The New York Times reports:
China successfully carried out its first test of an antisatellite weapon last week, signaling its resolve to play a major role in military space activities and bringing expressions of concern from Washington and other capitals, the Bush administration said yesterday.
Only two nations — the Soviet Union and the United States — have previously destroyed spacecraft in antisatellite tests, most recently the United States in the mid-1980s.
Arms control experts called the test, in which the weapon destroyed an aging Chinese weather satellite, a troubling development that could foreshadow an antisatellite arms race. Alternatively, however, some experts speculated that it could precede a diplomatic effort by China to prod the Bush administration into negotiations on a weapons ban.
“This is the first real escalation in the weaponization of space that we’ve seen in 20 years,� said Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks rocket launchings and space activity. “It ends a long period of restraint.�
Ed Morrissey points out that the debris could cause tremendous damage to other satellites as well and goes on to write:
We can’t really afford to have more debris fields get created in orbits where our critical assets operate. The kinds of offensive weapons that we are rumored to pursue (satellite-killing lasers) appear to still be years away, even with the combined R&D efforts of both the Clinton and Bush administrations. The reluctance may come from the impact such negotiations could have on the efforts to build an missile shield for the US using space-based laser systems to destroy ballistic missiles and warheads in flight. The question will be of priorities — is it more important to secure our existing military and communications satellites, or to keep open a path to a missile shield that the Chinese now could knock out?
Noah Schachtman fears for an arms race in space. In the ‘update’:
Why would Beijing pull a stunt like this? The China Matters blog has a theory. Meanwhile, one keen space-watcher notes that, if this anti-sat weapon was really “kinetic” — i.e., hit-to-kill, non-explosive — instead of a plain ol’ exploding weapon, that’s extremely bad news. That means the booster rocket has to be very accurate “in order to deliver the kill vehicle to the desired initial trajectory…. Then the kill vehicle needs to tweak its trajectory into a precise collision course using on-board propulsion and either on-board target tracking or… command guidance from the ground.” That’s no mean task.
Thomas P.M. Barnett isn’t that surprised by this news. He also notices how some people argue that when the U.S. tests its weapons, it is “to preserve peace” but when, for instance, China does the same it is a threat “to global security”. He goes on to write:
This is the essence of the primacy argument of the neocons: America must not only have the biggest gun, but the only gun worth mentioning. If anyone reaches for one, they are automatically bad unless they’re already in bed with us (meaning we sell it to them).
Is this a grown-up attitude WRT China? No, strategically it’s infantile, given the everything else going on in China, the world, America, and between us and China.
My general view is quite similar to the one expressed by Thomas: I am not surprised. Obviously I did not expect this specific test now, but if China wants to develop technology like this, it can. That is something all of us should be aware of. In other words, we all have to anticipate things like this. China will be the world’s new superpower relatively soon. Without these kinds of technology, one can simply not truly be a superpower.
This test changes the balance in the world. But, acknowleding the very likely possibility that China will be a superpower within a couple of decades, means that one has to anticipate more situations like the one of today.
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