DAMIN JUNG South Korea took a bold step into space defense in December 2023, leveraging new technologies and the country’s long-running alliance with the United States to launch its first military surveillance satellite. After placing a military communication satellite into orbit in July 2020, Seoul’s newest endeavor builds its own space surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities while deepening cooperation with allies in related areas. Historically dependent on the U.S. for satellite intelligence, South Korea has now developed a satellite capable of precise ground observation, according to Lee Jong-ho, minister of science and information and communication technologies. The country’s long-range plan calls…
Author: Apogee
Technologies deployed during Desert Storm play key role in creation of Space Force APOGEE STAFF Long before the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act established the United States Space Force, seeds were being sown during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 for the military’s sixth branch. Satellite communication, GPS and precision-guided munitions all played a prominent role in what many historians refer to as the United States’ first space war, launched as a prolonged air assault to drive invading Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The U.S. and its coalition partners flew more than 116,000 combat sorties and dropped 88,500 tons of bombs in…
APOGEE STAFF India has been honing its space know-how for more than six decades, starting with the launch of a sounding rocket delivered by bicycle and graduating to orbital missions around the moon and Mars. Now, India is on the verge of joining an exclusive group of three — the United States, Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) — as the only nations to send a crew into space. India’s ascension as a space power took a sharp turn in January 2007, when the PRC fired a missile into space and blasted a defunct satellite into thousands of…
APOGEE STAFF Two satellites were circling the Earth in March 1958 when a team led by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory placed a third one into orbit — Vanguard 1, a shiny aluminum sphere the size of a grapefruit with a half-dozen antenna spikes sticking from it. Five months earlier, in October 1957, Russia had ushered in the Space Age with Sputnik, another sphere that orbited for three months before becoming the first satellite to burn up and fall to Earth. At first, Vanguard’s only company in orbit was a Sputnik successor and the missilelike Explorer 1 satellite, launched a…
APOGEE STAFF Nations with space capabilities are poised to launch more civilian and military payloads into orbit than ever before in the coming years. While launches have risen steadily in number since the dawn of the Space Age in 1957, the volume of objects launched has grown exponentially since 2017 as payloads aboard each rocket increase. Leading the way are SpaceX’s Starlink global internet satellite constellations, shot dozens at a time into low Earth orbit from Florida and California. Overall, said founder Elon Musk, SpaceX was tracking to launch more than 80 percent of all Earth payload to orbit in…
DAVID A. HOLLENBACH Those familiar with air power theory know that well before World War II and soon after World War I, Italian Air Marshal Giulio Douhet advocated that the future of war could justify bombing civilian targets by declaring total war on an adversary, later coined “strategic bombardment.” Even at the dawn of military airpower in 1921, Douhet reasoned that war should be extended to civilian and industrial targets to terrorize the population and destroy resupply, thereby hastening the enemy’s surrender. Douhet’s thesis was about adapting to the change in the character of war, and to win by destroying…
RUSSELL BOYCE Australia established a Defence Space Command in January 2022 “to achieve our strategic space ambitions and lead the effort to assure Australia’s access to space.” The government also plans to spend about $4.5 billion on space defense over the next decade. Many areas within defense are already engaged in space activities, but Defence Space Command will bring them together. It will aim to build space capability not only in defense, but also the rest of government, industry, and the research and education sectors. I am the director of University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra Space — the…
Cybersecurity in sharper focus with recent attacks APOGEE STAFF As Russian military forces prepared to invade Ukraine in early 2022, state-sponsored hackers were busy planning an attack of their own. The focus of their efforts: a U.S.-based commercial satellite network. By the time Russian forces crossed the border in the pre-dawn hours February 24, firing missiles into Kyiv and other cities, the hackers had launched their assault, not only disrupting Ukrainian police and military communications, but also disabling internet connectivity for tens of thousands of users across Eastern Europe. United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the action in…
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