Satellite Shoot-out: Deploying Sea-based X-band Radar

Will we ever really know the whole truth behind the government’s plans to shoot down that rogue satellite? The Pentagon’s explanation includes concern about a toxic gas cloud exploding over a populated area. Other analysts scoff at this, according to Noel Schachtman’s excellent blog at Danger Room, saying the likelihood that it would hurt anyone is very minimal. Many other items containing the dreaded hydrazine fuel have plummeted to earth in the past without trouble.

Maybe it’s more about secret military technology falling into the wrong hands. As this article in The Resister so aptly put it, “That might be no more than an attempt by the Pentagon to downplay the importance of the satellite’s payload, in an attempt to big up the official we-just-want-to-save-the-world-from-hydrazine line.”

Another explanation could be their wanting to show off their fancy Star Wars toys. The Russians are particularly incensed, as is China, “Many people are worried that a new race of military weapons has just begun.” Investigating this controversy led me down several fascinating rabbit holes, not the least of which is the Sea Based X-Band Radar (SBX-1; SBX-2 is in the works, too).

The world’s largest phased-array X-Band radar, SBX is part of the ballistic missile defense system. The first one was constructed in Texas on a Russian-built mobile, ocean-going semi-submersible oil platform. Here is the image gallery from Boeing. The $900 million radar “is so powerful that if it were off the east coast of the United States near Washington, D.C., it would be capable of detecting the motion and rotation of a baseball launched into outer space from the San Francisco area,” according the to the Missile Defense Agency.

It really does look like something built by a James Bond villain. After a slow trip around Cape Horn, it arrived in Pearl Harbor here in Hawaii in January 2006 to complete repairs. It attempted to make the move to its home base in in Alaska later that year but returned to Pearl Harbor in May to repair ballast problems; this is contradicted by a report from the military which insists that was part of its testing, sea trials and calibration. It finally arrived in its home port of Adak, Alaska in February of 2007. This location was supposedly chosen for its best view of space, though as Noah Shachtman wrote back in 2006, the high seas there are worrisome. HAARP is also located at this latitude, perhaps for similar reasons; however, I did find this article from 2003 that claimed six different locations had been considered, one of them being Hawaii. That same article claimed that an environmental impact study would have to be completed first, to rule out “potential adverse effects of electromagnetic radiation on health.” (Yeah, right; considering how the Hawaii Superferry, built largely for military purposes, managed to get around that, one wonders whether such a study would have been cast aside for the SBX as well.) Certainly electromagnetic radiation is a concern regardless of the home port; this entire next generation of military technology brings up numerous concerns. One cannot help but wonder about the effects on our fragile planet, not to mention our fragile and susceptible minds, which all operate within certain electromagnetic frequencies.

According to Schachtman, three ships are currently just north of Hawaii preparing for the operation. The SBX-1 has also been deployed; from 3000 miles away, its job is to track the object. FEMA has been alerted to dangers, and foreign governments have been briefed. They won’t attempt the operation until the shuttle Atlantis is safely back on the ground.