Technological means of delivering injurious physical effects to a target include Force Delivery and C3I techniques. For purposes of this discussion, it is convenient to classify these according to the scheme shown in Table 4-1. Each of the items in Table 4-1 will be discussed briefly below in relation to the SPS to give a preliminary indication of the likely effectiveness of such assaults. A later section will highlight those subsystem elements of the Reference Design SPS which are most sensitive to damage by hostile actions. 4.4.1 Physical Contact Sophisticated mechanical and electronic systems can be damaged by mutilation, in which key components are mechanically broken, electrical circuits are shorted or physically interrupted, or key fluids are allowed to escape. The immediate tools used for mutilation can often be far smaller in mass than the systems they damage, potentially affording the assailant a significant advantage over the defender when the targets are objects in space. At remote target sites, mutilation of communications systems may be the initial action of terrorists or guerrillas, heightening their psychological advantage over the defenders. Successful mutilation requires the ability to place either a person or a fairly sophisticated machine in close proximity to the target without triggering defensive reactions. Explosives are a time-honored tool for destruction. On Earth, their effectiveness often depends on the propagation of shock waves through the ambient medium (air or water) to the target. In vacuum, blast effects are imperceptible except at extreme proximity between the explosives and the target. Conventional explosives would then be used in space only in space mines with proximity fuses, with vehicles capable of rendezvous and attachment to their targets, with inside pressure vessels if they can be surreptitiously introduced by saboteurs or inside baggage or cargo, or for explosives-driven projectiles (shrapnel bombs). Nuclear explosives rely on radiation as well as on blast effects for their lethality. Due to the absence of an absorbing medium in space, the zone of lethality by radiation for a given nuclear warhead is greater in space than on Earth. A one-megaton nuclear warhead at a range of 5 kilometers in space, for example, would deposit a few thousand calories per gram of spacecraft structure facing the explosion, an energy density sufficient to melt or even vaporize at least the outer
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==