Terminator Times #39

Drones (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles/UAVs):

The US Air Force is incorporating the laser guided small diameter bomb on its Reapers.

Two dozen Reapers are being sent to be based in Florida.

Niger approved armed US drones in its country.  Some think this is a bad idea.

The US Army along with the British demonstrated unmanned resupply capabilities using UGVs & UAVs.

The USMC is testing the potential of unmanned gliders delivering up to 700 lbs of supplies to troops.

The USN will only initially buy 4 MQ-25A tanker drones to see if the contractor can meet the requirements.  That contractor might be selected by the end of this coming summer.

The USN is looking at plugging in its ground based control system for the MQ-25A into the carriers.

The USN has taken delivery of its first Northrop MQ-4C Triton.

The USN is going through the final testing of the FireScout this spring before declaring initial operating capability.

The USN will use the FireScout as a forward spotter, amongst other roles.

A Reaper was used in a sub hunting (ASW) exercise.

China's AVIC demonstrated some impressively flexible UAVs but they (currently) have short endurance.

China has been testing VTOL UAVs in Tibet.

China has shown its Cloud Shadow UAV as a potential naval strike asset.

China's Beihang has shown off its TYW-1 strike capable UAV.

China claims an Indian drone violated its airspace and crashed.

Czech's will be buying ScanEagle UAVs.

India has extended the deadline for bids on the naval UAV system procurement.

India's army has issued an RFI for 60 short range UAVs.

Kuwait is seeking UAVs.

Turkey's special forces have received their first batch of loitering munitions.

Airbus has teamed up with Facebook on high altitude drones.

Antonov has demonstrated a new UAV, the Horlytsia.

Bell is considering whether or not to make the V-280 tilt rotor able to fly autonomously.

Elbit has expanded the Hermes UAV system with the Hermes 45.

General Atomics and Intelsat demonstrated a UAV moving from one satellite radio spot to another.

Lockheed is looking at extending the range of its Fury UAV.

Leonardo is showing off the Evo Falco UAV.

Northrop is proposing a canister carried UAV for the EA-18G block 2s.

Skeldar has enhanced the R-350 VTOL drone.

Teal predicts $100 billion market (or is it $80 billion?) for drones & UCAVs.

Bolos & Ogres (Unmanned Ground Vehicles):

The US Army is looking at the Remote Combat Vehicle program: a mix of manned and unmanned vehicles with the punch of an M-1 Abrams.

Robo Subs (Unmanned Underwater Vehicles):

US Navy's unmanned assets were being used in the hunt for the missing Argentine submarine.

US Navy sent its deep dive recovery UUV for the hunt.

US Navy is implementing a continual improvement program for UUV.

A Houston based company is attempting to build a UUV designed for deep dives without an umbilical.

Exoskeleton:

The US military is testing exoskeletons to help US troops carry their heavy loads.

Counter Drone:

China has tested a laser based anti drone weapon system.

BAe has been given a contract to modify shipborne machine guns to be anti drone weapons.

META:

Russia has made it plain it will NOT adhere to any treaty banning autonomous weapon systems.

Do the Sino-American Aerial Engagement Rules Undermine International Law?

As part of the September 2015 fanfare visit by Xi Xinping to the United States, the United States and China signed an arrangement on rules of behavior for safety of air-to-air encounters of military aircraft. The deal is supposed to avert aviation incidents in international airspace between military aircraft of the United States and China. In a deadly 2001 incident, for example, a Chinese F-8 fighter jet interceptor collided with a U.S. EP-3 aircraft that was operating more than 75 miles from Hainan Island, causing the loss of the Chinese aircraft and pilot, and an emergency landing in China by the U.S. surveillance aircraft. Similarly, in August 2014, a Chinese fighter jet roared over, under, and in front of a U.S. P-8 maritime patrol aircraft – coming as close as 50 feet to the American aircraft – about 135 miles east of Hainan Island. The Chinese jet climbed vertically with its underbelly showing in front of the U.S. aircraft to display its under wing combat load out.

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The New Space Race #1

Whether people realize it or not, there is a new space race on.  This time, its less about getting to a place first, so much as attempting to build a sustainable, reliable space program with guaranteed access to space.   To be sure, the world will be going to Mars, but the steps to get there are much bigger than simply going to the Moon.  The US, China and others are build the infrastructure to get there.  Who will build fastest and sustainably will be the first ones to step onto the Red Planet.

The New Space Race will be an aggregation of news about those efforts that will be posted as sufficient news of interest has accumulated.  

China:

China will launch a second space station in June.

Europe:

The new Airbus+Safran rocket is hinging on a French tax ruling.

The Ariane 6 is moving ahead, but will not be reusing any of its parts, unlike the American rockets being developed.

Safran believes the first first contract for the Ariane 6 will be signed by year's end.

Russia:

The first satellites have been shipped to Russia's new spaceport for launch.

Russia will be substituting local parts for its rockets that used to be made in Ukraine.

Russia's new Federation space capsule being developed is touted as being cheaper than the SpaceX Dragon Capsule.

Due to the crashing Russian economy and slashed Russian space budget, the new Angara-A5V rocket first launch has been postponed at least ten years to 2025.

USA:

Did the law that granted Americans and American companies rights to mine asteroids not go far enough?  Should the US have allowed foreign companies to register claims?   I think that would have clashed with the international treaties regarding outer space, but also would have ended up making the US the defacto arbitrator of all things space.  That seems like a really big...presumption.

Dragon 2 landing rocket test.

SpaceX also tested the Dragon 2 capsule's parachute system, but with a mass simulator rather than a capsule.

The NASA awarded three new resupply contracts for the space station.  SpaceX will continue with their Dragon capsule.  Orbital ATK will continue with their Cygnus module.  The new addition is Sierra Nevada with a unmanned cargo version of their DreamChaser.  This is partially being funded by the Europeans.  The really good news about the decision is losers, Boeing and Lockheed, will not be protesting the selections!

Lockheed has stated the Orion capsule is still on schedule for its 2018 first launch. Work on the pressure vessel for the first Orion has completed.

The Senate and House have introduced legislation to reinstate the limitation on the United Launch Alliance on using the Russian rocket engines.  Congress is debating the engine ban now.

In a related move, the US Air Force may terminate the unique contract it has with the ULA due it not bidding on a GPS launch.

Musk claims he will be unveiling his Mars architecture in September and the first launch to Mars will be in 2025.

Asteroid Mining is now Legal in the United States. What About the Rest of the World?

Who owns asteroids in outer space? What about if you go up and take a chunk out of one, who owns that bit? According to a newly signed law, you own whatever asteroid resources you manage to obtain—but it only applies if you’re a US citizen.

President Obama signed the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act into law on 25 November 2015. Among other things, the Act essentially opens the prospect of asteroid mining up to commercial entities in the US. It states:

A United States citizen engaged in commercial recovery of an asteroid resource or a space resource under this chapter shall be entitled to any asteroid resource or space resource obtained, including to possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in accordance with applicable law, including the international obligations of the United States.

The broader space community is, however, not completely enthusiastic about the US’s finders-keepers policy, with some experts claiming the new law may even be at odds with international space law.

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International Outrage at the American Legalization of Asteroid Mining

The Commercial Space Launch Act, which includes provisions allowing American companies the right to keep resources that they mine in space, was recently signed into law by President Barack Obama. While the act has been hailed as groundbreaking in the United States, the space mining title has gotten an angry reaction overseas. In a Friday article in Science Alert, Gbenga Oduntan, Senior Lecturer in International Commercial Law, University of Kent, condemned the space mining provisions as environmentally risky and a violation of international law. Ram Jakhu, a professor at Canada’s McGill University's Institute of air and space law, adds that space mining is a violation of the Outer Space Treaty and should not be allowed.

Oduntan’s environmental argument is expressed thus:

“So what’s at stake? We can assume that the list of states that have access to outer space - currently a dozen or so - will grow. These states may also shortly respond with mining programmes of their own. That means that the pristine conditions of the cradle of nature from which our own Earth was born may become irrevocably altered forever - making it harder to trace how we came into being. Similarly, if we started contaminating celestial bodies with microbes from Earth, it could ruin our chances of ever finding alien life there.

“Mining minerals in space could also damage the environment around Earth and eventually lead to conflict over resources. Indeed what right has the second highest polluter of Earth’s environment got to proceed with some of the same corporations in a bid to plunder outer space?”

Leaving aside the anti-American, anti-capitalist swipe, Oduntan’s argument could be applied to forbid even the peaceful exploration of space, lest space probes and astronauts “contaminate” the “pristine’ nature of space.

Both gentlemen try to invoke the Outer Space Treaty as binding against space mining, a dubious position. Oduntan attempts to claim that the notorious Moon Treaty, of which the United States is not a party to, is still binding as “customary law,” an odd position to take that suggest that the parties to an agreement can force their views on those countries that have chosen not to be parties by fiat.

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An event of cosmic proportions occurred on 18 November when the US congress passed the Space Act of 2015 into law. The legislation will give US space firms the rights to own and sell natural resources they mine from bodies in space, including asteroids. Although the act, passed with bipartisan support, still requires President Obama’s signature, it is already the most significant salvo that has been fired in the ideological battle over ownership of the cosmos. It goes against a number of treaties and international customary law which already apply to the entire Universe.

The new law is nothing but a classic rendition of the "he who dares wins" philosophy of the wild west. The act will also allow the private sector to make space innovations without regulatory oversight during an eight-year period and protect spaceflight participants from financial ruin. Surely, this will see private firms begin to incorporate the mining of asteroids into their investment plans.

Supporters argue that the US Space Act is a bold statement that finally sets private spaceflight free from the heavy regulation of the US government. The misdiagnosis begins here. Space exploration is a universal activity and therefore requires international regulation.

The act represents a full-frontal attack on settled principles of space law which are based on two basic principles: the right of states to scientific exploration of outer space and its celestial bodies and the prevention of unilateral and unbridled commercial exploitation of outer-space resources. These principles are found in agreements including the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the Moon Agreement of 1979.

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We have a precedent!   Noel pointed out in email that asteroid mining only needs a Guano Islands Act: no sovereignty, but US can protect the islands and commercial interests.

The Intended Justice of International Space Law...

The ambiguous or indeterminate nature of legal norms in space law can be problematic. However, consensus may often develop around a general principle much quicker than around a detailed plan of action. The very existence of a principle can be significant because, at best, it can lead to positive change or at least can ensure the continuation of a dialogue. Such principles might have a conceptual autonomy to develop in ways that the actors most responsible for their inception, usually nations, had not foreseen. Their very ambiguity can render such evolution more likely.

In this essay, [Aganaba-Jeanty] examine[s] the intended justice outcome of space law by exploring the foundational principle of space law that “the exploration and use of outer space… shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interest of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development.” [Aganaba-Jeanty] re-explore[s] the objective of a group of developing nations to find meaning to Article 1 of the Outer Space Treaty, which concluded with the adoption of a UN Declaration known as the Space Benefits Declaration.1 That declaration ultimately did not create any new rights for the developing nations and based on that experience, [Aganaba-Jeanty] argue[s] that it is almost impossible in today’s context to adopt legally binding rules in the space context that all can agree with.

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Scuffle in the South China Sea #7

The Chinese have told the US not to threat its territorial integrity.  This means the reacted islands and south china sea are, in the chinese POV, Chinese territory.  I wonder what they think of the carrier battle group sitting in the SCS.

China has said trust between the US and China has been damaged by the USS Lassen's passage.

Considerable confusion remains about what the legal standing of the USS Lassen's sail-by means.

The USS Lassen's passage, despite being shadowed by Chinese warships was apparently polite and the captains even seem to have exchanged banter.  For all the noise of how dangerous this was, the sailors on both sides seemed to have kept things from getting out of hand.

China Concerned About US Plans to Challenge South China Sea Island Claim

Beijing expressed "serious concern" Thursday about a reported U.S. plan to challenge China's South China Sea territorial claims by sailing a Navy ship near one of its newly built artificial islands.

The U.S. newspaper Navy Times reported on Wednesday that the Navy may soon receive approval for the mission to sail inside the 12-nautical mile (21-kilometer) territorial limit surrounding one of the man-made structures.

That would drive home Washington's stance that the artificial islands do not constitute sovereign territory and build a legal case under international law for the U.S. position, the newspaper said.

Five other governments also claim the region in part or in total. The U.S. doesn't take a formal position on sovereignty but insists on freedom of navigation in the vital sea lanes and airspace above.

Asked about the report at a daily briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China has long made clear its position on the South China Sea, which Beijing claims virtually in its entirety, along with its islands, reefs and atolls.

"I have not noticed the latest report you have mentioned. However, having heard what you said, we express serious concern about it," Hua said.

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The Struggle to Define, Prevent Global Cyberwar

The cyberwar era arguably began two hours before midnight on April 26, 2007, when hordes of Internet traffic started quietly overwhelming servers in the small European nation of Estonia.

The barrage, prompted by the Estonian government’s decision to relocate a controversial monument to the country’s Russian liberators in World War II, went largely unnoticed for the first 24 hours. After a week, major government websites were offline. In the second week, the hackers, operating from an unknown location and controlling infected machines all over the world, brought down the websites of Estonia’s major newspapers. The papers’ IT experts eventually had to block all international traffic to stay online—saving themselves, but cutting off their best way of telling the world that they were under attack.

The hackers were using a technique called a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. They assembled botnets—networks of computers surreptitiously infected with their malware—to flood Estonian servers with data requests. This jumble of garbage traffic prevented packets of genuine data from getting through. DDoS attacks are a crude but highly effective tool, and they continue to be a major weapon in cyberattackers’ arsenals.

The attacks peaked at midnight, Russian time, on May 9, the anniversary of V-E Day. The symbolism was obvious and deliberate: Most of the attacks were the work of pro-Russian activists, who used software distributed on Russian-language forums and were furious about the relocation of a statue honoring their war heroes. When the nationwide political cyberattack reached a fever pitch, Estonian servers received a combined total of 4 million packets per second from almost 1 million computers worldwide.

“Never before had an entire country been targeted on almost every digital front all at once,” wrote Wired’s Joshua Davis in August 2007, “and never before had a government itself fought back.”

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Should Robots Have Passports? Thinking Internationally About the Robopocalypse

China Losing Interest in Playing by the West's "International" Rules?

PUBLIC rows can be a welcome relief from the stifling obfuscation and pussyfooting courtesy in which much diplomacy is cloaked. So optimists saw an unseemly spat in Singapore on June 1st—between China on the one hand, and America and Japan on the other—as a positive development. Mealy-mouthed antagonists were at least speaking frankly about their concerns, clearing the air. Frayed tempers exposed the concealed limits of national patience. Through the murk of mutual misunderstanding, the edges of “strategic clarity” could at last be discerned. That clarity, however, is not an unmixed boon: it revealed the depth of the gulf separating China’s view of its future role from the West’s hopes about what sort of great power China might become.

The forum for the tiff was this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual shindig for Asia’s defence establishments, held in a hotel of that name in Singapore. As an opportunity to air the region’s security concerns, this year’s dialogue, the 13th, was well timed. Such worries have been mounting sharply over the past six months, as China’s neighbours have taken fright at what they see as its aggressive pursuit of disputed territorial claims.

In November 2013 China unilaterally declared an Air-Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea. It covered the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands, which are administered by Japan. In January it announced the equivalent of an ADIZ for fish, in the waters of the South China Sea, requiring foreign fishing vessels to seek its permission. Then, in May, China moved a massive oil rig, accompanied by a large flotilla, to drill in waters seen by Vietnam as part of its Exclusive Economic Zone; it started construction work at a shoal elsewhere in the South China Sea claimed by the Philippines; and it flew fighter jets dangerously close to Japanese surveillance planes near the Senkakus.

China probably feared all along that this year’s dialogue would be an opportunity for concerted China-bashing, orchestrated by America, with Japan as the lead soloist. That fear will have solidified into a near-certainty when it learned that the keynote speech would be delivered by Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, whom China shuns as a troublemaker intent on reviving Japan’s militarist past.

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China Pissed at Phillipines Over Attempting to use International Law to Settle South China Sea Disputes

China summoned the Philippines ambassador on Monday to lodge a strong complaint over Manila's seeking of international arbitration in a festering territorial dispute over the South China Sea.

The Philippines filed the case against China on Sunday at an arbitration tribunal in The Hague, subjecting Beijing to international legal scrutiny over the waters for the first time.

The United States, a treaty ally of the Philippines, said on Sunday that the right of any state to use dispute resolution mechanisms under the Convention on the Law of the Sea should be respected.

On Monday, the U.S. State Department accused China's coastguard of "harassment" of Philippine vessels and called its attempt on Saturday to block a Philippine resupply mission to the Second Thomas Shoal, a disputed atoll, "a provocative and destabilizing action."

Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told the Philippines' ambassador that Beijing was "extremely dissatisfied and resolutely opposed" to the case Manila had brought to The Hague, repeating that China did not accept it and would not participate.

"The Philippines forcing of international arbitration is not conducive towards resolving the Sino-Philippine dispute over the South China Sea," the Foreign Ministry cited Liu as saying.

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Phillipines Files Suit Against China Over South China Sea

The Philippines will file a case against China over the disputed South China Sea at an arbitration tribunal in The Hague next week, subjecting Beijing to international legal scrutiny over the increasingly tense waters for the first time.

Manila is seeking a ruling to confirm its right to exploit the waters in its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) as allowed under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), its team of U.S. and British lawyers said.

A ruling against China by the five-member panel of the Permanent Court of Arbitration could prompt other claimants to challenge Beijing, experts said. But while legally binding, any ruling would effectively be unenforceable as there is no body under UNCLOS to police such decisions, legal experts said.

China, which has refused to participate in the case, claims about 90 percent of the South China Sea, displaying its reach on official maps with a so-called nine-dash line that stretches deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia.

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Is Now the Time? Space Property RIghts Back and Forth

Bigelow Aerospace founder Robert Bigelow raised eyebrows with an announcement pertaining to space property rights at a recent event in downtown Washington.

The Nov. 12 event marked the presentation of a report prepared by Bigelow Aerospace for NASA that proposed the use of a model similar to the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program — which led to the development of the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) Dragon and the Orbital Sciences Corp. Cygnus freighter for international space station resupply missions — to develop human spaceflight capabilities for beyond low Earth orbit, including activities around and on the surface of the Moon.

As part of his presentation, Bigelow announced that by the end of the year Bigelow Aerospace would be submitting an application for a policy review to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration Office of Commercial Space Transportation for a review of the United States’ stance on outer space private property rights. The announcement was met with skepticism from many in the space community.

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‘We can lick gravity,” quipped Wernher von Braun, “but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.”

Robert Bigelow is trying to do what von Braun could only dream of: Build a Moon base — and a profitable one at that. He’s not just dreaming. Funded by his hotelier fortune, Bigelow Aerospace already has two autonomous prototype habitation modules in orbit. Another Bigelow module is headed to the international space station next year. The company plans a full-scale space station once domestic crew transportation becomes available.

But as for von Braun, Bigelow’s challenge isn’t merely technological (or economic). Just like the first private rocket company 30 years ago, Bigelow Aerospace needs sign-off from the U.S. government — and again, there’s no clear path forward. The company also needs two other things, as Bigelow himself made clear at a press conference in November. First is the U.S. government’s assurances that it won’t allow other U.S. companies to interfere with Bigelow’s operations. Second, obviously, Bigelow must own any resources it mines: minerals, water, rocket fuel, etc.

“Without property rights, any plan to engage the private sector in long-term beyond [low Earth orbit] activities will ultimately fail,” declared a recent report Bigelow produced for NASA.

Far from seeing the company as competition, NASA “finally understands the need for such public-private partnerships,” says James Pura, president of the Space Frontier Foundation, an organization long critical of NASA’s traditional go-it-alone approach but which has cheered the agency for buying commercial cargo and crew transportation services to the international space station.

Not everyone is onboard, though. In the Dec. 9 issue of SpaceNews, space lawyer Michael J. Listner insisted that “The Time is Not Ripe To Tackle Space Property Rights” [Commentary, page 18]. He’s right: The United States needs to tread carefully. But he falls into the typical trap of lumping all “property rights” together — and thus defaults to calling for careful international negotiation, the last refuge of most space lawyers.

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