China's Missile Test Has the World's Attention

Theresa Hitchens, with the Center for Defense Information, said knocking out a satellite like this creates about 300 to 800 pieces of debris the size of a baseball. Debris that size is big enough to do serious damage to the space station. A crack in the space station could mean loss of pressure. NASA's own tests have shown a tiny piece of debris could penetrate the space shuttle, and a hairline crack could have catastrophic results

China's Missile Test Has the World's Attention
ABC - Analysts Say the Test Underscores China's Military and Space Ambitions
By GINA SUNSERI
Jan 19, 2007 — - When China launched an anti-satellite weapon to destroy one of its old weather satellites, it also launched an avalanche of speculation around the world. What is the ultimate goal of the Chinese?
The incident is believed to have happened around 5:28 p.m. EST, on Jan. 11, according to Craig Covault of Aviation Week & Space Technology. Covault broke the story late Thursday night, reporting that "the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA and other government organizations have a full court press under way to obtain data on the alleged test."
Covault reported the test is believed to have occurred as the weather satellite flew 520 miles above China's Sichuan province.
Blasting a satellite into bits is one way to get attention.
Covault said this test has significance on several levels. "Although more of a 'policy weapon' at this time, to me the test shows that the Chinese military can threaten the imaging reconnaissance satellites operated by the U.S., Japan, Russia, Israel and Europe," he tells ABC News.
What has many analysts worried are the 26,000 satellites orbiting the earth, from weather satellites to communications satellites. Even the International Space Station is a satellite, which orbits at about 220 miles, well within range of the Chinese anti-satellite weapon. Analysts also worry about the debris of a satellite's destruction.
Theresa Hitchens, with the Center for Defense Information, said knocking out a satellite like this creates about 300 to 800 pieces of debris the size of a baseball. Debris that size is big enough to do serious damage to the space station. A crack in the space station could mean loss of pressure. NASA's own tests have shown a tiny piece of debris could penetrate the space shuttle, and a hairline crack could have catastrophic results when the shuttle re-enters Earth's atmosphere.
Hitchens' concern is if there is some kind of "space shoot out" with two countries targeting the other's satellites, the fallout from debris could conceivably destroy satellites, or at least render their orbits unusable.
Covault said the Chinese test has significance for its own space program. "China has a very ambitious space program and is increasing it dramatically," he said. "They are in the process of developing many unmanned satellites and in fact a whole new line of powerful boosters. China is really on a roll with increasing potency of its space program."
Joan Johnson Freese is an analyst with the Naval War College who has closely followed the Chinese space program. She believes the Chinese have long felt left out of the space race. "The Chinese have long felt the U.S. isolates them in terms of space. It is a real thorn in their side," she said.
ABC News Ned Potter contributed to this story.

A New Player at Star Wars

“Outer space is the common heritage of mankind, and weaponization of outer space is bound to trigger off an arms race, thus rendering outer space a new arena for military confrontation,”

January 20, 2007
NYT - News Analysis
A New Player at Star Wars
By JOSEPH KAHN
BEIJING, Jan. 19 — China’s apparent success in destroying one of its own orbiting satellites with a ballistic missile signals that its rising military intends to contest American supremacy in space, a realm many here consider increasingly crucial to national security.
The test of an antisatellite weapon last week, which Beijing declined to confirm or deny Friday despite widespread news coverage and diplomatic inquiries, was perceived by East Asia experts as China’s most provocative military action since it testfired missiles off the coast of Taiwan more than a decade ago. Unlike the Taiwan exercise, the main target this time was the United States, the sole superpower in space.
With lengthy white papers, energetic diplomacy and generous aid policies, Chinese officials have taken pains in recent years to present their country as a new kind of global power that, unlike the United States, had only good will toward other nations.
But some analysts say the test shows that the reality is more complex. China has surging national wealth, legitimate security concerns and an opaque military bureaucracy that may belie the government’s promise of a “peaceful rise.”
“This is the other face of China, the hard power side that they usually keep well hidden,” said Chong-Pin Lin, an expert on China’s military in Taiwan. “They talk more about peace and diplomacy, but the push to develop lethal, high-tech capabilities has not slowed down at all.”
Japan, South Korea and Australia are among the countries in the region that pressed China to explain the test, which if confirmed would make it the third power, after the United States and the Soviet Union, to shoot down an object in space.
China’s Foreign and Defense Ministries declined to comment on reports of the test, which were based on United States intelligence data. Liu Jianchao, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, would say only that China opposed using weapons in space. “China will not participate in any kind of arms race in outer space,” he told Reuters.
The silence on the test underscores how much China’s rapidly modernizing military — perhaps especially the Second Artillery forces, in charge of its ballistic missile program — remains isolated and secretive, answering only to President Hu Jintao, who heads the military as well as the ruling Communist Party.
Having a weapon that can disable or destroy satellites is considered a component of China’s unofficial doctrine of asymmetrical warfare. China’s army strategists have written that the military intends to use relatively inexpensive but highly disruptive technologies to impede the better-equipped and better-trained American forces in the event of an armed conflict — over Taiwan, for example.
The Pentagon makes extensive use of satellites for military communications, intelligence and missile guidance, and some Chinese experts have argued that damaging its space-based satellite infrastructure could hobble American forces.
Yet while China’s research and development of such weapons has been well known, the apparent decision to test-fire an antisatellite weapon came as a surprise to many analysts.
“If this is fully corroborated, it is a very significant event that is likely to recast relations between the United States and China,” said Allan Behm, a former official in Australia’s Defense Ministry. “This was a very sophisticated thing to do, and the willingness to do it means that we’re seeing a different level of threat.”
China’s military expenditures have been growing at nearly a double-digit pace, even after adjusting for inflation, for 15 years. China has begun to deploy sophisticated submarines, aircraft and antiship missiles that the Pentagon says could have offensive uses.
Yet with a few notable exceptions, Beijing has avoided sharp provocations that could prompt the United States or Japan to focus more on what some officials in both countries regard as a potential China threat.
Chinese leaders emphasize that they are preoccupied with domestic challenges and intend to focus their energy and resources on economic development, a policy they say depends heavily on cross-border investment, open trade and friendly foreign relations.
Beijing has denied that it intends to develop space weapons and sharply criticized the United States for experimenting with a space-based missile defense system. It forged a coalition of Asian countries to jointly develop peaceful space-based technologies.
Last month it published and heavily promoted a white paper on military strategy that emphasized its view that space must remain weapon-free. “China is unflinching in taking the road of peaceful development and always maintains that outer space is the common wealth of mankind,” the paper said.
Some of such talk amounts to little more than propaganda. But Jonathan Pollack, a China specialist at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., says the Chinese military does in fact act cautiously when it comes to improving its strategic capabilities, like long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, to avoid causing alarm in the United States.
“They have talked about antisatellite weapons,” he said. “But we have always thought that the threat was ambiguous and that China probably wanted it that way. So what was the calculation to go ahead with an actual test?”
Some analysts suggested that one possible motivation was to prod the Bush administration to negotiate a treaty to ban space weapons. Russia and China have advocated such a treaty, but President Bush rejected those calls when he authorized a policy that seeks to preserve “freedom of action” in space.
Chinese officials have warned that an arms race could ensue if Washington did not change course.
At a United Nations conference in Vienna last June on uses of space, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official, Tang Guoqiang, called the policies of “certain nations” disconcerting.
“Outer space is the common heritage of mankind, and weaponization of outer space is bound to trigger off an arms race, thus rendering outer space a new arena for military confrontation,” he said, according to an official transcript of his remarks.
Even so, Mr. Pollack of the Naval War College said that if China hoped that demonstrating a new weapon of this kind would prompt a positive response in Washington, they most likely miscalculated.
“Very frankly, many people in Washington will find that this validates the view of a China threat,” Mr. Pollack said. “It could well end up backfiring and forcing the U.S. to take new steps to counter China.”
Other analysts said the test might have more to do with proving a technology under development for many years than a cold-war-style negotiating tactic.
China maintains a minimal nuclear arsenal that could inflict enough damage on an enemy to guard against any pre-emptive strike, these analysts said. But the increasing sophistication of American missile interceptors, which are linked to satellite surveillance, threatens the viability of China’s limited nuclear arsenal, some here have argued.
That may have prompted the Second Artillery to show that it had the means to protect fixed missile sites and ensure China’s retaliatory capacity by showing that it could take out American satellites.
At the annual military fair in Zhuhai, held last November, the Guangdong-based newspaper Information Times and several other state-run media outlets carried a short interview with an unidentified military official boasting that China had “already completely ensured that it has second-strike capability.” The analyst said China could protect its retaliatory forces because it could destroy satellites in space.
American officials have also noted the development. Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. Michael Mapes of the Army testified before Congress that China and Russia were working on systems to hit American satellites with lasers or missiles. And over the summer, the director of the National Reconnaissance Office, Donald M. Kerr, told reporters that the Chinese had used a ground-based laser to “paint,” or illuminate, an American satellite, a possible first step to using lasers to destroy satellites.
“China is becoming more assertive in just about every military field,” said Mr. Behm, the Australian expert. “It is not going to concede that the U.S. can be the hegemon in space forever.”

China's Hu calls for powerful, combat-ready navy

Resource Wars Prep

China's Hu calls for powerful, combat-ready navy

Thu 28 Dec 2006
A Chinese naval guard stands beside a guided missile destroyer at the Ngong Shuen Chau Naval Base in Hong Kong April 30, 2004. Chinese president and commander-in-chief Hu Jintao urged the building of a powerful navy that is prepared "at any time" for military struggle, state media reported on Thursday. REUTERS/Kin Cheung
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese president and commander-in-chief Hu Jintao urged the building of a powerful navy that is prepared "at any time" for military struggle, state media reported on Thursday.

At a meeting of delegates to a Communist Party meeting of the navy on Wednesday, Hu said China, whose military build-up has been a source of friction with the United States, was a major maritime country whose naval capability must be improved.

"We should strive to build a powerful navy that adapts to the needs of our military's historical mission in this new century and at this new stage," he said in comments splashed on the front pages of the party mouthpiece People's Daily and the People's Liberation Army Daily. "We should make sound preparations for military struggles and ensure that the forces can effectively carry out missions at any time," said Hu, pictured in green military garb for the occasion.

China's naval expansion includes a growing submarine fleet and new ships with "blue water" capability, fuelling fears in the United States that its military could alter the balance of power in Asia with consequences for Taiwan.

China has said it would attack if the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own formally declares independence.

Analysts say China sees a stronger navy as a way to secure energy supplies and seaborne trade routes to help ease security fears over supplies of resources and oil it needs to feed its booming economy.

Hu also called for the "strict management of the navy according to law", a possible reference to a scandal in which a vice admiral was jailed for life on a charge of embezzlement.

Wang Shouye was convicted by a military court earlier this month, Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po reported, making him the most senior Chinese military officer to be jailed for corruption.

Earlier this year, Wang was sacked as navy deputy commander for bad morals and using his position to demand and accept bribes and violate laws and discipline, the report said.

Reuters 2006. This article: http://news.scotsman.com/latest_international.cfm?id=1921212006 Last updated: 28-Dec-06 06:13 GMT