The Reality-"A date which will live in infamy" On the early morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941, the sneak attack of Pearl Harbor was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan was planning in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. The attack was an initial shock to all the Allies in the Pacific Theater. Further losses compounded the alarming setback. Will another “day of infamy” become a reality for U.S. and NATO?

In 2011, could another Pearl Harbor sneak attack upon the U.S.’s space-based military digital hybrid networks by asymmetric Warfare and/or anti-satellite attack happen? The consequence could be the end of Western civilization as we know it. Is the U.S. Military prepared? What military contingencies would be available to prevent a complete electronic global sneak attack upon the U.S., NATO Allies, and Defense Coalition digital space-based military defense internet architecture? Al Qaeda’s Allies, the Quetta Shura Taliban, the Haqqani Network and the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) have thousands of hardened terrorist. As revealed from the material found in Abbottabad, highly educated and trained Al-Qaeda operatives are capable of employing sophisticated threats to military networks.

Current Global Trends

Space-based C4ISR - Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance has become the backbone of the U.S.A’s National Security Global Umbrella against global terrorism as well as rogue or sovereign states launching covert and possibly direct attacks. Those actions would nullify the Space Command and Control assets of the United States and its NATO allies.

The U.S. Air Force’s digitized (T-SAT) Transformational Satellite Communications System program consisted of a six-satellite constellation, satellite operations centers, a mission operations system and ground gateways. However on June 8, 2009, the U.S. Air Force terminated, under the direction of U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, for convenience, the (T-SAT) Mission Operations System contract with Lockheed Martin. Under the 2011 (DOD) U.S. Department of Defense budget cutting directives of the Obama Administration, the U.S. now relies on both unsecured commercial and secured military satellites to form the core and edge Cyberspace hybrid networks. GPS Navigation and digital imagining Satellite Systems are an integral element in the U.S. Force’s global military projection capability.

On February 10, 2011, newly appointed Secretary of Defense and former CIA Director Leon Panetta told a U.S. House panel that cyber security is the international "battleground of the future." He went on to state that "…when it comes to national security, I think this represents the battlefield for the future. I’ve often said that I think the potential for the next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyber-attack…Other countries are developing a significant capacity in this area, whether it's Russia or China or Iran," Panetta told the panel. "We're now the subject of literally hundreds of thousands of attacks that come in, in an effort to try to get information. We've got to develop not only defenses against that," he added, "but we've got to put our assets in places where we can provide sufficient warning that these attacks are coming."

Avoiding a Pearl Harbor Moment

Many examples exist of failures in intelligence such as Operation Barbarossa, Pearl Harbor, Yom Kippur War, Falkland War, 9/11 and al-Qa'ida’s bin Laden. It is clear that the best deterrent to a “Space Related Pearl Harbor” is eternal vigilance and restriction of Internet based technology transfers that can be weaponized while a politically correct U.S. State Department adheres to the view of a “peaceful world” in which Global Commerce trumps overt and covert military actions against the U.S., Japan, and NATO.

As stated by the Council on Foreign Relations stated in the 2009 Report to the U.S. Congress, ”Over the past several years, China has begun a new phase of military development by beginning to articulate roles and missions for the PLA that go beyond China’s immediate territorial interests.” According to Mark Dale, “The more of a “Pearl Harbor” type of thing would be more of denying service essentially by jamming the signal, which would be the most likely way for an asymmetric foe to do it. With a much more capable type of foe they would down the satellites with ballistics and that would be much more serious…one of the reasons US forces have been so dominant… is that they so much better ‘situational awareness’ capability than their adversaries. That ‘situational awareness’ comes from and is enabled from the superior communications (over the space, over the air, over the ground) which US Forces have today. So to deny service that would be a key element in future conflicts.”

President Donald J. Trump declares a need for US Space Force separate from the USAF. Secretary of Defense Mattis states given green light with funding under the 2019 Defense Appropriation 717 billion dollar bill. On August 13, 2018, signed by the President at historical Fort Drum -the home of the10th Mountain Division Light Infantry.

As in Pearl Harbor, an attack against a software vulnerability that has not yet been addressed by the private sector is difficult to defend as the U.S. learned in 1941. The vulnerability exists because the impossible is not considered. It becomes a Maginot Line mentality that could never happen when the architecture rest on each node layer being linked into a system-of-systems, thus a removal of one link destroys the process unless redundancy is built in. A “war battle satellite” can be easily placed in orbit with a stealth signature which can then systematically remove the Voice, Video, Data platforms and links in conjunction with the removal of terrestrial power supplied to the (TT&C)s Tracking, Telemetry, and Control, (OMC)s Operation Management Centers, (SOC)s Satellite Operation Centers, (NOC)s Network Operation Centers, Hubs, and Server-based Data Centers. As in the “Pearl Harbor” scenario, one stroke of the sword, decapitates the foe. On May 1, 2011, the discovery, surveillance, and termination of bin Laden within the Abbottabad enclave was clear proof of the power of digitized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)s relays and satellites being the operational platforms for the U.S.’s global response against threats to its National Security interest.