As someone that follows the development of technology closely, it becomes particularly
noteworthy when a seemingly obsolete technology comes back into play.
This is rare, one does not often see someone switching from the latest smartphone back
to a flip phone of the early 2000’s.
Where you would least expect this is in the area of espionage, where you might expect
the highest, most advanced technology to be employed.
And it is, to a degree, but at the same time some tried and true methods from the past
can be situationally brought back if the need arises, or old ones kept secret long after
you’d expect just because they work.
Take one of the oldest secrets the US government kept classified until relatively recently.
One of the major driving forces of classification in any government is to avoid telling everyone
your methods.
In this case, it was a secret held since World War I, around a century of classification
that also illustrates how classification can sometimes be rather silly.
It was a recipe for disappearing ink.
While one can certainly see the spy utility of disappearing ink in the past, it’s hard
to make a case for it today in our days of chemical analysis which is probably why it
was declassified.
But at the same time, you could order the same chemical from any magic trick supply
house in the 1950’s, and literally every nation on earth knew of its existence.
Yet it remained classified until relatively recently in the US.
Other cases were the persistence of vacuum tubes in aircraft design by some nations far
after tubes became obsolete in most contexts, except for specialist guitar amplifiers where
they hold out due to a specific sound all their own and a few other uses.
But in aircraft, a vacuum tube can make your aircraft resistant to electromagnetic pulses,
and do it cheaply.
And it’s also no secret that the US nuclear arsenal still employs computer systems from
the 1980’s simply because they work, and they aren’t online and can’t be compromised
as modern computer systems can be.
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
Recent world events have raised the question of why nation states on earth would employ
very old balloon technology for espionage.
The reasons usually given is that balloon technology has certain advantages over satellites
in that they can linger longer over sites, they are inherently much cheaper - there’s
no way to make a highly capable spy satellite cheap, but the one thing rarely mentioned
in the media is how difficult it has become to successfully operate a spy satellite, no
matter its country of origin.
Spy satellites have always been contentious since their advent in the space age.
Rival countries can orbitally overfly each other’s territory and take very high resolution
photography of strategically important sites, such as air bases.
Many countries do this, and spying has been going on since time immemorial.
Take the American revolutionary war, Britain had compromised the continental congress with
a spy, whose identity is unknown to this day.
Another form of espionage in the 18th century was to intercept dispatches, one general may
send a dispatch to another, only to have it intercepted and read by their adversaries,
a practice not unlike the clandestine monitoring of communications that goes on today.
Spying is an ancient practice, and it’s actually a norm of international relations
and we all do it, so this is not to point fingers or condemn, but rather to take a global
look at what’s going on and what has been developing within the field of aerial espionage.
And it’s somewhat disturbing.
We truly are witnessing an orbital Satellite cold war.
There are many ways to compromise a satellite.
The most obvious is something we’d probably only ever see in wartime, though there has
been at least one recent close call that we know of.
This is usually termed kinetic action, meaning a projectile is fired at a satellite with
the intention of disabling or destroying it physically.
This can be done from the ground, or space.
This sort of action is not good, and if it were widespread with satellites shooting at
each other it is one major way of setting off the Kessler Syndrome, where low earth
orbit becomes unusable due shattering space junk, something depicted pretty inaccurately
by the Sandra Bullock movie Gravity, but the basic idea is there.
Kessler syndrome would create a post conflict status quo of humanity still being able to
launch satellites, but with a no go orbital zone that you could launch through, but not
use.
Kessler syndrome aside, kinetic action has happened in space, and actually something
worse.
Several countries over the years have used satellites as target practice leading to international
condemnation due to the resultant creation of space junk that will linger in orbit for
long periods of time and pose a danger to active spacecraft.
But that “something worse” involved a series of nuclear test detonations at the
doorstep of space.
These kinds of tests were conducted by both the Soviets and the US, and they were conducted
in or around 1962.
At that time, the knowledge that space was radioactive was new.
In the late 1950’s, University of Iowa Physicist Dr. James A. Van Allen discovered that satellite
mounted geiger counters were detecting massive amounts of radiation.
These are the now famous Van Allen radiation belts, and while initially he hypothesized
that they would be deadly to anything living potentially grounding humans from ever going
to space, we later collected more data and one simply passes through these belts as quickly
as possible to minimize the radiation exposure.
Not having a great handle on how radiation behaves in near earth space, these nuclear
tests were conducted and the earth’s magnetosphere did not react well.
There isn’t a lot of data public about some of these tests, but one in particular was
known as Starfish Prime conducted over the pacific by the US.
In addition to lighting up the sky with a blast, it created strange artificial aurora’s
that were visible for nearly an hour all around the pacific and despite being almost 1000
miles from the blast, the electrical grid of Honolulu was partly knocked down and the
test by an electromagnetic pulse, and in all ways exceeded the predictions of the scientists
involved.
Attempts at trying to figure out how to weaponize the Van Allen Radiation Belts aside, there
was satellite damage, and there was one curious but very unlucky satellite involved.
It was known as Telstar 1, the first of a family of very successful communications satellites.
This one was launched on behalf of AT&T by NASA one day after the starfish prime detonation.
While the satellite worked, it was quickly heavily damaged by the after effects of starfish
prime.
It held on and successfully relayed everything from phone calls to TV signals even in a hobbled
condition, but only for about 7 months, when it was silenced forever by a similar Soviet
high altitude thermonuclear test.
I can’t imagine AT&T was too happy with this state of affairs, but in consolation
Telstar 1, though now long dead, remains in earth orbit.
A year later US President John F. Kennedy and soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev signed
a treaty eliminating this kind of testing.
So while technically not a kinetic test of disabling a satellite, it was close.
But much more recently, we’ve come far closer.
In 2019 Russia tested an on orbit firing of a projectile from a satellite, and has also
launched satellites that have come physically close to potentially hitting US spy satellites.
These were of course inter-nation state messages that we know little about, since such activities
are invariably going to be kept as secret as possible, and the truth of these experiments
is likely far more extensive on all sides.
But the point is, we know that ground based tests to destroy satellites with missiles
do happen and intersatellite kinetic interactions are possible.
But much more common are what are known as reversible interactions, where satellites
can become temporarily disrupted but with no permanent damage.
No doubt these types of operations are done by anyone operating spy satellites, but they
can include jamming.
More drastic measures include microwave emissions from one satellite to another, essentially
satellites cooking each other, or directed energy weapons which have been experimented
with since the Star Wars program of the Reagan era, robotic attacks such as satellites drilling
holes into each other, and even chemical spraying where one satellite spray paints over the
lens or mirror of another or does similar chemical damage.
But perhaps of the greatest interest here is satellite optical blinding.
This has been going on since at least 2006 and can be done from the ground.
Back then there were reports of satellites being lit up by ground based sources, and
while it didn’t really affect the day to day intelligence functions of those satellites,
it was clear that there would come a time when they would.
And now, it’s happening constantly.
And hitting targets with lasers is not new, The Apollo missions to the moon set up meter
sized reflectors so lasers from earth could be used to very accurately determine the distance
to the moon at any given time.
But there’s more, the US Space Force for example has recently taken over equipment
the existence of which is not classified that interferes directly with satellite downlinks
and uplinks.
Typically called the newly created force’s first offensive weapons system, the CCS or
counter communications system allows essentially for satellite signal jamming from the ground.
And there’s always the cyberwarfare and hacking component.
While there have been many calls, rightfully, to avoid the weaponization of space, the reality
is that it’s been weaponized for years now.
But we also stand at the cusp of the democratization of Space with tourism, and eventually civilians
of many nations living and working in space.
That could work out peacefully if we play our cards right.
Or it could lead to nightmare scenario O'Neill cylinder laser wars, the formation of new
independent orbital states that may not agree with each other or those on earth, and so
on.
I truly hope that as a species we find some way of leaving our baggage here on earth,
and simply existing as the humans when in space and actually make ourselves presentable
to any alien species we may ever come across.
But at this point, spy satellites, at least some types of them, may be of severely limited
effectiveness in certain instances.
And because of that, it’s not unreasonable to expect nation states employing different
means of practicing aerial espionage even if they might on their face seem archaic.
It’s much easier to take a bet on a cheap balloon returning something useful as far
as intelligence gathering is concerned, than launching a very expensive spy satellite that
may not end up working.
For better or worse, here may come the new age of the balloons and perhaps even the return
of the strategic air ships.
At least for now.
There is an effect known as photophoresis where a suitable object can absorb sunlight,
while the other does not, creating a temperature difference.
This can have the effect of creating a lifting force on a very light, specifically designed
object.
Thus superlight objects could be designed to float indefinitely in the upper atmosphere
of earth, but also Mars and Venus and possibly beyond, that take advantage of the effect
and carry tiny microscopic payloads.
These types of objects, which are being studied, could be released into the atmosphere using
standard weather balloons.
While ostensibly being developed for weather and scientific study, it’s not hard to see
how such a device could in the future be used for espionage and would be almost impossible
to detect by radar due to their size.
A brave new world indeed is coming.
Thanks for listening!
I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier currently expecting balloon
encounters from all sides for talking about this.
There is a show that once aired on British Television called “The Prisoner” where
Patrick McGoohan was imprisoned on an island for some reason and every time he tried to
leave he got attacked by a weather balloon.
That’s just what I need, a quantum mechanical possum, a difficult AI and sentient attacking
weather balloons every time I go outside.
Not good and be sure to check out my books at your favorite online book retailer and
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