Posted on 10/12/2006 6:47:12 PM PDT by Stultis
In an interview last month, Inside the Pentagon asked the U.S. Strategic Command chief about allegations made by some uniformed officials and civilian experts that the Chinese military in recent years has tested the means to harm or destroy American satellites.
“Your [question pertains] to someone actually with intent interfering out there,” Cartwright said during the Sept. 21 Pentagon interview. “And we really haven't seen that.”
The Marine Corps general declined to address details about the capabilities or actions of specific nations.
But he said it is only “prudent” for the U.S. military to improve its ability to monitor space assets, given the possibility of future meddling.
“You have to expect that any place you put commerce and you put value, there will be competition in that environment,” Cartwright told ITP. His command, whose responsibilities also include nuclear weapons and missile defense, is headquartered in Omaha, NE.
The United States relies heavily on satellites for commercial communications, navigation systems and an array of critical military capabilities. The nation owns more than half of the 800 satellites currently in orbit, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, based in Washington. Military operations rely on space-based commercial communications capacity for up to 80 percent of its needs, says one top space official.
The White House late last week released a 10-page summary of its newly revised space policy, which emphasizes maintaining the ability to utilize space without impediments (see related story).
“Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power,” the official summary states.
A growing Chinese capability to target objects in orbit has proved troubling to a number of defense and intelligence community officials.
In May, the Pentagon sent a report to Congress on Chinese military capabilities that offered little detail about anti-satellite efforts. But it noted, “At least one of the satellite attack systems appears to be a ground-based laser designed to damage or blind imaging satellites.”
Defense News, a trade newspaper, last week cited unnamed U.S. officials contending China has actually used lasers on several occasions over the past few years to test an ability to blind U.S. satellites.
“China not only has the capability, but has exercised it,” the publication reported Sept. 25.
Asked this week to respond to the assertions contained in the Defense News article, Cartwright said he would not address specifics “because it might lead our adversaries to speculate about our capabilities.”
But in his e-mailed response, he said, “The Department of Defense has been aware that China is conducting research to develop ground-based laser anti-satellite weapons.”
Cartwright's earlier comments during the Sept. 21 interview “were meant to ensure that your readers were not left with the impression there are nations routinely operating in space with hostile intent against our national assets,” the general said this week.
For its part, the Chinese government-dominated media is attempting to refute the trade journal piece.
“The information about China using laser to blind U.S. satellites is entirely a conjecture,” states a translated version of an article published online Sept. 28 in Beijing's Huanqiu Shibao , a supplement to the daily newspaper published by the Communist Party's Central Committee. “The United States' exaggeration of China's counter-satellite technology is only an attempt to seek an excuse to justify its development of space weapons.”
Back in the United States, several China experts in and outside the government say that while the Chinese interest in space clearly extends to its military sector, evidence of exercises is murkier than portrayed by the Defense News article. Some say basic facts reported in the article are accurate. But others note that events occurring in space that might be interpreted as combat preparation or exercises in fact remain mysterious. The international community can only speculate about motives, these officials say.
Because the details are highly classified, debate over Chinese activities and intentions in space has flared mainly behind closed doors, according to experts.
“Layers and layers of classification” shroud information about satellites the United States has fielded in space, international capabilities to harm those satellites, and actions the U.S. military has taken to protect its space-based assets or potentially harm others, according to one source.
Even for those with top-secret clearances, a considerable obstacle to interpreting Chinese actions in space with confidence is a limited U.S. ability to monitor and investigate what goes on in orbit -- something the military calls “situational awareness.”
“We've done a good job so far cataloging what is up there but the time has come to take the next step” -- namely, improving situational awareness, Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of Air Force Space Command, said in an August conference speech.
Some experts say the United States has detected miniature Chinese satellites placed in orbit nearby U.S. military communications and imaging satellites.
Some are close enough to sensitive U.S. satellites that they could “cause damage if they are packed with conventional high explosives,” says John Tkacik, a senior fellow in Asian studies at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.
However, two years ago, analysts with the Union of Concerned Scientists called into question the veracity of Chinese news reports about the potentially “parasitic” microsatellites, cited by the Pentagon in past reports to Congress.
Meanwhile, Chilton seeks a clearer picture on a minute-by-minute basis.
“I want . . . to be able to tell the combatant commander, Gen. Cartwright, the capabilities and owner's intentions of any new object put into space,” he said in his conference speech. “I want to know if they maneuver. And if they calve a micro-sat. And if they are a threat to any of our systems.”
Chilton said that, in the past, U.S. space officers tracked international launches simply to determine if they were ballistic missiles or satellites deploying into space. If a satellite was launched, the U.S. tracking stopped on the assumption that the orbiter was for a peaceful purpose.
“I say those days are over,” the Air Force space commander said. “If it's a space launch, we can't afford to relax.”
Until improvements are made, divining the meaning of suspicious events in space is a bit like the Kremlinology that Soviet experts in the West practiced during the Cold War.
“Interpretations are mixed,” says one senior military officer, interviewed this week by ITP on condition of not being named. “[There is] much discussion about what was done and not done, but to me the important point is that country's pursuit of the capability.”
“There may be a controversy about interpreting various events,” agrees another official, who said the situation is analogous to intelligence community debate over pre-war intelligence about the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
In last month's interview, Cartwright said the way in which the United States responds to unexplained events in space may affect future relations between world powers.
“Will it turn hostile at any point?” the general asked. “[That] is something that you certainly don't want to hasten by the wrong actions. But you [also] certainly don't want to be disadvantaged by sitting on your hands when you should have been thinking about, gosh, what would be the next step?”
The senior military officer, who demanded anonymity for this article because he was not authorized to speak publicly about this issue, echoed Cartwright's concerns.
“[We] don't want to portray them as the 10-foot-tall ‘panda,' but we shouldn't be too naïve about their capability and intent, either,” the official said.
“I'm not sure the U.S. government wants to come out and accuse the Chinese of doing this sort of thing unless there is unambiguous evidence,” says Michael Swaine, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. For the Bush administration, it is “more urgent” at this time to win Chinese cooperation in imposing sanctions on North Korea following its claim of an Oct. 9 nuclear weapons test and in restraining Iran's nuclear development program, he said.
“It is not necessarily in the U.S. interest to confront [China] with this, at least not publicly,” Swaine told ITP in an Oct. 11 interview.
“It would be tragic if paranoia about a China threat were used to accuse them of this kind of highly sophisticated action,” Michael Pillsbury, an adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Sino-American policy, said this week.
Cartwright says he is using a newly opened Joint Space Operations Center to ensure U.S. satellites, as well as international partners in space, adhere to common “rules of the road” -- much like the government sets and enforces driving behavior and speed limits on American highways.
In the space arena, when the United States detects that something has gone wrong, the first questions typically asked are, “Gee, was it our satellite that wandered off course? Was it someone else's?” Cartwright said. “It's not a . . . pointing-a-finger thing. But it is an understanding of responsibility and making sure that we have some measure [of behavior]. You expect me to stay on the right-hand side of the road when you approach me and that type of thing.”
As space becomes more crowded with satellites, the need to enforce common operating rules becomes more urgent, he said. Greater international adherence to those rules could make it easier to interpret any deviations from common practice, according to the general.
“There are 16 or more nations with a demonstrated capability to operate 10 or more satellites on orbit,” Cartwright said in his Oct. 11 e-mailed response to questions. “Seven of the 16 nations are non-NATO countries, to include China, Russia, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Brazil and Japan. We expect many more nations to expand their national interests into space and, unfortunately, we anticipate some will challenge the free use of space.”
The United States, he said, “is committed to the use of outer space by all nations for peaceful purposes and seeks to cooperate with others, consistent with international space treaty obligations.”
China, you agitating my dots?
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More Clinton legacy stuff.
Don't worry. It will.
Who are we to deny access to outer space? We can't do that. What we can do, though, is neutralize what the ChiComs are doing.
Want to f*** with our satellites?
Perhaps an errant test of some sort, on our part.
"Oh, man, we are like reeeeeealy sorry!"
Walk softly, carry a huge ChiCom whacking 2x4.
There is no doubt we could eliminate this annoyance.
Guarantee you that the Taepodong failure a few months ago was a sucessful optest of our ABM systems.
Welcome to FR, nice start. </sarc>
Russia also actively tries to disrupt our sattelites.
ping
BTTT
Bump. Agreed.
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