As missiles rain, big arms contractors have lined up to battle climate change
(Originally published May 7 in “What in the World“) Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his military to start tactical nuclear weapons drills in response to suggestions by Western officials that Ukraine should be freed of restrictions on using more sophisticated weapons.
U.K. Defense Secretary Grant Shapps revealed in an interview late last month that Italy has been sending some of its own long-range Storm Shadow stealth cruise missiles to Kyiv. The Storm Shadows have a range of up to 400km, farther than the latest Army Tactical Missile Systems, or Atacms, that Biden shipped secretly to Ukraine in February. Those Atacms can hit targets only 300km away.
Biden and other Western allies had resisted Ukraine’s requests for such long-range weapons to prevent it from launching them against targets inside Russia. But British Foreign Secretary David Cameron added fuel to Moscow’s fire last week when he said Ukraine was free to decide how to use such long-range weapons. So far, Ukraine has used increasingly sophisticated, home-made drones to attack targets across the border inside Russia, even launching one that almost reached Moscow.
Russia’s foreign ministry also warned Sunday it would respond to “open hostility” from the Baltic states with “asymmetrical” measures. Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharov didn’t say what those measures might be, but said they would be primarily be economic and logistic. European intelligence agencies already believe Moscow is planning to launch a sabotage campaign across the continent that includes arson, bombs and other attacks on infrastructure.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization warned last week that Russia has already been launching “hybrid” attacks against Europe, including cyberattacks, electronic interference, GPS jamming, sabotage, and disinformation campaigns. Estonia, in particular, has been weathering stepped up cyberattacks and GPS jamming that has forced airlines to cancel flights there.
Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, meanwhile, have broadened the reach of their attacks. According to shipping line Maersk, they are now using drones to attack ships in the Indian Ocean that have avoided the Red Sea entirely by going around the Cape of Good Hope. The group’s leader vowed in March to do so as part of the Houthi’s retaliation against Israel and its allies for the war in Gaza.
As climate change imposes a rising toll on lives and the economy, scientists are racing to put new satellites into orbit that can monitor crucial changes to our atmosphere before older satellites they now use fall out of orbit.
Climate scientists now rely primarily on just three satellites: Terra, Aqua and Aura. Terra, launched in 1999, leads the group, carrying five sensors that monitoring everything from radiation, sea temperatures, and the ice sheets, to land cover and greenhouse gases. About the size of a school bus, Terra was shot into an orbit 705km above the Earth, flying over the Equator from the North Pole to the South Pole every 99 minutes. To make sure the data it collects is comparable from day to day, its orbit was set so it descends south across the Equator somewhere over Brazil every morning at approximately 10:30 am.
Aqua and Aura fly in the opposite direction, ascending north across the Equator in the Western Hemisphere as they head for the North Pole. Aqua, which measures Earth’s water cycle, as well as global temperatures, ocean health and vegetation cover, was launched in 2002, also flies 705km overhead, but crosses at about 1:35 pm. Aura, launched in 2004 to measure the composition of gases in our atmosphere, crosses ten minutes later.
All three satellites were originally intended to work for just six years. More than two decades later, they now lack enough fuel to keep them from slipping out of orbit as they inevitably fall back to Earth. To accommodate that, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to let their Equatorial crossings slip a bit, moving Terra’s earlier and Aqua and Aura’s later. That has scientists worried that observations will be affected, skewing their data.
But it’s only a stopgap in the eventual need to replace the satellites. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is still building a network of four satellites called the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES)–R Series. Unlike Terra, Aqua, and Aura, which zip longitudinally around the Earth at relatively low altitudes, these satellites are parked 36,000km over the Equator, orbiting at the same speed the earth spins so they stay over one spot. The first three of these satellites are already in orbit. The fourth is scheduled to launch sometime this year.
The NOAA is also planning a Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) satellite system of three satellites to complement and eventually replace the GOES-R satellites. The first of these satellites is scheduled to be launched into orbit in 2032.
And who is developing these satellites and their vital instruments for the NOAA and the agency that will launch them, NASA? Why, none other than the same aerospace and defense companies that already dominate the supply of terrestrial rockets and missiles to the U.S. Government: BAE Systems, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX (the company formerly known as Raytheon).