Satellite wars: China's anti-satellite weapons test is part of a larger effort to build a military capacity to confront the United States.

On January 11, China's Feng Yun 1C (FY-1C) weather satellite placidly swooped around the Earth in the same sun-synchronous polar orbit it had maintained ever since it was boosted into space atop a Long March rocket in 1999. But its repetitive march around the globe was about to be brought to an abrupt and spectacular end. On the ground in China, the 2nd Artillery Battalion of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) launched a medium range ballistic missile that quickly rocketed into the sky and disappeared into space. Shortly thereafter, it slammed into the hapless FY-1C satellite 537 miles above the Earth, sending bits of debris spiraling out into space in all directions. In an instant, China became the third nation, after the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia, to demonstrate an anti-satellite weapons capability.

The test alarmed much of the world and sent shivers through the U.S. defense establishment, but Chinese officials at first feigned ignorance, then sought to downplay the test. "The test was not directed at any country and does not constitute a threat to any country," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao. "What needs to be stressed is that China has always advocated the peaceful use of space, [and] opposes the weaponization of space and an arms race.... China has never participated and will never participate in any arms race in outer space."

The truth is at odds with the diplomatic niceties. Because the United States, far more than any other nation, depends on satellite-based capabilities for intelligence gathering, communication, and precision-guided munitions, Chinese anti-satellite technology can only have been developed as a means of countering U.S. military capabilities. And, as it is primarily a first-strike weapon, it is another indication that the Chinese are arming for a future confrontation with America.

Anti-satellite Operations

In a limited sense, the Chinese had already been conducting low-level anti-satellite operations against the United States. In 1998, the Los Angeles Times reported: "The Chinese government may be building a powerful anti-satellite laser that could deprive the U.S. military of a key advantage in any future conflict in Asia by disabling the American fleet of 'spies in the sky.'" That weapon, or one like it, is now operational and has been used against U.S. satellites.

On September 22, 2006, Defense News reported that a U.S. reconnaissance satellite was blinded by a laser while over China. The communist nation "fired high-power lasers at U.S. spy satellites flying over its territory in what experts see as a test of Chinese ability to blind the spacecraft, according to sources," Defense News reported. "It remains unclear how many times a ground-based laser was tested against U.S. spacecraft or whether it was successful."

At the time, U.S. officials shied away from any mention of the laser attacks on U.S. satellites, but unnamed officials confirmed that the attacks had happened before. "According to top U.S. officials ... China not only has the capability, but has exercised it," said Defense News. "It is not clear when China first used lasers to attack American satellites. Sources would only say that there have been several tests over the past several years."

In addition, China appears to be operating satellites in orbits near U.S. military satellites, though the purpose of the Chinese satellites remains unclear. According to the Air Force Times, "U.S. officials are questioning why some Chinese spacecraft are in orbits that bring them close to key U.S. satellites, according to military sources." As with most sensitive military issues, sources were not anxious to go on record regarding the existence and activity of the Chinese covert spacecraft. However, according to one unnamed source quoted by the Air Force Times, "there is a menu of missions that could be performed that we are not yet clear about. These things aren't being sent up there to be space rocks."

Whether or not China has actually put covert craft into orbit, the communist nation has long made it clear that it intended to create a fleet of such craft. "We have three books and several dozen articles from China that go back 10 years, all of which advocate all types of anti-satellite weapons and they have a consistent theme--they have to be deployed covertly so that in a crisis with America, China can shoot down some satellites as a deterrent message," Pentagon China consultant Michael Pillsbury told Air Force Times. "These documents advocate multiple approaches to preemptive strikes on satellites from plasma clouds, pellets, directed-energy weapons, orbiting spacecraft and attacking ground stations with special forces."

Coming on the heels of the laser attacks, the test of the ballistic missile anti-satellite system that destroyed the FY-1C satellite is one more indication that the People's Liberation Army is targeting U.S. space-based capabilities, an area where the United States is potentially vulnerable. In recent years, for instance, the United States has transitioned to GPS-guided precision munitions, like the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) from earlier systems. U.S. dependence on such systems was illustrated by their heavy use in the recent war in Iraq where, according Foreign Affairs, the journal of the internationalist Council on Foreign Relations, as much as 60 percent of all munitions used were GPS guided.

Any disruption of U.S. satellite technology would significantly reduce defense capability and put soldiers, sailors, and pilots at highly elevated levels of jeopardy. The threat and risk was highlighted by Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert Kehler, deputy commander of the U.S. Strategic Command. "If our space capabilities are taken away, the U.S. military begins to go back in time .... The less effective and capable we are in space, the farther back in time we go, until we [no longer have] precision strike [and] we don't have--or have very little--situational awareness," Kehler warned. In such a situation, U.S. military capabilities would be set back by as much as 10 or 20 years.

Chinese defense analysts have noticed this potential weakness. According to Jon Howland of the Jewish Institute for National Affairs, "In July 2000, the Xinhua Hong Kong News Service reprinted an article by Wang Hucheng titled 'The U.S. Military's Soft Ribs and Strategic Weaknesses.' Wang, a People's Liberation Army defense analyst, wrote: 'For countries that can never win a war with the United States by using the method of tanks and planes, attacking the U.S. space system may be an irresistible and most tempting choice.'"

Military Buildup

Chinese anti-satellite capabilities are part of a larger ongoing effort to modernize and upgrade the People's Liberation Army's war-fighting and force-projection capabilities. China is increasing military expenditures this year by 17.8 percent according to People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. That will bring China's official military spending to $45 billion, but the real figure is thought to be much higher. "The U.S. believes that a straightforward accounting of total military expenditures--including new equipment purchases, which Beijing does not include in its report of annual defense spending--would amount to $150 billion," Time magazine reported.

Those equipment purchases include several advanced, big-ticket weapons systems. In addition to its domestically built ships, the Chinese Navy has purchased four advanced Russian-built Sovremenny-class destroyers equipped with deadly evasive and supersonic SS-N-22 anti-ship missiles. In addition to the likely acquisition of two more Sovremennys, another purchase of Soviet/Russian naval technology may be in the offing. Ukrainian authorities are hopeful that the Chinese Navy may be interested in buying the 10,000-ton Slava-class cruiser Ukraina, according to reports in the Russian paper Kommersant. A report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission notes that China's acquisition of the cruiser, should that occur, "would present a significant threat to the U.S. and its allie[d] Asian navies, in addition to the possibility of using its missiles to attack land targets."

More troubling is China's expansion of its submarine fleet. In addition to operating a number of very stealthy Kilo-class diesel-electric subs, the Chinese Navy is introducing both a new class of nuclear-powered attack submarines and a new class of nuclear-powered ballistic missile subs that, according to the Washington Times' Bill Gertz, will carry nuclear missiles that "could have multiple-warheads, since China is known to have acquired all the needed technology from the U.S. during the 1990s." In addition, China has the world's largest army with 2.3 million soldiers and it is also modernizing its air force with domestically built J-10 fighters--reportedly built with technologies reverse engineered from a U.S.-built F-16 obtained from Pakistan--and updated versions of the Su-27 and its variants, one of the best fighter designs to come out of the Russian Sukhoi design bureau.

Statements made by Chinese military leaders strongly suggest that the buildup and modernization is part of an effort to build a military capability capable of confronting the United States. According to the Washington Times, "Chinese Gen. Zhu Chenghu told reporters in 2005 that China would attack U.S. cities with nuclear weapons in response to any conventionally armed U.S. missile strikes against China during a conflict over Taiwan. Years earlier, Gen. Xiong Guangkai threatened to use nuclear weapons against Los Angeles if the U.S. helped Taiwan defend against a Chinese invasion of the island."

And while Taiwan remains the near-term concern of Chinese military analysts, oil and other resources are likely to be flash points of future conflicts with China. "The growing demand for oil is leading to a growing global conflict," Amos Nur, a geophysicist at Stanford University, told the Christian Science Monitor in 2005. In a chilling warning, Nur noted that recent conflicts like that in Iraq "pale in comparison with the looming potential conflict over oil with China." Should that conflict occur, the first sign that it is underway might be the sudden disappearance of America's global-positioning and reconnaissance satellites.