Superpowers Vie at High Altitude
WASHINGTON — High above earth, but below orbiting satellites, the United States and China are testing new defense systems. China’s exploitation of this zone, called near space, with aerial craft and advanced munitions suggests it is pulling ahead of its superpower rival, causing worry among U.S. officials.
This little-known and little-seen strategic contest over near space — a phrase suddenly on the lips of every American politician and policymaker — is increasingly critical for the honing of advanced warfare and certain types of espionage.
Near space is liminal space, a stratospheric netherworld where no international law applies and no military holds dominance, where hypersonic missiles and space planes fly, and surveillance balloons drift without being picked up by radars.
The Chinese military, which has surprised the United States with uses of hypersonic missiles and balloons, has focused for years on developing capabilities in near space, generally thought of as 18 kilometers to 100 kilometers above earth — where no civilian aircraft fly.
U.S. military commanders, policymakers and legislators warn that China may have surpassed them in thinking strategically about that zone and in deploying assets, and that the United States needs to address looming problems there.
In a recent speech on a Chinese spy balloon and three unidentified (but likely innocuous) flying objects that have been shot down recently, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said he would ask Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to work toward establishing “common global norms in this largely unregulated space.”
Chinese military researchers have warned in recent years of the need to keep the United States from establishing superiority in near space.
But the U.S. government has not paid much attention to that zone, current and former U.S. officials said, partly because the military and intelligence agencies have used space-related budgets to deploy assets like government surveillance satellites into outer space.
The result is the United States lacks intelligence-gathering and defense capabilities in near space, the officials say.
“We know how to detect them, we know how to track them, and we know how to kill them,” said Admiral William E. Gortney, a retired commander of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD. “We just weren’t looking for them.”
A classified U.S. intelligence report sent to Congress last month indicated that the military had spotted unidentified flying objects at many altitudes, including possibly in near space, U.S. officials said. Some U.S. lawmakers have suggested that they intend to put a spotlight on near space and perhaps get more in the defense budget for those efforts.
The altitudes of near space are ideal for certain military systems, ones that China appears to have an upper hand in innovating.
Hypersonic munitions — a new, advanced type of weapon that Chinese, Russian and U.S. militaries are all developing — work well in the relatively low-pressure and low-density environment of near space, where cold temperatures also help keep the missiles from overheating.
The U.S. is developing hypersonic cruise missiles and gliding warheads to fly above 24,000 meters, the upper range of what most air-defense missiles can reach.
China appears further along. It has conducted more than 200 hypersonic missile tests, a former U.S. official said. In 2021, U.S. officials were stunned by two Chinese tests of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile delivery system that first put the weapon into orbit in space, then enabled it to detach and descend through near space to earth.
China and the United States are also developing space planes, which would fly at orbital altitudes as well as in near space and could be used for logistics and intelligence-gathering missions, as well as potential armed sorties in wartime.
Chinese military researchers also have said that airships could be a potential alternative to satellites, including if satellites are knocked out in war. Last year, China experimented with using rockets to send balloons up to 40 kilometers above earth.
The United States does not have adequate sensor coverage in near space, current and former military officials say, as shown by the recent episode involving the Chinese spy balloon. And U.S. officials discovered China’s broader spy balloon program only years after it had begun operating.
“We should expect more of these incursions,” said Victor E. Renuart Jr., a retired U.S. Air Force general and former commander of NORAD.
“This must be a coordinated effort of all agencies of the U.S. government and our allies to thwart,” he added. “And we are late.”