you're not even really attacking the mission. You're attacking the mind of the adversary commander who's using that imagery information. So you know, it's kind of information warfare, whatever you want to call it. And that's kind of hard to figure. Like, you know, how do you model human mind? Did he get this

information or not? Did he attack left or right? You know, if you had like an extra one hundred million dollars some fiscal year and he said, well, gee, should I buy one of these fancy new space weapons that we've never tried before? Or should I re equip an army brigade with newer tanks or something like that. Now, Okay, there's politics and this and that, but really, what is going to make the war end sooner? With fewer casualties,

I guess, or get your point across, you know. And so the army they're very used to, you know, they invented what's called operations research, so they're very used to figuring that out, Like, well, if we take out this bridge, it'll take them twelve hours to get bridge laying equipment, and so we delay the forces, you know, maybe fourteen hours, and we can calculate in general the war ends two days early and there's you know, three percent fewer casually

something like that. I mean, something you could kind of say, is that worth a hundred million maybe? You know, but if you could say, oh, this crusty old general in I don't know, North Korea or something like that, who doesn't really believe in space, and you know, even if he gets information from it, he's going to do what he's going to do. He's mind to set. And so is it worth one hundred million dollars for that space weapon program to deny something he doesn't care about anyway?

You know, I'm being a wise guy here at this, of course. You know. Let me tell you something a very wise guy, and that is what is the biggest threat from space, and that is something called fobs fractional orbital bombardment system and that's something that the Russians invented in the nineteen sixties. And you know, instead of sending nuclear icbm's north you know, North Pole, they sent they put it into space, the rocket and it comes from the south and avoids American radars and all that stuff,

you know. And it was like two three years ago the State Department or military I forget who said, well, you know, China has fobs now the fractional orbital bombardments system, And I'm thinking, okay, you have to again think the bigger picture.

it is not a land power. Good luck marching one hundred thousand soldiers across the Atlantic ocean to defend Europe, and we've gotten kind of arrogant that, oh, we're just going to do all these wars around the world and they'll never affect us because we got these oceans, the barriers, and no one could send landing craft that far, you know, and all that, and so we you know, we can get away with a lot. Let's say, now, let's theorize.

Let's say you take you know, I'm being facetious here, but two tons of concrete in space and you drop an all eleven American aircraft carriers around the world within forty minutes it comes down mock, I think twenty four Anything coming from space comes that fast, three times hotter than the surface of the Sun. It holds the carrier. There's gonna be you know, gleaming orange, jagged metal. It's gonna hit the ocean, the cold ocean, and a huge

steam explosion. The think sinks in a matter of minutes. Now I'm talking about nineteen sixties technology in order to achieve this. And oh, by the way, some reason we screwed up and we don't have hypersonic weapons, but the Russian have been merrily using them in Ukraine, taking out command centers four hundred feet underground, and China the only reason they develop their own hypersonic weapons is, oh, guess what, take out American aircraft carriers. Because it's a point target thing.

You know, if you use it on the ground and forces attacking on the ground, oh maybe kill fifty hundred people whatever, But you know, take out command centers aircraft carriers. So I guess what I'm emphasizing is you better control space or you suddenly become a second rate power. What can we do if we no longer have our aircraft carriers, we no longer control the sea. Let's say China controls

the sea. They you know, all that oil in the Middle East is worthless if you can't ship it out, And so China starts charging transit fees, you know, anti piracy fees or something. If you don't pay it, we'll sink your ship too. You know, it's real easy nineteen sixties technology. You know, we're not actually talking about the future. It could happen tonight. So China, you know, essentially controls

the world. Seems to me, I mean this theoretical, but I don't I can't think of any holes in that at the moment, and I actually I'm writing a novel, a seventh book, and that it will be out in a few months. So okay, that's something to worry about. Now, getting back to the the domain of space, everyone I know keeps in the space force, and you know this has been true of the Air Force I worked with. See. The trouble is, can you think of the last time that the air war was in doubt for the Air Force?

And it's like, well, early World War two, not even late World War two, Vietnam, no, you know, in the Middle East. No. So I think there's a certain degree of lazy thinking that goes on because quite frankly, you learn more from defeat than from victory. I mean, we're teaching Russia how to really fight worse nowadays. So probably ninety five percent of space for US is Air Force.

So I talked to these generals and you know, lieutenants or colonels and all that, and they keep thinking, tactically, oh, we're kind to you know, slowly maneuver to this satellite and observe it, or maybe shoot it with a pelggon or the French are telling me they were putting up a laser, you know, and all that. But they're not thinking this strategic big picture and that is well, a satellite is strategic. It covers the world. You know, you

think you're doing something tactical. Not only are you doing something strategic. And oh, by the way, maybe you're fighting in the Middle of East or Ukraine or something of that, but you're going to attack that satellite in the South Atlantic, you know, from a ship or something, you know, with a laser or direct assent weapon. You have to think the bigger picture global and then you have to think political too, I mean wars, you know political. Unfortunately, we're

used to killing people on the ground during war. We're not used to space war. Now. I've noticed this space force the last few years is getting people used to that concept. You know, they keep their marketing campaign getting more and more severe or something like that. But if you take out someone's satellite, you know, it has consequences. Now there's a problem and a beauty with space too, and that is conflict escalation letter and I go over

that in the book too. I've started learned that countries are just like children. They'll do anything they want if they can get away with it from their parents. Parents being the United Nations, their own people or whatever. And so you could think you could go to CIA headquarters in Virginia. There's a wall with all the stars of the agents who died in the line of duty. You know, did any of those start a war? Do we even

know who they were? I heard I think it was two years ago there was an incident between an American and a Russian submarine in the Sea of Japan. You know, I just read in the paper and that's all they say, an incident because there's no news camera taking it. You know, they don't know. So what I'm getting at is spy warfare, undersea warfare, space warfare. You can get away with a lot, and we have. There's been more intense space war since the nineteen sixties. I can, you know, show you a

bunch of those. And like I said, this the war that happened in twenty fourteen Ukraine. I could mathematically prove that through the orbital dynamics. So you really have to thank the bigger picture. You can't think, oh, this satellite is going to come snuggle up to me and start, you know, messing with me or something like that, because that takes days and weeks to accomplish. Well, my simulations have shown space wars over with in twenty four to

forty eight hours. You know, a real one. Oh, I've got fifty space weapons going out right now, so you know, I think in some sense we would self deter You know, I've heard at least years ago that we wouldn't attack a satellite that attacked us unless we knew who owned this satellite, you know, And that's kind of hard to do. They're kind of arrogant too, and say, oh, we know what satellites have been launched, and blah blah blah and

all that. And I say, well, you know, every two weeks I download the official Air Force Satellite Orbital Catalog, and forty percent of the objects there are considered unknowns. We don't know who launched them, who owns them, and what the mission is, so you know, you know of what's really happening. And so the first step to defeat in space is over confidence. Oh yeah, you know, we're Air Force. We've won every single air war we've had, and we'll win the space war. It doesn't take much.

The most popular method is cyber warfare. Any country on Earth has clever young kids who can be hackers and hack a satellite. Every country on Earth has university with high powered lasers that you can kind of gin up and make more accurate and or whatever and mess with satellites. I mean, I have a laser I got on Amazon seven want laser handheld that'll start my furniture on fire across the room in a fraction of a second. You know, we'll put that out of satellite or whatever.

Russian tanks will stop. You'll mess with their computers or whatever, you know. And you know, I haven't tested this in the field, but it worked in the lab. Don't worry. And and the poor soldiers there, well, what about a bazookah I said, oh, sorreh, well, used up all your funding on this, you know, cyber weapon. You know, so the Russian tanks attack, Oh, they push that button, you know, the tank stop and thirty seconds later they reboot and

squish you. You know. So I don't know about you, but as a guy, I find it much more emotionally satisfying to see a burning hole in the ground where the tank used to be, you know, as I did the job. And it's the same kind of with space. Now, of course, I have a whole other briefing. I can present sometime ninety four ways to attack satellites without creating debris. You really don't have to do the debris thing, but you're really not sure. You know, people when they're about

to die get very clever. So you're really not sure if the satellite's faking its death, especially if you use the cyber means. You know, you're not even sure exactly who attacked you. I mean, let's say we're at war in the Western Pacific, China, Taiwan, whatever, and you wake up one morning and several of your satellites stopped working. Well, you know, my computer stopped working last month. You know, maybe that same thing happened. Maybe a solar flares irradiated

too much, maybe a micro meteorite hit it. Oh it's human cause. Oh this you know, Romanian satellite came too close accidentally you know, Oh, no human cause and intentional. Okay, what is the intent now? Let's say, oh, it's the Chinese attacking us where we were the Well, maybe it's the Russians of the North Koreans messing with you and starting to stir the pot. How do you know who's

doing it, what their intent is? Are they going against command and control, decapitation, communication satellites, are the imagery satellites navigation? Are they doing a demonstration attack, like, well, we're showing we're really serious now kind of thing.

in space. And I theorize, well, if you've got one of these inspector maintenance satellites, whatever, and you float behind it and present an upside down star chart to it with the satellite flip over, because these are just dumb machines, you know, So there's a lot of techniques. I don't know,

you know, if that would work. Certainly to my mind, it's most effective weapon, not timeliness wise, but if someone comes up there with the manipulator and you know China, they gleefully told us about one of their supposedly dead satellites and they used a satellite, came up close with manipular arm and pulled it to what's called well sort of graveyard orbit. It's very suspicious, but any rate, so you can pull satellite out of orbit. But it's an

ideal weapon. A satellite coming up close to you, because it's sort of like taking a satellite, putting in a wheelbarrow, going in your garage and going at it. Well, let's drill a hole, let's cut this wire, let's bend this, let's all that. You know. Oh, let's paint the optics with something that you know floats away a few weeks

later or something. You know. So you do a lot of messing and there's a lot of people and unfortunately one of them's Eline muss And I love Musk, but who want to play the commercial entities who want to play with army soldiers like children, And you know, Musk said, oh, I'm going to give Ukraine these starlink terminals and all that. And I'm pretty sure Russia attacked his systems for that, but they don't really understand the consequences. And it's sort

of like Merchant Marine in World War Two. Well they got sank two, you know. And I think I believe there have been attacks on multiple satellite systems, not only cyber attacks but others during the Ukrainian conflict. So this thought that oh, I'm just going to play war and the military is doing that too, that we're going to

take these satellites commercial statists and use them. And you know, the commercial ones have really cool technology and probably cheaper and so forth, But who pays for them when they get attacked? I don't know how that works. And you know, they live in what I consider Disney fantasy worlds like Starlink. I don't know, ten fifteen thousand satellites, Well, you got to attack each one. No, you know, I've seen cyber warfare techniques like thirty five years ago, going through the

electrical plug into your computer and all. I mean, people are very clever. They'll always find a way. And I've you know, theorized well Elon's Starlink satellites have a they can tell how close they're coming to each other and have an algorithm to say, oh we're too close, let's go away. Well, you do a cyber attack. You put a negative sign in that algorithm, and when they get too close to the satellites start moving even closer and you kill them all at once. You know, I mean,

there's always a way on that. So I think it's easy for us to lose a war in space due to overconfidence, due to not thinking strategically. You know, what exactly are the consequences, I guess militarily politically, and also getting back to your teaching your adversary how to fight you better ten years later or whatever. So maybe it should withhold some weapons and shape not only the future battlefield but the future political environment of well, oh gee,

look at this, we want that space war. Look at all the junks flown around. Well, now all your allies hate you. Now they are all these treaties restricting you. Maybe you should have thought of that beforehand and said, well, let's do it this way, maneuver this way, or whatever, and so more improbable this new treaty won't be so bad or something. I mean, think of the political now.

For years I've said, oh, look at this cool multi billion dollar space weapons program, you know, And I said, well, you know, we're starting to develop this now, why don't we get the State Department in on this early on? Because they're going to be part of I don't know what used to be called National command authorities, but they're going to be in the room with the President's deciding

whether attack or not. And if the State Department got on early, they could say, well, if you tweak it slightly later on, there would be more probably will prove it or something, you know. And I was always told, oh, we can't truss the State Department. You know, they'll just reveal, you know, what we got or whatever. And you know, all governments are like that, each department hates each other

and all that. But I've got over twenty eight thousand members in my space warfare discussion group on LinkedIn, and one of them is a former assistant Secretary of State, and he says, yeah, they're right. State Department never knew a treaty. It didn't like for space, you know, restricting something in space. You know. So we've got all these kind of undercurrents and getting back to children playing with toys, it's conceivable that let's say the Space for US attacks

the satellite. They're certainly not going to tell the State Department. There's certainly probably not going to tell the Navy or the army or whatever. You know, we all have our secrets, I guess.

the satellite, oh, start spinning or something like that. You know, so as soon as you're accomplishing a counter space thing or something that you know is trying to defend yourself, Uh, the enemy has won, because if you start spinning, you can't do your mission anymore, you know, and he's probably attacking at some critical time in the battlefield, and so he's you know, he's done his job. You don't have to necessarily kill the satellite. And quite frankly, there's three

major areas that we've talked about for years. I mean, you go against satellite, you can go against the ground controller, or you can go against the link between the two. And that's all three ways to do it. So there's multiple ways to skin a cat I guess or something like that that doesn't necessarily involve debris generation. But the James Bond thing, you know, capturing, yeah, you probably could do that. As a matter of fact, you could look up.

I think NASA had some net to capture satellites they were doing research on. I remember seeing that, and I suppose the net might work if it's you know, spinning or something. But I've had my own theories, like what I call the porcupine defense, and that is, you know, in the nineteen sixties, satellites used to have the long

antennas sticking out of the ball. You know, well, if you had these long wires that you inferled out going out I don't know, half a kilometer or something like that, nobody could approach you they tangle up in the wires. Maybe the wires you have them electrostatic, and they give them a shock or maybe somehow acidic or I don't know. I think some simple defenses like that. Maybe for close approaches. People talk about, oh, well we'll start maneuvering out of

the way we see it coming. Oh. You know, first of all, if you let's say you had a space weapon where I called lagrange points, they're equal gravitational potential to retain the Earth and the Moon, and so they just sort of sit their way out, you know, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of miles something like that, and all it takes is just a little bit of feel to you know, hit it and have it come screaming back down the gravity. Well, and come attack your satellite.

And if your satellite, oh I see something coming, I'm going to maneuver a kilometer or two away. Well, well, just looking at the physics the geometry. If you're fifty thousand miles away and you sell how removed a few kilometers, Well, I change a micro radian or something of my trajectory, and I'm coming in like really fast, And I don't know if there's much you can do. I mean, everything can be easily hypervelocity in space, and it's not like you're going to have fifty feet of concrete on your

satellite trying to defend from something coming in. I don't think you can defend anything. And you know, the Air Force all, oh, we're going to defend these commercial satellites, and I don't know what that really means. Maybe you try to jam the weapon coming at you or something like that. But I think a lot of people living in fantasy world's when it comes to space warfare.

between opposing space cruisers or whatever. I suppose you'd still have to have kinetic one way or the other, because oh, you got these great lasers. Well if you had a mirror like finish on their spacecraft and you know, if you spin it, it'd be you know, depositing the radiation all around. And it's like we have ground based lasers, but they can't go out to geosynchronous orbit. It just

isn't powerful enough. So if you're talking about I don't know if battles would be from fifty thousand kilometers apart or something. I just don't know about how all that

would work. And you know, maybe we're really talking about AI and the machines will be fighting the machines in one way or the other, you know, getting back to space war, and why would you rather have a bunch of satellites broken in space, hopefully without debris, because you don't have to use debris causing things, then a bunch of broken Ukrainian cities, and you know you're not killing anyone.

There's no sense to attack the International Space Station though, just as a funny aside, who knows, twenty five thirty years ago it is as some space conference in coverall springs, you know, Air Force and the general giving the presentation, who, by the way, dressed up in a World War two outfit and acted like patent, you know, with a big American flag bearing. Anyway, I stopped him on the way out and I says, well, you know, the Russia is on the International Space Station and we are doing like

the left hook or whatever. And he had binocas the Russian cosmonaut had binoculars on there. What would you do? And his first response was I'll shoot him. You know, well, I don't know about discharging a weapon in you know, putting a hole through the sides letting oxygen out, and even the political implications, but of course, you know, generals,

I guess sort of think that way on it. I even had some if he used five point seven by two to eight bullet, it can penetrate the was a Lexan armored goggles of an astronaut and the what is the bulletproof suits, but it can't penetrate the bulkheads, the metal bulkheads, you know, oh, kevlar suits. So boarding space stations? Would we ever board the Chinese one?

So I don't know, it's you know, it's an emotional decision for countries to say, well, what's more important to us?

aircraft and what targets to service and all. I mean, you get to the point where war in space maybe is morally better than war on the ground. So how important is that to a society versus Oh, yeah, NASA, we're exploring this and that. Now I could again be a wise guy and say, boy, elon, the commercial world sure did a better job of trying to get to the Moon than NASA, did you know? They really seemed

to be failing there and all that. So yeah, they pour money into NASA, and or maybe we should just fund the commercial world to do that kind of thing, or maybe we should just get contributions from people who think it's really cool to go to the moon, or something. I mean again, I might be an old fogy here, but the Mars, you know, the dust is extremely poisonous and the radiation is extremely bad, and so you're gonna end up being underground ninety nine percent of the time.

You're gonna get really tired of that red not sing blue and all that. So I can see, you know, if I was younger, Oh yeah, you know, go, you know, colonize Mars and all that. Yeah, someday maybe we put atmosphere on that, but you're talking beyond our lifetimes. And same with the Moon.

gonna put cell phone service on the Moon. What the hell you're talking about? You know, you're gonna pay ten thousand dollars a minute for three astronauts, you know, and oh, you're putting these surveillance sensors on the dark side of the moon, you know, surveilling what. And everyone seems very worried about the whole thing. Now, I could be a conspiracy to alien this, and I don't think so, or

maybe am I I theorize that. You know, when China, when they land their TAKEO knots on the Moon, they plant the flag abrogate the outer space treaty that says you can't own crestal bodies, abrogate that. Ten minutes where they land on the Moon, say now we own the Moon, you know, sort of like Spain and Portugal I guess did for the Western hemisphere. Cour it's good luck defending that kind of So I wonder if they're worried about

that in some sense. And I also point out we have this nineteen sixty seven outer space treatise as you can't own celestial bodies. Well there's over eighty countries that never sign that. I theorize that Elon can take one

of his es. He was building some launch ships. I don't know he gave up on that, but you ship it out to the territorial waters of one of these countries and launched the moon and say, and now we own the moon, or that country Ecuador or whatever owns the moon and leases it back to Eline for ninety nine years, like Hong Kong. You know, I'm not a lawyer, but sounds like you could do that.

and you know, communicating that way. I think there's even a website associated with it and all that, and that's that's probably the best way.

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