China rocketing ahead with space weapons, experts warn
China is developing antisatellite weapons as part of a “breathtaking” military expansion, United States defence experts have warned.
General Stephen Whiting, the head of the US Space Command, said Beijing had “tripled the number of intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance satellites on orbit” in just six years.
“Frankly, the People’s Republic of China is moving at breathtaking speed in space and they are rapidly developing a range of counter-space weapons to hold at risk our space capabilities,” he said.
Counter-space attacks range from disruption of GPS signals or spoofing, to destroying a satellite by detonating a missile in space.
Experts have long warned of Beijing’s misuse of antisatellite weapons and the need to clean up space from an environmental perspective. Debris still lingers from the ballistic missile China fired in 2007 to destroy an orbiting satellite.
Whiting added that China had used “space capabilities to improve the lethality, the precision and the range of their terrestrial forces”.
Speaking at the US embassy in London, Colonel Raj Agrawal, commander of America’s Space Delta 2 force, also warned that China had shown a “clear intent” to project its power through space. He stressed the “precision” with which it could strike targets thousands of kilometres away, beyond Earth’s curve.
Lieutenant Col Travis Anderson, head of a Space Force intelligence squadron, also said its fleet of 350 satellites had “increased by 300% since 2018”.
“It allows them to look into the Indo-Pacific and find the US and allied forces’ ships.” Last week, Beijing announced the creation of an information support force within the People’s Liberation Army, which will reform the way cyber, information, logistics and space operations are run.
Beijing has invested billions of dollars into its military-run space programme in an effort to catch up with the US and Russia. –