Pearl Harbor in Space?

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — The Fengyun — “Wind and Cloud” — 1-​​C weather satel­lite was a proud worker in China’s space pro­gram. Launched in May 1999, it pro­vided a wealth of infor­ma­tion that sci­en­tists used for fore­cast­ing floods, sand­storms and dis­tur­bances in space caused by solar activity. 

Now, it has been reduced to a neb­ula of debris. And that may prove to be its most last­ing legacy.

In January, China blasted the Fengyun 1-​​C into obliv­ion with a land-​​based anti-​​satellite mis­sile from its south­west­ern Xichang space­port. It was the first kill of a satel­lite by a land-​​based mis­sile ever con­ducted by any nation, includ­ing the United States and Russia.

The mes­sage was hard to miss: China is ready — and increas­ingly able — to chal­lenge the U.S. mil­i­tary advan­tage in space.

“Competition is mov­ing toward the new fron­tier, space,” said Arthur Ding, a research fel­low at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University.

To space and mil­i­tary experts, China’s suc­cess is no sur­prise — its military-​​run space pro­gram has taken a great leap for­ward in recent years.

It launched its first manned space flight in 2003. A sec­ond mis­sion in 2005 put two astro­nauts into orbit for a week, and a third manned launch is planned for next year. This year, China plans to launch a probe that will orbit the moon.

On Saturday, the coun­try launched a Long March 3-​​A rocket that sent a nav­i­ga­tion satel­lite into orbit as part of its effort to build a global posi­tion­ing sys­tem, the offi­cial Xinhua News Agency reported. The satel­lite is the fourth China has launched as part of the Compass nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem, which is expected to be oper­a­tional in 2008.

But some see the anti-​​satellite mis­sile as evi­dence that China’s pro­gram is tak­ing an alarm­ing direction. 

“The suc­cess­ful test of a Chinese direct-​​ascent anti-​​satellite weapon rep­re­sents a new and dan­ger­ous phase of Chinese for­eign pol­icy,” said Tom Ehrhard, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and senior fel­low with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, a mil­i­tary think tank.

“Despite offi­cial state­ments about its ‘peace­ful rise,’ China aims to chal­lenge the inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized sanc­tity and neu­tral­ity of the ‘com­mons,’ those areas like inter­na­tional waters, air­space, cyber­space and space itself,” he said.

A host of other nations — from Japan to Israel — have spy satel­lites col­lect­ing mil­i­tary data, and the United States also has been con­sid­er­ing weapons in space.

Satellites are already the eyes and ears of the U.S. mil­i­tary, used to guide mis­siles to their tar­gets, pro­vide detailed infor­ma­tion on enemy posi­tions and move­ments and make imme­di­ate, global com­mu­ni­ca­tions pos­si­ble. The next step, first envi­sioned dur­ing Ronald Reagan’s pres­i­dency, would be weapons such as lasers that could be used from space to destroy or dis­able enemy satel­lites or pos­si­bly even tar­gets on the ground.

U.S. mil­i­tary plan­ners have long warned that the satel­lites they depend upon are vul­ner­a­ble. A 2001 report by a com­mis­sion headed by Donald Rumsfeld, then defense secretary-​​designate, said the U.S. is “an attrac­tive can­di­date for a space Pearl Harbor” and the coun­try needed to develop sys­tems to pro­tect them.

China and Russia, which like Washington have signed the 1967 treaty out­law­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion in space, advo­cate a com­plete ban on anti-​​satellite and other space weaponry. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion, how­ever, blocked a U.N. res­o­lu­tion to that effect in 2005. Beijing and Moscow resub­mit­ted a sim­i­lar pro­posal this year.

Beijing says it wants to bring Washington back to the nego­ti­at­ing table, and that its satel­lite kill was in line with its larger goal of demil­i­ta­riz­ing space.

“China opposes the weaponiza­tion of space and any arms race,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said. “The test is not tar­geted at any coun­try and will not threaten any country.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed after the satel­lite kill that Moscow con­tin­ues to oppose weapons in space and crit­i­cized Washington, not Beijing, for plan­ning space-​​based weapons, which he said was the rea­son behind the Chinese test.

“We must not let the genie out of the bot­tle,” he warned.

The United States and Soviet Union also shot down satel­lites, but didn’t use ground-​​based mis­siles. The U.S. did it in 1985 with an air-​​launched mis­sile, and the Soviets used a hunter satel­lite to approach its tar­get and then fired at it.

Bill Sweetman, an ana­lyst with Jane’s Space Systems and Industry, said the Chinese test does not vio­late any treaties, but delib­er­ately hits at a sen­si­tive nerve.

“The Chinese are aware of a dif­fer­ence between them and the U.S.; the U.S., and Western forces in gen­eral, are highly depen­dent on low Earth orbit assets such as imag­ing space­craft and GPS, but the Chinese are not,” he said.

The test, he noted, was also sure to hold Washington’s atten­tion for years to come. The debris from the satel­lite will con­tinue to float in space, a haz­ard to other spacecraft.

“You fill low Earth orbit with high-​​velocity buck­shot,” he said.

April 16th, 2007 | Eye on China | 24547 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2007/04/16/pearl-harbor-in-space/Pearl+Harbor+in+Space%3F2007-04-16+10%3A40%3A26paisley You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.