Hack of Chinese state time center hints at U.S. advanced missile defense

China’s Ministry of State Security intelligence service disclosed in October that the U.S. National Security Agency has been engaged in a three-year cyber campaign to break into the official National Time Service Center.

The center is located in the north central city of Xian and provides precision time services that state media says are vital for military systems, communications, finance, electricity, transportation and mapping.

The NSA had no comment on the report, but defense analysts say the Chinese report is a significant clue to one of the most secret programs in support of an advanced form of strategic missile defense called “left of launch.”

Left-of-launch refers to a timeline for using various military tools, such as cyberattacks that could cause missiles to blow up in silos when launch buttons are pushed, special operations commandos and on-the-ground sabotage after a missile is detected being readied for firing.

The project to conduct pre-launch attacks and sabotage of missile systems has been underway for at least a decade, and its elements are among the American military’s most closely guarded secrets.

Asked recently how left-of-launch will be used in President Trump’s forthcoming Golden Dome defense system to prevent a missile from being fired, Space Force Gen. Michael A. Guetlein, vice chief of space operations, said cryptically: “Can’t talk about it.”

PNT satellite system

Gaining access to China’s central time system would provide a major advantage to the U.S. military and military intelligence services during a conflict by allowing hackers to disrupt missile strikes before launch or shortly after launch, known as boost phase.

The time center is a key element of China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system, a copy of the U.S. GPS system, that uses more than 35 satellites in providing the People’s Liberation Army with vital PNT — positioning, navigation and timing for its missile systems.

The satellite system is said to provide “centimeter-level” precision and is linked to the National Time Service Center.

Theoretically, NSA cyber sleuths, by breaching the time center, could have planted malicious software inside the PNT data chain that could then be used for intelligence gathering on missile targets and providing false navigation parameters for missile strikes.

Advanced artificial intelligence technology by the U.S. also could fashion pre-launch disruptions that could re-target Chinese missiles against Beijing.

A Chinese state media report on the NSA cyberattacks stated that control over timing is equal to “controlling the heartbeat of modern society.”

“Once the timing system is interfered with or hijacked, the consequences are unimaginable,” the online Chinese communications outlet C114 reported, noting potential disruptions of financial markets, power grids, rail lines and military systems.

For missile systems, PNT is an essential element for real-time location, direction and precise time data used for accurate targeting, trajectory control and command and control.

“There’s no doubt that the best time to defeat a missile is before it’s launched,” said Todd Harrison, a defense expert with the American Enterprise Institute. “The most obvious way is to track and destroy the launchers and the command and control infrastructure and sensors that enable them.”

Conducting the attacks is difficult because of the distances involved and the risks of escalation after conducting preemptive attacks.

A range of non-kinetic tools can be used to defeat a missile “kill chain” before launch, including jamming sensors and communications, and cyberattacks on command and control systems, Mr. Harrison said.

Electronic disruptions before launch can produce an uncertain effectiveness during combat, even if they start out producing impacts, because thinking adversaries will adapt and overcome the disruptions.

“The question for Golden Dome is how much relative effort the architecture puts toward left of launch versus other phases of flight,” Mr. Harrison said. “Left of launch will surely be part of the approach, but we still don’t know how much emphasis it will garner.”

Sensors and capabilities

Mr. Trump’s executive order on missile defense, signed in January, specifically calls for developing and deploying left-of-launch capabilities for Golden Dome.

The order states that in addition to deploying defenses targeting missiles in mid-flight and terminal phases, the new system must “defeat missile attacks prior to launch and in the boost phase.”

Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command, said in September that left-of-launch defenses will provide a next-generation missile defense capability.

Pre-launch defenses are needed because enemy missiles are becoming more precise and more lethal, he said at a defense conference.

“We are seeing both the capacity and the capability of the threat missiles we’re now facing rapidly increase,” Gen. Whiting said at the annual Air Space & Cyber conference. “Just look over the last 18 months in the Israel-Iran conflict … multiple salvos of missiles, not single-digit missiles, not double-digit missiles. We’re talking triple-digit missile salvos paired with one-way attack drones.”

Gen. Whiting said current missile defenses are capable of providing warning and tracking of traditional ballistic missiles. But newer high-speed hypersonic maneuvering missiles and space-based hypersonic missiles are “incredibly destabilizing.”

“Our missile defenses have done broadly a good job during the most recent conflicts, but most of those are focused on terminal engagement,” the general said.

“We want to be able to push that engagement to the left, and eventually left of launch,” he said.

To conduct such pre-launch strikes greater sensor integration is needed and more sophisticated cyberattacks will be used to “drive capabilities that allow us to affect targets before they even begin to launch,” Gen. Whiting said.

Robert Peters, senior research fellow for strategic deterrence and The Heritage Foundation, said one of the more promising elements of Golden Dome will be deploying better overhead sensors and coupling them with theater defense sensors. The advanced sensors will boost homeland missile defenses by providing far greater awareness of when enemy missiles are being readied for launch and then provide better data once a missile is fired.

“This better integration of data and sensors greatly increases a state’s ability to intercept missiles before they hit their targets,” Mr. Peters said.

Launch preparations for solid-fueled missiles in silos, like China’s new fields of more than 350 intercontinental ballistic missiles in western China will be more difficult to detect prior to launch.

But mobile ICBMs moved out of garrison in preparation for launch have signatures that can be tracked more easily as part of left-of-launch defenses, Mr. Peters said.

“Golden Dome, if done properly, will invest heavily in these types of sensor architectures — not simply on more and more modern interceptors, as critical as those are,” Mr. Peters said.

Israel’s military recently conducted a series of left-of-launch strikes on Iranian missiles before the joint U.S.-Israeli bombing raid on Iran’s key nuclear facilities.

The Israel Defense Forces released videos of airstrikes on several Iranian mobile missiles that were blown up before they could be fired in retaliatory attacks.

Israeli forces also conducted sabotage operations inside Iran and neutralized a number of key missile technicians in the days before the June raid on three nuclear facilities, according to an Israeli think tank report.

In addition to better sensors and increased cyberattack capabilities, special operations forces also will be developed for pre-launch strikes on targets.

Left-of-launch options

Lt. Gen. Sean Farrell, deputy commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, said special operations commandos are working on left-of-launch missile defense capabilities, for both missiles and drones.

“We have been working left of launch on behalf of the [Defense] department to try to understand how we can get after the threats before they become a threat,” Gen. Farrell said at the conference with Gen. Whiting. “I think a lot of that will translate as well if we’re able to synchronize and plan together at the strategic level on where we can bring left of launch attention to a layered approach to homeland defense.”

The ultimate goal of the layered and integrated missile defense will be to deploy an array of forces in all military domains that can detect, disrupt and potentially stop missile threats before they can emerge.

Left-of-launch capabilities have been a topic within the Pentagon since at least 2014 when a memorandum was disclosed from then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert and then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno to the secretary of defense warning that missile defense spending was “unsustainable” due to sharp defense cuts.

The two military leaders called for building more cost-effective “left-of-launch” capabilities.

Defense officials at the time said the research for left-of-launch included non-kinetic weapons — cyberattacks, electronic warfare, including electromagnetic pulse attacks against missile command and control systems.

These weapons would be used after missile launch preparations are detected and then disrupting or disabling launch controls or sending malicious commands to cause missiles to blow up on their launchers.

In 2016, then-U.S. Northern Command commander Adm. William Gortney stated in prepared congressional testimony that most missile defenses are designed to intercept missiles after launch using ground-based interceptors, mobile regional defenses, and ship-based anti-missile systems.

“We need to augment our defensive posture with one that is designed to defeat ballistic missile threats in the boost phase as well as before they are launched, known as ‘left of launch,’” Adm. Gortney said.

Other potential boost phase defenses could include high-powered lasers deployed on drones or aircraft that can strike missiles during the boost phase just after launch.

All current missile defense systems utilize kinetic kill interceptors that require precision targeting data to knock out high-speed warheads. They include Patriot; Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD; and large Ground-Based Interceptors in Alaska and California, an Aegis missile defense based mostly on ships and in several ground locations.

Golden Dome will deploy for the first time space-based interceptors that will provide greater coverage against missile threats.

Kenneth Todorov, former deputy director of the Missile Defense Agency and now vice president at Northrop Grumman Missile Defense Solutions, said the company is working on left-of-launch capabilities and counter-hypersonic missile efforts.

“With decades of experience supporting mission-critical defense programs across the entire kill chain, the company is bringing to bear a portfolio of advanced, innovative capabilities from left of launch, through detection and tracking, all the way to assessment of kill, delivering mission agility in addressing the evolving hypersonic threat,” Mr. Todorov said on the Northrop website.

Patrycja Bazylczyk, head of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said left-of-launch defenses include a broad category of kinetic and non-kinetic efforts to counter enemy launches. They can include strikes on missile launchers, jamming enemy communications or infiltrating a missile factory.

“Left-of-launch efforts are not alternatives to active missile defenses; they work in tandem, allowing U.S. forces to more effectively counter enemy action rather than merely respond to it,” Ms. Bazylczyk said.