Sat-killing cruiser stars in TV documentary - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Sat-killing cruiser stars in TV documentary

The cruiser Lake Erie and its crew star in a new TV documentary, premiering this weekend, about the ship’s mission to shoot down a malfunctioning spy satellite last February. The show, “Satellite Shootdown,” airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on the Military Channel, the network announced.

The show combines computer animation, footage shot aboard the cruiser and interviews with top military commanders to tell the story of Operation Burnt Frost, in which the Lake Erie used its Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system to destroy the dead satellite USA 193.

The show includes interviews in which top commanders reiterate the official U.S. rationale that the satellite had to be destroyed. If the spacecraft’s toxic fuel had survived reentry and hit a populated area, it could’ve sickened people, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry “Trey” Obering, head of the Missile Defense Agency.

At the time of the operation, skeptics in the U.S. and abroad said they thought the shoot-down was more an excuse to respond to an earlier Chinese anti-satellite test.

“Satellite Shootdown” has video shot in the Lake Erie’s combat information center as its SM-3 missile destroyed the satellite. It also has interviews with technicians from defense contractors Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, who describe the frenetic pace with which they re-tooled the Aegis BMD system — which, they say, was originally designed to avoid space objects such as satellites — to pinpoint and destroy the satellite’s fuel tank.