At 5:28 PM EST on Jan. 11, 2007, a satellite arced over southern China. It was small — just 6 ft. long — a tiny object in the heavens, steadily bleeping its location to ground stations below, just as it had every day for the past seven years. And then it was gone, transformed into a cloud of debris hurtling at nearly 16,000 mph along the main thoroughfare used by orbiting spacecraft.
It was not the start of the world’s first war in space, but it could have been. It was just a test: The satellite was a defunct Chinese weather spacecraft. And the country that destroyed it was China. According to reports, a mobile launcher at the Songlin test facility near Xichang, in Sichuan province, lofted a multistage solid-fuel missile topped with a kinetic kill vehicle. Traveling nearly 18,000 mph, the kill vehicle intercepted the sat and — boom — obliterated it. “It was almost just a dead-reckoning flight with little control over the intercept path,” says Phillip S. Clark, an independent British authority who has written widely on the Chinese and Russian space programs.
For China, a nation that has already sent humans into space and developed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), the technology involved in the test was hardly remarkable. But as a demonstration of a rising military posture, it was a surprisingly aggressive act, especially since China has long pushed for an international treaty banning space weapons.
Read the full story from Popular Mechanics posted HERE on Military.com…
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Where to begin…
You would think that alternatives to satellites would be set up by the U.S. Using airships as low level surveillance would be useful. Also swarming UAVs. We should also learn again what its like to live with electricity.We are so close to being one EMP bomb away from being back in the dark ages & the stone age.You have to wonder how we defeated the American Indians when neither of us had electricity or indoor plumbing.Sure we had the telegraph & trains but the American Indians could sabotage either just as the Chinese can sabotage our satellites & knock out Cable TV,Satellite TV,& the internet & then it’ll be the end of the world as we know.We might even have to start reading books again & newspapers & shortwave,FM,& AM radio.Better break out the rabbit ears & get used to 2 or 3 TV stations like us old timers used to remember.On the other hand,it would be nice to see the end of the surveillance society & satellites spying on everything we do.
Yes… I keep saying (in general to people) that there should be less dependancy on GPS guided stuff (including GPS maps for our troops). Use of the stuff, yes, but dependancy no. All you need is a few GPS satellites knocked out and the US military suffers a heavy blow!
This is referred to as an Ablation Cascade. Essentially it is a chain reaction. As more satellites are destroyed more debris is created and destroys more satellites. The problem for a country employing this strategy is that everything in orbit is wiped out; your stuff included. Not only that but it is in effect a denial of operation tactic in that low earth orbit is unusable for many years before this debris will burn up in the atmosphere. And higher orbits are unreachable because you can’t reliably launch through a cloud of junk. It is MAD for satellites.
Once again I find myself in the odd (for me) position of agreeing 100% with Byron. Yup, what he said. I’ll add that nearly all the strategically vital satellites- comm, missile warning, GPS- are in geosynchronous orbits and well out of China’s reach.
Vstress, the GPS guided weapons in the U.S. inventory have backup inertial navigation systems; their accuracy suffers a little in INS mode but not to the point of uselessness.
No matter how you slice it, the Chinese development is troubling. They basically go unchallenged in their effort to move the future battlefield to LEO.
It isn’t necessary to have a capability to disable all US assets, including GPS, only a few key ones.
Our imaging platforms are in low altitude orbits and are vulnerable to an attack, if the Chinese can perfect their guidance and control capabilities.
Taking out our eyes at a key moment in time can yield immediate, short-term benefits in a crisis.
That is why we developed the capability ourselves.
Imagine a time in the future when the US may not be capable, able or willing to defend Taiwan in a crisis and China decides to render Taiwan’s (future)overhead assets ‘inoperable’.
It would take time to move US assets in place to offer sufficient imagery to Taiwan, or, the US may be unwilling to risk an escalation.
Good Morning Guys,
Thank TBV. Two questions have come up in the dicussion here that i would like to adress.
First the C4IR satellites that seem to be of concern that often fly in the 100-200 mile orbits that the Chinese have shown that they can effectively interecept with a KEI. The Uninted States is well perpared for this.
In 2002 when Boeing was threating to close down it’s satllite division, like it’s C-17 line, the Bushies came to there aid an order of about $5Billion in unwanted hardware that was put on the shelf. These waiting to be flown birds are basicly empty “turkeys” that can be stuffed in short order and flown.
This rapid response capability by the U.S. satellite industry coupled with the ability to launch satellites from an air drop gives local theatre commanders the ability to put these C4IR assets any place they want them and when they want them. Any foe trying to down these birds would be following a fools journey.
The second question is China. Recent history has shown that China like to demostrate a technology but loses interest in developing it into a weapons system and producing it. Examples are the J-12 and 13 A/F’s, Type 090 Tank, nuclear warheads for ICBM’s, Type 090 assault rifle and 5.8mm cart., the Type 094 SSBM and the Jl-4 Ballistic Missile and on an on…
And finally China is in the satellite launching business and a lot of that business come from the United States. The question that must be asked is why would China want Washington to put an embargo on U.S. companies from using there discount launch facilities, which surely public reaction and domestic politics would demand if they even attempted to take down a U.S. Military or Commerical satellite.
Like so much posted about China this just doesn’t make sense.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Mostly good comments, right down the line.
Seems the Chinese posture is more about deterrence, with a little chauvinism and gamesmanship in the mix, rather than serious aggression. They know that both the US and USSR tested ASAT technologies over twenty years ago, and continue to maintain such capabilities, overtly and/or covertly. They’re probably thinking that the Japanese can take out satellites, too.
They wanted to announce that they’re in the game. They call, put a bargaining chip on the table; we, the Russians and Japanese check, raise the stakes, or fold. They’re trying to establish a position on space treaty negotiations, the way the Russian and US ASAT systems led to concessions in the SALT talks. There’s historical precedent for this.
Apart from that, it would seem that microsatellite capabilities might change the whole game. Large KE interceptors are too tech/capital intensive to target a distributed network of small satellites; they’re a legacy countermeasure to legacy systems. Our next generation of systems are going to be harder to detect, destroy or disable.
Or, look at Darpa’s “Orbital Express” — if you can refuel or fix your own satellites in orbit, it shouldn’t be too hard to render someone else’s useless, without blowing them to bits.
I mean, how’s that for a gambit: “If you don’t sober up, we won’t give your keys back.” Maybe they’re trying to head off that kind of humiliating development.
Granted, working from open sources can be like reading tea leaves, but I wouldn’t get too worked up over the Chinese ASAT. It’s saber rattling, at worst; truth is, it seems to be more of a gaffe. By driving the development of micro-satellites and small boosters, they’ll create launch competition. They’re alienating trading partners, and making a PR mess right before the Olympics. Human rights abuses, poisonous pet food, dangerous toys, and space junk. How’d you like to be a Chinese diplomat, right now?
I’m no China hand, but I’d chalk this up to internal contradictions between “Mao Zedong thought”, their military-industrial complex, and the Confucian kleptocracy and rampant globalization that seems to be sweeping everything else before it. Their MINC is trying to establish its relevance.
Remember, they have to throw fundraisers, too.