Executive Intent

“General Raydon, run it down for the vice president,” Miller said.

“Yes, sir,” Kai began. “Mr. Noble and my engineers and staff carefully studied data from the Kingfisher interceptor garages, along with other sensor data, and discovered two things: The same faults occurred on all the affected garages; and the faults occurred in virtually the same spots over the Earth.”

“Someone was shooting at the weapon garages?”

“Yes, sir, but not with a kinetic weapon, but with data. We believe the Russians are bombarding our satellites with viruslike data that enters the garages’ computer system through their digital radar sensors and causes certain systems to shut down or crash.”

“How do you know it’s the Russians, General?”

“The faults occur shortly after the satellites pass over Russian signals intelligence and space surveillance sites,” Kai replied. “Specifically, sites in Venezuela, the Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia, Socotra Island off the coast of Somalia, and Murmansk.”

“Can you verify that?”

“They proposed modifying the weapon garages with signal-gathering packages that can collect any intrusive outside signals and send them to the space station for analysis, sir,” Carlyle said. “Their engineers are working to devise a suitable package.”

“But as of now…?”

“No, sir, we can’t positively say the Russians are doing the damage.”

“Can you jam or block the outside signals?”

“Not yet, sir,” Raydon said. “We’re working on defensive software for the garages-basically antivirus software. Our only other option right now is to shut down the digital active electronically scanned array radars whenever they come within range of a Russian site, but then we’d be letting them know we know what they’re up to.”

“Seems to me you have no choice-it’s probably costing a ton of money to repair those things,” Phoenix said. “What about the Chinese?”

“We believe the cause of the explosion of the Kingfisher-Eight garage was the result of a successful Chinese DF-21 antisatellite-missile attack,” Raydon said.

“I’ll ask it again: Can you verify that?” the vice president asked after a stunned pause.

“No, sir, we can’t,” Ann Page said. “The satellite that could have done so, Kingfisher-Eight, was already damaged-due to the data attack by the Russians, we believe-and shut down when the missile was launched.”

“But we can detect missile launches with other satellites, right?”

“We believe the launch was hidden from heat sensors by a decoy: A large fire near the launch site obliterated the rocket launch.”

“So you’re not sure there was a DF-21 launch.”

“It could have been launched from there, but no, sir, we didn’t actually see it,” Ann admitted.

“But we did learn that the weapon garage hadn’t malfunctioned-it actually detected the incoming ASAT missile and tried to launch an interceptor,” Kai said. “We interpreted the sudden, uncommanded arming as a fault causing an explosion, but it was actually the garage detecting the attack and maneuvering to try to defeat it.”

“Unbelievable,” Phoenix said, shaking his head. “But you have no proof of any of the attacks, right?”

“The signal gatherer will tell us if the Russians are trying their own version of netrusion on our garages, and we’ll have to shut down the AESA radars until we find a way to block the harmful data,” Kai said. “As far as the Chinese DF-21s are concerned: Every malfunctioning weapon garage and every unprotected satellite in low Earth orbit is a target, and the more sites the Chinese build, the more satellites will be at risk.”

“So you’re saying we’re completely on the defensive here?” the vice president asked. “We can’t stop the Russians from injecting viruses into our satellites, and we can’t stop the Chinese from building ASATs all over the world? I don’t buy any of that for a second. The president is going to need more options, gentlemen. Let’s start putting some plans together.” He picked up a telephone on the conference table as the others left the Situation Room, leaving the vice president with Dobson and the images of Raydon and Page still connected on the secure videoconference line. “Get me the president, please.”

A few moments later: “Hi, Ken,” President Gardner said. “Did you get the briefing?”

“I did, sir. It’s staggering. None of our satellites are safe.”

“I wanted you to get that info to show you how important my proposed global ban on antisatellite weapons is, Ken,” the president said. “The arms race in space is on. And as soon as we figure out a way to stop one form of attack, another one will pop up, and then we have to pay to find a way to defeat it. It’s nothing but a treadmill, Ken, and I want to get off. The revised National Space Policy is the first step. If we have to do a unilateral antisatellite-weapon ban to show the world how serious we are, then so be it.”

“But what are we going to do now, sir?” Phoenix asked. “ Russia and China didn’t just demonstrate their antisatellite capabilities-they actually attacked our satellites!”