Is it possible to launch something to space stealthily?

[Jonfliesgoats]

Clamdestine launches are very difficult in the modern era.  Difficult is not impossible, however.  This poses an interesting engineering, operational and intelligence challenge.  I suppose something that is extremely "bright"with regard to relevant sensors could obfuscate a launch.  

If we imagine a breakdancer next to a spotlight aimed at our faces, we would only see the glare of the spotlight and would be ignorant of the crazy dance moves going on.  Along those lines, we could actively blind relevant sensors.

A spectacularly "bright" omnidirectional emitter that can overload relevant sensors (say with an IR transmitter would require lots of energy.  This means it would not be transportable and a strange transmitter next to a launch complex could be countered.

On the other hand, if we know where relevant monitor satellites are, we could lase the monitor satellites and jam BVR radars for fifteen minutes during a launch.  So, in theory anyway, we could find a way to sneak something aloft.

So to disguise a launch we need

1.) A thorough knowledge of adversary surveillance capabilities and the locations of relevant assets.  

2.) We need the ability to overload those sensors without starting a war.  

3.) We need these jamming capabilities to be mobile and inconspicuous.

Once a new object is flying, it is also traceable, but that's a challenge for another discussion.

 

 

 

Edited December 4, 2016 by Jonfliesgoats

[James Kerman]

It's my understanding that the USAF can only track objects in orbit greater than 10cm.  Adding a nano-sat to an existing payload might work but I doubt you would be able to transmit anything without setting off some alarms somewhere.

[cantab]

Doesn't the "jam the sensors" approach just make it even more obvious you're doing something dodgy? You might be able to hide the launch timing and trajectory, but if the enemy operating the satellites specifically designed to detect launches sees those satellites are being interfered with, they're going to assume you're launching. And they're quite possibly going to further assume you're launching nuclear missiles and respond accordingly.

[Jonfliesgoats]

Absolutely correct, CATNAB!  Once you take that approach, every amateur astronomer to acronym-organization will be trying to figure out what you are up to.

I am trying to tackle the challenge of launching something without being detected rather than the obvious strategic and tactical pitfalls that go with that.  An overt launch with some misinformation is easier and more beneficial.

Assuming there is no atmospheric wake detection out there, like some sort of real time schlieren optical system with some amazing processors, a truly stealthy launch system would have to be cool enough to blend in with background clutter.  That's harder than it sounds because position counts as much as emissivity.  A welding torch on the surface is no big deal, but something like a welding torch above 100000feet and Mach3 would still be noticeable.

Aerodynamic heating due to compressibility is another technical challenge.  Our stealth launch object would have to stay slow while it's low otherwise it will be noticeably hot and bright to surface and space-based sensors.

Or we can pretend a launch fails and our new asset is just space junk.

[Jonfliesgoats]

Okay guys, here's another idea to sneak something into space: unannounced salvo launching.

If you simultaneously launch interesting rockets from all our facilities on various' different, non ICBMish flight paths, you would have a small window to launch a less interesting rocket nearly covertly.

Passive sensors generally have to choose between a wide field of view and less detail or a narrow field of view and high detail.  Active sensors have other limitations and analysis from things like BVR radar would center on the larger, more interesting rockets

Whike everyone is watching the big rockets, a smaller one may escape notice for some time.

The problem here is that an unannounced salvo or rockets is a great way to accidentally start a nuclear holocaust.

Any sneaky rocket launch requires ridiculous effort, it seems.

Edited December 4, 2016 by Jonfliesgoats

[Tullius]

3 minutes ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

Okay guys, here's another idea to sneak something into space: unannounced salvo launching.

If you simultaneously launch interesting rockets from all our facilities on various' different, non ICBMish flight paths, you would have a small window to launch a less interesting rocket nearly covertly.

Passive sensors generally have to choose between a wide field of view and less detail or a narrow field of view and high detail.  Active sensors have other limitations and analysis from things like BVR radar would center on the larger, more interesting rockets

Whike everyone is watching the big rockets, a smaller one may escape notice for some time.

The problem here is that an unannounced salvo or rockets is a great way to accidentally start a nuclear holocaust.

Just hope the guys with the nuclear weapons aren't too trigger happy. Just remember the incident where in 1983 the Russian warning system gave a false alarm, and the only one to prevent a nuclear retaliation strike was the officer Stanislav Petrov that thought that the USA wouldn't launch such a small strike.

So you are taking a very high risk to launch a small payload, not to speaking of the enormous costs involved in launching so many rockets that the systems are saturated.

[Jonfliesgoats]

Exactly.  It's crazy due to risk and costs involved.  Still, it's an interesting problem to toss around.

[wumpus]

On 12/3/2016 at 10:48 AM, GoSlash27 said:

Tom Clancy postulated this once in Clear and Present Danger. He disguised an ELINT sat launch as a stage failure. They didn't try to hide the existence of the sat itself, they merely disguised the purpose and target. As a result, everybody dismissed it as a piece of space junk.

Best,
-Slashy

I have to wonder if you read this again how many mistakes you would find.

The thing would have to launch from Vandenburg (which helps secrecy a lot, there are a ton of controls of what goes in and out even on non-secret missions), and complete orbital insertion (of a polar orbit).  That's a fairly odd orbit to park in if you have a "staging failure" to launch a probe into escape velocity.

I was going to wonder if anybody noticed it was "hot".  Then I realized that the energy absorbed by solar panels (or TNG if the "cover mission" went past Jupiter) would cause the thing to heat up with the exact same energy regardless of the function of the craft.  If you decided to calibrate your IR sensors by comparing live birds to space junk you might be a little confused until you discovered the secret, but unless you did some precise measurements of the frequencies of the black body radiation emitted from the satellite, you'd never see a difference.  I wouldn't be surprised if spy agencies make such careful analysis of space junk, but I doubt ISIS has any agents in places that would tell them about such "hidden satellites".

Picking up the downlink would be relatively trivial if sent to Ft. Meade (just put a "home dish" in Columbia, MD).  A little harder in Utah.  Harder still for somebody listening to a Russian downlink to Siberia, and virtually impossible for NSA birds in GTO (especially if they sway back and forth to view northern sights).

I also thought there would be a bureaucracy issue (for pretty much the reason I laughed at the idea of NSA code in Windows.  Any US spook would run screaming from the idea of "we'll just have a bunch of H1-B temps code this up, then pull the code from an insecure server for the final build..." all to put [more] security holes in code they can hack at will).  My guess is that they could just have a Congressman insist on his pet company (which happens to be a small woman/veteran/indian owned company that is really a NSA front, so the immediately source a company that can handle everything [but insist on *one* specific part that can be easily replaced with the guts of an ELINT sat]).  This is so common in US contracting that nobody would notice (and only require a *tiny* front that wouldn't require a history at all.  And the "staging failure" makes a great reason to go out of business).  Yes, I've sat in too many meetings listening to government types drone on about "funding vehicles", can you tell?

Is the "staging failure" the thing just didn't work when in the right orbit?  Because "staging failure" sounds like "rocket failure" to me, which would be a bit odd.  But just failing (possibly working for a short period of time, some NASA missions are pretty short) would work pretty well.  And cover the tracks of the front agency well (which is probably more important in fiction, giving closure to those characters).

[Most of this post was thanks to some whoppers in Solar Express by L.E.Modesitt Jr.  He included a casual mention of "extending a partial space elevator" (which I would have easily caught *before* KSP) and [I think, I mostly assumed that anything after that was wrong] went downhill from there.  The non-orbital dynamics stuff was of course good.  2015 (probably written a year or two before) was not the time to release lousy orbital dynamics in SF.

[YNM]

22 hours ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

Okay guys, here's another idea to sneak something into space: unannounced salvo launching.

If you simultaneously launch interesting rockets from all our facilities on various' different, non ICBMish flight paths, you would have a small window to launch a less interesting rocket nearly covertly.

Passive sensors generally have to choose between a wide field of view and less detail or a narrow field of view and high detail.  Active sensors have other limitations and analysis from things like BVR radar would center on the larger, more interesting rockets

Whike everyone is watching the big rockets, a smaller one may escape notice for some time.

The problem here is that an unannounced salvo or rockets is a great way to accidentally start a nuclear holocaust.

Any sneaky rocket launch requires ridiculous effort, it seems.

Still, somebody would just overhear / overlook it.

And however good you conceal a satellite, it's visible from the ground. Although, visible as in can be tracked, but not known in detail (but that's what orbital / traectory analysis are for).

[Jonfliesgoats]

Yeah, it's certainly not feasible.  Any way I wrap my mind around the problem, the effort quickly escalates to Spaceballian levels of ridiculousness.

Of course it took me a very long time to solve tippy-lander problems by simply putting legs on their sides and belly landing them.  So there be some brilliant ideas that elude me.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Jonfliesgoats

[GoSlash27]

5 hours ago, wumpus said:

I have to wonder if you read this again how many mistakes you would find.

The thing would have to launch from Vandenburg (which helps secrecy a lot, there are a ton of controls of what goes in and out even on non-secret missions), and complete orbital insertion (of a polar orbit).  That's a fairly odd orbit to park in if you have a "staging failure" to launch a probe into escape velocity.

I was going to wonder if anybody noticed it was "hot".  Then I realized that the energy absorbed by solar panels (or TNG if the "cover mission" went past Jupiter) would cause the thing to heat up with the exact same energy regardless of the function of the craft.  If you decided to calibrate your IR sensors by comparing live birds to space junk you might be a little confused until you discovered the secret, but unless you did some precise measurements of the frequencies of the black body radiation emitted from the satellite, you'd never see a difference.  I wouldn't be surprised if spy agencies make such careful analysis of space junk, but I doubt ISIS has any agents in places that would tell them about such "hidden satellites".

Picking up the downlink would be relatively trivial if sent to Ft. Meade (just put a "home dish" in Columbia, MD).  A little harder in Utah.  Harder still for somebody listening to a Russian downlink to Siberia, and virtually impossible for NSA birds in GTO (especially if they sway back and forth to view northern sights).

I also thought there would be a bureaucracy issue (for pretty much the reason I laughed at the idea of NSA code in Windows.  Any US spook would run screaming from the idea of "we'll just have a bunch of H1-B temps code this up, then pull the code from an insecure server for the final build..." all to put [more] security holes in code they can hack at will).  My guess is that they could just have a Congressman insist on his pet company (which happens to be a small woman/veteran/indian owned company that is really a NSA front, so the immediately source a company that can handle everything [but insist on *one* specific part that can be easily replaced with the guts of an ELINT sat]).  This is so common in US contracting that nobody would notice (and only require a *tiny* front that wouldn't require a history at all.  And the "staging failure" makes a great reason to go out of business).  Yes, I've sat in too many meetings listening to government types drone on about "funding vehicles", can you tell?

Is the "staging failure" the thing just didn't work when in the right orbit?  Because "staging failure" sounds like "rocket failure" to me, which would be a bit odd.  But just failing (possibly working for a short period of time, some NASA missions are pretty short) would work pretty well.  And cover the tracks of the front agency well (which is probably more important in fiction, giving closure to those characters).

[Most of this post was thanks to some whoppers in Solar Express by L.E.Modesitt Jr.  He included a casual mention of "extending a partial space elevator" (which I would have easily caught *before* KSP) and [I think, I mostly assumed that anything after that was wrong] went downhill from there.  The non-orbital dynamics stuff was of course good.  2015 (probably written a year or two before) was not the time to release lousy orbital dynamics in SF.

Wumpus,

 I honestly hadn't given it that much thought, but it sounds totally plausible to me. *Particularly* with the lack of sophistication of the intended target. I could totally imagine this happening. The charade wouldn't last forever, but it'd last long enough for whatever op to be completed. Hell, people fall for cover stories a lot less plausible than this one all the time.

If I were to try to "disappear" a sat, this is how I would do it. Don't make it invisible, just make it seem like something else. Most people will accept the cover story without question and those that don't will be dismissed as conspiracy theory kooks.

Best,
-Slashy

[Jonfliesgoats]

Disguising something is a lot easier than hiding it.  Data-burst communications can transmit packets of info faster than DF equipment can find transmitters, so communications with a clandestine device would be doable.  

Maneuvering is another matter, but a clandestine payload masquerading as something innocent could maneuver within constraints.

People are more ingenious than we think, though.  We revealed our intent to capture Salyut 7 when we recruited soviet trained crew from France.  Keeping secrets is very difficult, in general.  Keeping secrets when you have have even a minimal number of people involved in a secret satellite program would be very difficult for more than a few years.  We do it, though.  Difficulty is not synonymous with impossibility. 

Disguising something is a lot easier than hiding it.  Data-burst communications can transmit packets of info faster than DF equipment can find transmitters, so communications with a clandestine device would be doable.  

Maneuvering is another matter, but a clandestine payload masquerading as something innocent could maneuver within constraints.

People are more ingenious than we think, though.  We revealed our intent to capture Salyut 7 when we recruited soviet trained crew from France.  Keeping secrets is very difficult, in general.  Keeping secrets when you have have even a minimal number of people involved in a secret satellite program would be very difficult for more than a few years.  We do it, though.  Difficulty is not synonymous with impossibility. 

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, GoSlash27 said:

If I were to try to "disappear" a sat, this is how I would do it. Don't make it invisible, just make it seem like something else.

Spoiler

Nobody likes to look stupid, so all would just ignore any messages about this object.

[wumpus]

15 hours ago, GoSlash27 said:

Wumpus,

 I honestly hadn't given it that much thought, but it sounds totally plausible to me. *Particularly* with the lack of sophistication of the intended target. I could totally imagine this happening. The charade wouldn't last forever, but it'd last long enough for whatever op to be completed. Hell, people fall for cover stories a lot less plausible than this one all the time.

If I were to try to "disappear" a sat, this is how I would do it. Don't make it invisible, just make it seem like something else. Most people will accept the cover story without question and those that don't will be dismissed as conspiracy theory kooks.

Best,
-Slashy

Most of this was overreaction from reading an otherwise excellent SF book and knowing just how bad the orbital mechanics were (which unfortunately were often key plot points).  But the idea of checking exactly what IR is coming off space junk has probably occurred to every well financed spy agency.  "Conspiracy theory kooks" aren't going to get the intelligence nor are they likely to be targeted (at least by a satellite).  Using "space junk" might not work well against an intelligence agency's "traditional enemies", but it might be extremely effective against poorly funded groups who at least know to hide when "official" satellites go across.

Hiding from well financed agencies might well be impossible.  One possible suggestion would be to have a "NASA [change scientific agency to match country launching it] moon impactor" study, preferably impacting (actually landing) on the far side of the moon.  Wait plenty of time, then launch again (back on the far side) for a [hopefully] undetectable launch.  The difficulty here is that you are a long way from Earth, and would have to burn in visible places to get close to Earth, and would be fairly likely tracked coming in the atmosphere.  Possibly some sort of ion propulsion (which simply would not be detectable by anything) might bring you into GTO in several months.

Actually, I'd probably do the same thing only instead of impacting, I'd split the thing in two (preferably on the far side, but it shouldn't matter) and have the "spy half" come back via ions and have the "science half" keep working.  I'd be rather interested to know just how long it takes to pick up something that looks for all the world like "space junk" slowly  changing from lunar orbit to GTO or similar.  I'm guessing it would be "detected" many times and thrown out as noise when it doesn't show up in the "right" position when checked again.

To be honest, the "rocket science" of a hidden EINT satellite isn't the real problem.  The big problems are that EINT satellites aren't exactly controversial, you could simply launch on from Vandenburg and mention it is a NSA flight without measurable protest.  The other is that satellite data is pretty much the "cheap cargo" of communications.  Of course, if Soviet/Chinese/OpFor_of_the_month could be interested in listening to Iridium calls, and have to cover it as well as they could to keep from blowing the secret that they could break whatever encryption was used (I would go so far to say that no launch is sufficiently stealthy to cover such a huge secret: just look at the care the UK took to hide that they broke enigma, and the fog of war was much thicker in those days).

[Jonfliesgoats]

A more practical question: can we secretly capture another organization's satellite?

[wumpus]

1 hour ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

A more practical question: can we secretly capture another organization's satellite?

Quick answer: no.

Longer answer: the only example of somebody gaining control of another's spacecraft was the ISEE-3.  This was "taken over" with full awareness of the original owners.  The difficulty of convincing the original owners that there billion dollar satellite was space junk (presumably arranging an anti-satellite satellite that is assumed to be space junk explode with the "correct amount" of energy for the collision and then jam the satellite until the owner gives up.  Then take over the satellite.

Actually going up and physically stealing the satellite (especially if attempting to return it) looks silly even in a James Bond movie.  Stealth is impossible with the mass necessary.

The key elements in such theft would require the thief to have (and use) extraordinary resources and the victim to have little or no extra resources (even with the aid of insurance: note that there have been cases of poorly maneuvered GTO satellites setting a course around the Moon to position themselves in the correct place.  Don't expect anyone to give up without a fight).  Presumably the victim organisation would be out of business and dissolved without the satellite.  Don't be too surprised if others attempt to contact the satellite when they notice it barely changed course after the "collision".

In any event, "destroy and replace" is relatively trivial (just slowly maneuver a "dead" satellite into a collision course) and launch your own copy of the thing into space.  Vastly more simple, same result.  So nobody is going to try the Rube Goldberg system of "stealing a satellite".

[cantab]

18 hours ago, GoSlash27 said:

Don't make it invisible, just make it seem like something else.

Or indeed make it be something else. On a minute's thought, I'd be rather surprised if the NRO or another relevant US agency doesn't have arrangements to quickly get the images from commercial and research satellites that would be useful to them.

[James Kerman]

5 hours ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

A more practical question: can we secretly capture another organization's satellite?

I'm speaking from ignorance but would it be possible to include further instructions (like a backdoor) in the chips that are used to assemble the satellite?

I ask this because the Australian government and the has banned Huawei from tendering on the national broadband network due to security concerns.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/25/huawei_nbn_ban/

[Kryten]

2 hours ago, cantab said:

Or indeed make it be something else. On a minute's thought, I'd be rather surprised if the NRO or another relevant US agency doesn't have arrangements to quickly get the images from commercial and research satellites that would be useful to them.

DoD already does a lot of purchase from commercial imagery providers though the geospatial intelligence agency, they're the main customer for the very high-res ones like DigitalGlobe.

[Darnok]

Even if you would be able to send something in orbit... SETI will know it when this satellite will communicate with ground station.

 

On 3.12.2016 at 3:16 PM, Green Baron said:

Status quo: seriously, a few years ago i would have said "No" with all the observation and surveillance satellites. But after realising that all the forces of the world aren't able to find a 300ton airliner in the Indian ocean my clear answer is: "No ... problem". You have good chances if you launch from a remote place, away from the states that are probably being watched over.

 

You just reminded me about this... this plane was going up with huge, as for airliner, speed? That is maneuver I often use in KSP with strato-like-launch

Now what if it was just a attempt to send something on orbit? Plane was not important, so it could crash in ocean after payload went higher.

 

 

 

 

 

[ARS]

2 hours ago, Darnok said:

You just reminded me about this... this plane was going up with huge, as for airliner, speed? That is maneuver I often use in KSP with strato-like-launch

Now what if it was just a attempt to send something on orbit? Plane was not important, so it could crash in ocean after payload went higher.

 

 

 

 

 

Hey I think u have a point there. I'm used to send a very small SSTO in KSP (with only 1 crew) by simply accelerating upwards (it uses advanced ramjet engines). once sufficient velocity is attained (aka, the apoapsis is higher than 70km kerbin atmosphere limit) I simply cut off the engine (while still being inside the atmosphere) and let the SSTO go by itself leaving the atmosphere with it's engine turned off

[YNM]

42 minutes ago, ARS said:

3 hours ago, Darnok said:

On 12/3/2016 at 9:16 PM, Green Baron said:

Status quo: seriously, a few years ago i would have said "No" with all the observation and surveillance satellites. But after realising that all the forces of the world aren't able to find a 300ton airliner in the Indian ocean my clear answer is: "No ... problem". You have good chances if you launch from a remote place, away from the states that are probably being watched over.

You just reminded me about this... this plane was going up with huge, as for airliner, speed? That is maneuver I often use in KSP with strato-like-launch

Now what if it was just a attempt to send something on orbit? Plane was not important, so it could crash in ocean after payload went higher.

Hey I think u have a point there. I'm used to send a very small SSTO in KSP (with only 1 crew) by simply accelerating upwards (it uses advanced ramjet engines). once sufficient velocity is attained (aka, the apoapsis is higher than 70km kerbin atmosphere limit) I simply cut off the engine (while still being inside the atmosphere) and let the SSTO go by itself leaving the atmosphere with it's engine turned off

Also, radars do detect airplanes. And, there's this in the middle of your nowhere.

Edited December 7, 2016 by YNM

[cantab]

4 hours ago, James Kerman said:

I'm speaking from ignorance but would it be possible to include further instructions (like a backdoor) in the chips that are used to assemble the satellite?

Probably. Intel Management Engine demonstrates the kind of thing that is possible, and a similar feature that isn't disclosed would be very hard to detect. Examining the physical chip with an electron microscope might spot it, especially if the chip is supposed to be to a standard design. I think the hardest aspect would be knowing what chips to backdoor and making sure they'll work properly in the full system, at least if you don't know said full system.

[ARS]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

Also, radars do detect airplanes. And, there's this in the middle of your nowhere.

Aaaw... ok... time to get back to my drawing board

[GoSlash27]

11 hours ago, wumpus said:

Most of this was overreaction from reading an otherwise excellent SF book and knowing just how bad the orbital mechanics were (which unfortunately were often key plot points).  But the idea of checking exactly what IR is coming off space junk has probably occurred to every well financed spy agency.  "Conspiracy theory kooks" aren't going to get the intelligence nor are they likely to be targeted (at least by a satellite).  Using "space junk" might not work well against an intelligence agency's "traditional enemies", but it might be extremely effective against poorly funded groups who at least know to hide when "official" satellites go across.

Hiding from well financed agencies might well be impossible.  One possible suggestion would be to have a "NASA [change scientific agency to match country launching it] moon impactor" study, preferably impacting (actually landing) on the far side of the moon.  Wait plenty of time, then launch again (back on the far side) for a [hopefully] undetectable launch.  The difficulty here is that you are a long way from Earth, and would have to burn in visible places to get close to Earth, and would be fairly likely tracked coming in the atmosphere.  Possibly some sort of ion propulsion (which simply would not be detectable by anything) might bring you into GTO in several months.

Actually, I'd probably do the same thing only instead of impacting, I'd split the thing in two (preferably on the far side, but it shouldn't matter) and have the "spy half" come back via ions and have the "science half" keep working.  I'd be rather interested to know just how long it takes to pick up something that looks for all the world like "space junk" slowly  changing from lunar orbit to GTO or similar.  I'm guessing it would be "detected" many times and thrown out as noise when it doesn't show up in the "right" position when checked again.

To be honest, the "rocket science" of a hidden EINT satellite isn't the real problem.  The big problems are that EINT satellites aren't exactly controversial, you could simply launch on from Vandenburg and mention it is a NSA flight without measurable protest.  The other is that satellite data is pretty much the "cheap cargo" of communications.  Of course, if Soviet/Chinese/OpFor_of_the_month could be interested in listening to Iridium calls, and have to cover it as well as they could to keep from blowing the secret that they could break whatever encryption was used (I would go so far to say that no launch is sufficiently stealthy to cover such a huge secret: just look at the care the UK took to hide that they broke enigma, and the fog of war was much thicker in those days).

Wumpus,

 I think you're thinking too hard. The point isn't whether the *specific* example is 100% Hoyle in a work of fiction, it's whether the concept itself is plausible. Launch an unknown sat against one target. Oops... it broke and is now totally useless. Except it's not totally useless, it's reasonably- well positioned against a different target; one that doesn't have the technical means to scope out what it's *really* up to. *Of course* that would hold up. At least long enough to do what is needed. The original target doesn't care what the sat's doing so long as it's not over their territory and nobody's interested in listening to a tin foil nutter.

 Magic isn't actually "magic", it's just sleight- of- hand. Make people see what they expect to see, and they will conspire to help you pull off the trick... Example: Why do you suppose tanks are called "tanks"?

Best,
-Slashy

Edited December 7, 2016 by GoSlash27