FEATURE ARTICLE

April 2007

Congress ponders action after Chinese anti-sat test

By Stew Magnuson

For the space community, it was “the shot heard around the world.”

On Jan. 11, the Chinese military launched a medium range missile at one of its defunct weather satellites to demonstrate the ability to destroy an enemy spacecraft.

That event followed a series of tests last summer where the People’s Liberation Army apparently used lasers to temporarily blind U.S. spy satellites.

The U.S. military’s dependence on space-based assets to communicate, gather intelligence and navigate has created an “Achilles’ Heel,” for any adversary willing to attack them, analysts charge. But as the importance of these critical assets has grown, the ability to defend them has not grown with them, they add.

“I believe this is a clear wake up call to the administration and Congress and the American people,” said an indignant Rep. Terry Everett, R-Ala., a member and onetime chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

Now that the “wake-up call” has been made, will the Chinese test prompt further spending on the defense of space assets? There has always been a vocal minority in Congress pushing for more funding for the sector, but they face critics who correctly note that Air Force and National Reconnaissance Office’s satellite systems usually come in late and over budget.

Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., said his fellow senators are up in arms about the test, but he didn’t know if the anger would translate to more dollars.

The test “raises the question: what are the Chinese up to? I don’t know whether it is going to translate into funding or not. Certainly there’s going to be an emphasis back on security space,” Allard said at a National Defense Industrial Association conference. “It will help members of Congress to understand how important it is to have the proper security measures taken in space to protect our assets.”

Both congressmen are critical of the Defense Department’s efforts so far.

“Despite the national security imperatives in space, I believe the department has not devoted sufficient attention to enhancing and defending our space dominance,” Allard said.

Said Everett: “Senior military officials, I do not believe, have the necessary resources to address these threats.”

Maj. Gen. Mark D. Shackelford, director of plans and requirements at Air Force Space Command, said “such events do not and did not find the military space community asleep at the switch.

“We will take appropriate measures to organize, train and equip space capability … for such events,” he added. When asked what the U.S. military could really do to prevent an adversary from launching a rocket at a U.S. satellite in low earth orbit, he declined to answer.

The military space advocates have been pushing a concept they call “operationally responsive space” for the past few years. Its proponents, who include Undersecretary of the Air Force Ronald Sega, envision a world where users on the ground can connect directly to a satellite above, and where small rockets and satellites designed to replace damaged or destroyed systems can be launched within days or hours.

Part and parcel of the concept is “space situational awareness,” the ability to know what is happening outside the atmosphere. Currently, ground stations tracking objects have difficulties telling the difference between an orbiting piece of debris or a small “killer satellite” designed to destroy or damage a U.S. asset. Or if interference disrupting a communication satellite is the aftermath of a solar flare or an enemy jamming its signals.

When the Rumsfeld Space Commission Recommendations for National Security Space came out in early 2001, it generated front-page headlines. Donald Rumsfeld became secretary of defense not long after, but despite his keen interest in the issue, space defense did not garner a boost in funding. The attacks of 9/11 put the department’s energy elsewhere.

Allard is awaiting an independent review of U.S. space capabilities and vulnerabilities due this fall. The review is intended to update the Rumsfeld Space Commission report, he said.

In late 2005, a senior Air Force space official predicted before Washington-based reporters that there would be little funding for space defense. One year later, Lt. Gen. Michael Hamel, commander of the space and missile systems center at Los Angeles Air Force Base, told the same group that the Pentagon was now more serious about protecting space assets.

The change in course may have resulted from the release of the updated U.S. National Space Policy document signed by President Bush in August. The policy states that the United States will “take those actions necessary to protect its space capabilities; respond to interference; and deny; if necessary adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests.”

Center for Defense Information Director Theresa Hitchens wrote after the policy’s release that “there has been little indication up to now of a coherent plan for implementing a space war strategy; little evidence of administrative and bureaucratic tools being put in place for doing so; and little, if any, movement to shift overall U.S. budget priorities (or even space budget priorities) to accomplish such a mission.”

Whether the Chinese A-sat tests will speed development of operationally responsive space programs remains to be seen. Meanwhile, China appears to have little doubt as to where it should spend its resources.

A U.S. intelligence officer addressing an industry conference said the A-sat test was a “profound event.” It not only called attention to the vulnerability of U.S. space-based assets, but also China’s willingness to use space weapons.

“Space is the Achilles’ heel of America’s awesome firepower,” the intel officer said.

The “space race” that typified the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union is back on, but now with China, the officer said. But don’t forget Russia. It is becoming more interested in offensive capabilities now that it has an influx of hard currency from petroleum sales to spend.

“Other states can and will develop capabilities to counter U.S. space assets,” the officer said. “The degree of space dominance the U.S. has enjoyed for many years is evaporating as other nations rise in economic prominence,” the officer added.

Chinese military scholars have written that China needs the capability to destroy or temporarily incapacitate all enemy space vehicles flying above China’s sovereign territory, the officer said. They have even borrowed the words “shock and awe” to describe such an attack. “They study us a lot,” the officer said.

And when potential adversaries study the United States, what do they see?

Both the Soviet Union and the United States tested A-sat capabilities during the Cold War, but their efforts ended in the mid 1980s. In the late 1950s, the United States detonated a high-altitude nuclear weapon over the Pacific Ocean to demonstrate the ability to knock out communications satellites. Several missiles were outfitted with this capability. The Outer Space Treaty, ratified by the United States, Russia and China, now bans the use of nukes in space.

In 2001, the Rumsfeld Commission said the president should have the “option to deploy weapons in space.” In 2002, the United States withdrew from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which banned weapons in space. The Air Force has put forth concepts that call for the development of an aircraft that can fly through space and deliver a kinetic weapon capable of flattening an entire city anywhere in the world within hours. More recently, President Bush’s 2008 budget proposal asked for $10 million to study a space-based interceptor missile platform that could presumably rain similar destruction from above.

The new space policy was released in August, which seems to eschew international treaties restricting military use of space.

Dean Cheng, senior Asia analyst at the CNA Corp., said it is wrong to assume the A-sat test was a reaction to the August release of the U.S space policy. There were at least two other unsuccessful A-sat launches before Jan. 11 that no one noticed.

The Gulf War in 1991 was China’s wake-up call, he said. The People’s Liberation Army has been on a modernization push after observing the U.S. military’s use of “information dominance” to strike a swift blow against Iraqi forces. Chinese military scholars are fond of quoting statistics showing that 90 percent of U.S. military communications and 100 percent of navigation flows through satellites, he said.

The Chinese military is like any other, he said. It casts its eye around for potential adversaries, and looks for their weakest links. And that, in the case of the United States, is the reliance of space to gather, transmit and exploit information, he said.

There is no clear definition of what constitutes a space weapon, Everett said. The U.S. needs to look broadly. Ground-based rockets that can take out orbiting assets or small killer satellites speeding through space to destroy larger platforms are more spectacular examples of war in the “ultimate high ground.”

However, it is not necessary for an adversary to have space-faring capabilities, he pointed out. Global positioning system jammers were used in the beginning stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Dazzlers designed to blind remote sensing cameras, as China apparently did last summer, are another example. Attacks can come from air to space, ground to space or space to space, he noted.

“An attack on a ground station can be equally effective as attacking a space-based asset,” he added.

While rife with phrases such as the “peaceful use of space” the new U.S. space policy also declares the secretary of defense shall “develop capabilities, plans and options to ensure freedom of action in space and, if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries.”

According to Cheng, there has so far been no official Chinese military space doctrine published, although the words of military scholars echo a familiar theme. “The aspirational objective for PLA space operations is to establish space dominance … in order to preserve friendly space systems and deny it as much as possible to an opponent,” he said.

As one senior Air Force space official said at the conference, space is not yet “hostile,” but it is now “contestable.”

Please email your comments to SMagnuson@ndia.org

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