The Increasing Reality of War in Space 

One day the Space Force will be the most important branch of the military you'll see, that day is far but it's not science fiction

Current USSF Guardian and Engineer here; one of the biggest reasons the USSF was established as its own branch was to consolidate space acquisitions and have a budget of its own to develop and sustain capabilities separate from the Air Force's budget - the reason being that the Air Force's primary goal is Air Power, and that always took a precedent over Space Power e.g. the F-35 got the funding over more GPS satellites. Another example was that the Army, Navy and Air Force had different SatCom networks that accomplished the same ultimate goal of communications with forces on the greound/surface (and why I feel for the operators and engineers in Del 8 who have a cluster of different programs and systems that are all managed under one roof). Great video overall to demonstrate the critical need for space for the 21st century warfighter and to demonstrate how real of a warfighting domain space has become. _Via Vincimus and Semper Supra!_

Correction: The ASM-135 test in 1985 was NOT a co-orbital ASAT. Co-orbital means the weapon achieves orbit prior to engaging it's target. The ASM135 was a direct-ascent ASAT, meaning it struck its target without ever entering orbit. These are two radically different classes of weapons.

As a guy in the Space Force (pretty sure I was in this video too lol) thanks for taking it seriously and for making this video. Really well done.

Glad to see something about Space conflict. A lot of people just don't know how important space is to day to day life and how vulnerable it is.

25:45 I really wanted the line to be "the consequences are just astronomical"

I transferred from the US Army into the US Space Force a few years ago. I appreciate seeing more outlets realize and communicate the importance of our mission to the United States' national defense.

I want to personally thank you, I have a presentation on space warfare tomorrow and i need a video and there were no good ones until now, you are my hero.

Part of the reason the Outer Space Treaty is so vague on "conventional" weapons in space is because astronauts often keep knives and even loaded guns on them as part of their survival kits in the event they land back on Earth somewhere like a forest full of bears.

To be fair to Steve Carell he initially dismissed Space Force as ridiculous but as his team did research for the movie he realized its real life importance

Loved seeing Thessaloniki's very own "white tower" at 3:09

Most people think the idea of the space force is brand new, but it isn’t The first discussion of a U.S. Space Force occurred under President Dwight Eisenhower's administration in 1958 and it was nearly established in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative otherwise known as Star Wars. In essence, what’s old is New again old ideas constantly getting rehashed.

genuinely surprised the words "Kessler syndrome" did not make it into this video

To be fair using Colbert and Kimmel as a litmus test for intelligence is like taking financial advice from a crack addict

I really appreciate what you did with the music in this video. It conveys a much more serious tone than most of your others, fitting, given the subject matter.

Space Force/Space Corps had been proposed previously to Trump signing those papers. Like nearly 2 decades previously. It was a very real and serious answer to a military need being recognized by the pentagon. The fact that it took so long tells you all that you need to know what politicians and the public think about the importance of space.

On space debris, it's worth noting an attack on geosynchronous or semi-synchronous orbit would be particularly bad, because while debris in low-earth-orbit will de-orbit on it's own given decades or centuries due to atmospheric drag, geosynchronous orbit would be basically screwed permanently (or at least until we manually clean it up). Relatedly, one factor is that there is a legitimate purpose behind developing anti-satellite technology - Active Debris Removal. Most technology that could be used to remove space debris could _also_ be used to remove active satellites, so there is a bit element of hush hush around the technical specifics of the field. And also, this is a minor point, but the liability nightmare that would ensue in the event of Kessler Syndrome (the bit mentioned in the video where collisions trigger ever more collisions) would be _insane_ . There is basically no regime to determine responsibility if one satellite, or the debris from a satellite, collides with another. And they are pretty damn expensive. t wasn't addressed in the Outer Space Treaty or any of the subsequent treaties, and there are now many, many more actors in space than just the US and USSR. Arguably, all satellites are legally the responsibility of the state from where the satellite launched from (no private ownership in space! Legally, Space Communism is a thing, kinda). I think Russia has some legal provision to make it responsible for stuff launched from Baikonur, but France is on the hook for all satellites launched from French Guyana. The liability uncertainty creates a big problem for insurers, which creates a big problem for commercial users of space - as the current situation in the Red Sea demonstrates, scaring off insurers can cause immense damage even if there aren't actually that many incidents, proportionately.

I have an irrational amount fear about Kessler Syndrome, because even though I'm probably too old to reach a time where space travel is affordable, the idea of our species imprisoning itself on this planet horrifies me at some fundamental level. And with the state of international relations in 2024, it feels like an inevitability.

The amount of well researched content you provide is insane and so good for this world.

I never understood why anybody thought "Space Force" was funny. We've had a space force for years. It was just called the Air Force. We just realized that it was important enough to create it's own branch.

Space warfare without space cleanup will spell doom for any future space activities

Actually US do have some "dark sat" which use materials that reflects radio wave and reflects very little visible light. They are quite literally speaking are not tractable, at least not according to known method.

Minor correction: GPS Block IIF reads as "Block two F"

4:02 Physicist here. The differences in gravitational force caused by distance from the planet for objects in orbit is far weaker than implied here, and definitely not the reason for faster minimum velocities to stay in orbit. For example, at the altitude of the ISS, they still experience about 90% of surface gravity. The reason for faster minimum speeds is simple geometry. Orbiting is (put simply) moving fast enough “sideways” so that, while you fall towards the planet, you are also moving so far to the side that you miss, continuously. Different gravitational pulls will affect what those sideways speeds need to be, but for the same planet and orbiting object, the distance changes the necessary speed relatively very little compared to simply how large the orbit is. The easiest way to conceptualize it is probably this: imagine you are orbiting 1 foot off the surface. You would have to travel around a significant portion of the globe to account before falling that foot in order to remain in orbit. You would have to be traveling extremely fast for no other reason than having such little space to work with. Now imagine you’re orbiting at a thousand miles up. You now have much, much more time to “miss” the planet; instead of one foot, you have a thousand miles to use while covering that same distance to miss the planet. Edit: If you’d like to think about it geometrically, the further satellite can account for fall and “sideways” travel in a shape more closely approximating an equilateral triangle, which has a relatively small hypotenuse (which itself approximates the necessary velocity), while the near satellite has a very lopsided triangle, needing to travel far more to the side than the distance it falls, and thus making a hypotenuse far longer than the average of the other side lengths. Edit 2: This wasn’t meant to be a full, formal explanation of orbital mechanics, as some people seem to think I was trying to do. The entirety of my point is that the differences in felt gravitational pull via different orbital radii is not the primary reason for different minimum orbital speeds.

Saw the gator ball in the video. Worst piece of equipment I used. It worked but i always felt it was a pain and it was very finicky to acquire. Now the RRK was one of the slickest pieces of equipment I ever used. You put in the configs and it would lock and optimize the connection for you. All you had to do was point it in the general vicinity. Was also light and easy to transport

What an incredible piece of work. Great content

Damn, it's Ace Combat 7 all over again.

Hey, just a heads up, "Block IIF" is pronounced "block 2 f" and it's the second ordinal series of GPS satellites. It was preceded by Block I and will be succeeded by Block III.

I worked on a "rendezvous and proximity" project as part of my first engineering position with Hughes Aircraft after my university graduation in 1985. That was almost 40 years ago. Technology advances pretty quickly, so I'm sure we (and they) have gotten much better at it over the past 40 years.

Everyone makes fun of the spaceforce until they actually stop and think about it

18:50 AK47 duct taped to Sputnik

The element of speculation and the unknown makes everything so much spookier

Correction to the Viasat hack: This was only Ukraine's backup communications, they say their comms were not affected by the hack. You're framing it as if they were incapacitated.

The result of going into a space age with the kindling of conflicts and war still within us will only be disastrous.

In Swakopmund, Namibia when i was a child in 1978, My father and myself witnessed two "stars" converging from opposite directions while laying in the backyard on manure bags, they hit each other and it caused a massive explosion which resembled a fireworks yet it had the colour of starlight thinning out as it expanded until it disappeared like stardust. No colour just white light and no sound just visuals. I lie not and remember it like yesterday. I say that this world has had star wars like capabilities since or even before this imprinted moment!

This video is ahead of its time. Great video 👍

So next to the red atomic button there is also a red space destruction button for each of the presidents offices

Imagine humanity never unites and we just end up having celestial bodies belonging to a certain country and that’s how war evolves in space

To reinforce the important of GPS, it is also utilized maintain the power grid as well. Finds faults and helps sync the equipment.

was really cool to hear Theatre of Delays playing in the background! Excellent musician and excellent music.

The quality of this video seemed better and high budget than usual. I liked the music better

Space warships will most probably look like the ones on the Expanse. I can totally see the US Space Force or China building something like the UN Truman class Dreadnought or the MCRN Donnager class Battleship.

ur channel is just so awesome

This video is slightly misleading, geo stationary orbit is relatively open and clear of satellites and debris in comparison to LEO (Low Earth Orbit), which has 21457 trackable orbital and suborbital objects. There are more objects other than just these pieces, and there are about 167 million more of these smaller untrackable debris, and they pack a punch. (The ISS was struck by one of the untrackable debris and had a crack in Cupola Module window)

Completely forgot to mention that apart from US Russia & china, India has also done ASAT test in 2019, so there's atleast 4 ASAT programs in tge world that we know of

2:35 Correction: The internationally defined Kármán line is defined at 100km, not 100mi.

Very glad that this video went back to first principles to explain "why orbits". We've just started the Astronautics badge, and being able to show them the first part of this (we didn't have time for the whole thing unfortunately) made things so much easier. Also, at least one of the Scouts got excited when he realised that this was the same people as Jet Lag.

Thank you for your videos! ❤

I think one thing that should have been mentioned here is Space X's reusable rocket technology. Being the only entity in the world who can successfully do this has given a MAJOR leg up for the United States in terms of the modern day "space race". This has drastically reduced the cost and increased the volume at which the United States can launch it's satellites.

18:14 rock ‘em sock ‘em satellites goes hard af😂

Bendover productions really popping off

Great production thankyou!

I am far from a Donald Trump supporter, but will give credit where it's due. The space force was a good long term move.

Remember, the Space Shuttle was designed to capture satellites.

This is such a well made video! I think they should we showing videos like this in schools to raise public awareness about such threats and possibilities. Definitely a sub from me 👍

Great video, I'd also recommend looking into the bus-sized Chinese and US space planes which go into space for years and re-enter without any idea what they're doing. Crazy to think about!

I was always confused why everyone was making fun of space force. Like do they not think it's necessary? It's like laughing at the US air force being created in 1947.

Spaaaaace!!!!!

This was pretty cool. I work for a contractor who is doing work on Tranche 1 and Tranche 2. Good job :)

12 minutes, 43 seconds. A new record for me and a Wendover video. I really wish I could enjoy your content; it's right up my alley, but I can't get over the weird pauses in your delivery. Not sure why; I thought I'd eventually get used to it or something, but it rubs my brain the wrong way LOL. I'm probably just brain-damaged or something; keep doing what you do.

Every time I hear Space Force in a Sci Fi book I think 'oh shit, that's actually a real thing'. They don't need to come up with names any more like 'UN Space Command', it's just Space Force.

The thumbnail of the satellite with its high gain antenna point in the same direction as the solar panels is amusing.

the first three minutes of this video were so interesting. I never knew about any of that stuff

Not sure if this message will get to you, but I actually have a whole research report for college on the weaponization/militarization of space. I heavily base my style of writing off of the script used in this video so its such a crazy coincidence! So thank you for making this video!

The Space Force scene where they sent the monkey and dog to space was so f*cking funny how quickly their reactions changed

people mocked the air force before and during its formation, just goes to show that forward thinking is mocked and then loved and the clowns forget they mocked

I remember when this happened, my senior thesis had been about space exploration and I was at the time extremely informed on the happenings within the aerospace sector. The creation of the space force didnt surprise me at all and i thought it was a good move and eventually inevitable, space operations has been a career field within the USAF for years. It surprised me how much everyone made fun of it, but it was mostly people who were very uninformed about aerospace and space warfare who were laughing.

Great video, thanks!

One of your best videos ever. Excellent work @wendoverproductions

One correction in the list of countries with anti satellite system. India 🇮🇳 is also in this list. India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), successfully neutralised a satellite in space with its anti-satellite (ASAT) missile on 27 March 2019, in Mission Shakti.

i keep getting ads to join the US Space Force

I was at CSUDH when they used the campus to film that stupid Netflix space force show. It was super annoying because they were always closing down parts of the campus for shooting (mostly around the library) so you’d either have to wait for them to stop or go the long way around (both of which are a pain when you only have 10 minutes to get from one side of campus to the other

I both admire the restraint and am disappointed that you didn't take the opportunity to make a high-ground reference/joke. (know it's more HAI's place, but still, it was right there!)

Additional note, when India conducted a similar test it did so with extreme caution. The Chinese ASAT test in 2007, which occurred at an altitude of 865 kilometers and produced a debris field of some 3,000 objects that will linger in space for decades, the Indian demonstration appears to have produced some 400 fragments (of which about 270 are being tracked) that will decay in weeks or perhaps a few months. Both US and China had some very unkind words despite conducting similar tests.

It would have been much cooler if it were called the Star Force.

18:11 i like to imagine satellites up there with just one robotic arm each furiously punching each other like plastic rock-em-sock-em robot toys from the 80s.

I worked in the clean room at 22:54 when I was with Lockheed from 2004-2007.

The Airforce already had complete control over monirtoring space, so there is really no need for the space force...

the v2 vibing up there before hitting an empty field south of London "am i not physiclly part of a conflict" Edit: i didnt think i have to say this, this was a cheap joke, i dont acctually think the V2 should count but hoped someone laughted anyway

Great information

Great video! Felt like a documentary.

0:18 names the most prolific propagandists

Everyone was so desperate to mock trump and rip the space force. But it still exists now

Remember when youtube was chock full of videos about the “black knight satellite”? Ah, the good ole days….

KSP really prepared me for this video. It seems like a low-earth orbit requires more energy to go thousands of miles per hour and circle the earth a couple times per hour, but in fact the stationary orbit is way harder to do. There's no good reference for speed other than the surface of earth, which is a relative difference of 0mph, but in fact, it takes waaaay more energy to get to the stationary orbit. Well sure, put a 150 million mile long stick in your hand and spin around. The far end of that stick is BOOKING IT. There's also a really neat way of setting up a network of stationary satellites, you raise your apoapsis to the stationary orbit then lower your periapsis until the Period of your orbit is 1/3 of the local day length. Now, every time you hit apoapsis, you release another satellite (and circularize orbit of course). Congratulations, you now have 3 stationary satellites that are on the same orbit and can probably see each other and, together, can probably see just about all of the planet.

I honestly will never understand why people think "Space Force" is so fucking funny when another branch is literally called "Air Force" ????

I trust a two-year-old over any of the late-night “comedians.”

6:08 I had this exact head unit in my car.

Dang. Imagine what humanity could accomplish if we all worked together.

The fact that the late night show hosts were so dismissive shows how poorly equipped they are to play the role of social commentators that they purport to be.

I don't understand why Space Force would be a joke. I saw a really interesting talk by a high ranking general years ago talking about the need for a "Space Force" and isn't it fairly obvious thats where the next front will be. Or was it just cos it was Trump?

thanks for the great information, would you be able to make a video that explains, how the US / China / etc. military fund war across the world and the most important part, how that cost is recovered from that country?

It was an overdue move but a very sound one. I ordered the SF foundational document today, I want to study it. This is going to matter a lot.

I can’t imagine humans would take such a necessary environment and abuse it to the point where it is polluted so badly that it would….. Never mind

I really hope humanity isn’t stuck on earth because of idiots with egos.

Great video.

Great video!

They would take it serious if Biden announced it

Trump could have said "you need to wash your hand after using bathroom" and those so called "comedians" would have been laughing at him like it's the stupidest thing to say. Years later, and Space Force is alive and well, while most of those "comedians" are out of work - and that's comedy :)

Nice sound on this one! :)