In the late seventies the US programme seemed to have reached a plateau of development, while the USSR continued with frequent manned launches on research tasks, the exact purposes of which were not always evident to Western observers. It was, however, pretty well authenticated that they were developing a counter-satellite capability employing, in addition to jamming, certainly lasers and other high energy beams. In 1985 both sides had some counter-satellite capability, but it was suspected that the USSR was well in the lead. It refrained from making use of this capability until the early hours of 4 August for fear of still further conceding the advantage of surprise but, as recorded elsewhere, as soon as the offensive was launched in the Central Region it made an all-out effort in space.
This immediately degraded Allied communications, but it was a degradation that could at least in part be compensated for by switching to atmospheric systems as soon as space circuits went out. When the history of the space war comes to be written the part played by the communications managers in the US control centres will be seen to have made a remarkable and decisive contribution to the Allied war effort.
On NATO’s declaration of alert in July 1985, NASA, together with the Department of Defense, urgently reviewed the launch schedules for the space shuttle Orbiter vehicles. Of the five in service, one was available. Of the others, one was on long turn-round for replacement of its thermal tiles; one was having its undercarriage renewed after a heavy landing at Vandenberg AFB; one was on a thirty-day refit and one was in orbit recovering a satellite. The European Space Laboratory was on the ground and not scheduled to be relaunched until later in the year.
At 0600 hours Eastern Standard Time on Friday 2 August the available orbiter (Enterprise 101) was launched from Cape Kennedy with a four-man crew and Colonel ‘Slim’ Wentworth, USAF, in command. It was a multi-purpose mission in which priorities might need to be changed, and a manned craft was the best way of preserving flexibility. Photography and a full range of electronic reconnaissance was required from its regular passes over Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe. In addition it was ready with specially prepared tapes in over a dozen languages for propaganda broadcasts, but these would only be ordered if political developments during the mission made it propitious to do so.
As tension heightened towards the end of July the two Big Birds were so manoeuvred as to photograph the likely dispersal sites for the Soviet SS-16 mobile ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missiles). At the same time the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered the readying of two further Big Birds as replacements for any damaged satellites, with priority going to maintaining the electronic surveillance which would be so vital to the Allied ECM campaign if war broke out. He and his colleagues had also ruled that three supplementary navigation satellites should be placed in geostationary orbit 30,000 kilometres up over the Atlantic. This was the system that gave such an astonishing navigational capability and allowed USAF’s F-111 aircraft to be immediately capable of reading out a ground position to an accuracy of twelve metres. It was not thought that these high satellites would be at much risk. They were very difficult to get at, and there must surely be more cost-effective ways of disrupting the system than by days of satellite manoeuvring in order to effect close-range interference. Some corroboration of that view came on 2 August when the FLEETSATCOM (fleet satellite communications) tracking and control station on the eastern seaboard suffered major damage from an undetected saboteur. The very disturbing feature of this was that the damage was done by electronic means and could only have been inflicted by someone with an intimate knowledge of the station and its technology.
