The one major development in the China ASAT saga in the last 24 hours was news that China officially admitted that it carried out the test, although it claims that it is still interested in the “peaceful development of outer space” and that the nation “has never, and will never, participate in any form of space arms race.” Needless to say, many people are skeptical. (Also noteworthy: a Xinhua article about the test describes it as only a “space experiment”, as if China had simply been irradiating seeds in space or something.)
Some additional commentary about the test:
- A Wall Street Journal editorial (subscription required) speculates that the test might have been for domestic consumption as much as anything. “It’s possible the missile test was Mr. Hu’s way of garnering the support of his top generals. Like his predecessor, the president doesn’t have military credentials; he’s an engineer. The PLA remains a powerful political force and maintaining the generals’ support is paramount.”
- The Asia Times, a Hong Kong-based newspaper, suggests that the test was really oriented at Taiwan, as a more subtle way of deterring independence talk there, which could trigger a conflict between China and Taiwan that would involve the US.
- Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institute, writing in the Financial Times, argues that the US should not overreact to the Chinese test. While arguing that there’s no need for the US to develop its own ASAT weapons, he also says that a ban on such weapons “is unjustified”, because it would be unverifiable and would ignore the fact that missile defense systems could also be used as ASAT systems. “So the right policy for the US in space remains hedging and going slow.”
- In an op-ed in the Washington Times, Peter Brown notes that this is not the first time in recent months China has remained silent for a long period about a space event: it took weeks for officials to confirm that the Sinosat-2 communications satellite suffered a debilitating failure shortly after launch in late October. “For China, you would think one Olympic-sized satellite headache stemming from loss of Sinosat-2 would be enough. Instead, now they have two. The lesson is simple. It is far better to launch a satellite successfully than to shoot one down.”
What is so interesting about this is what China didn’t do. They could have chosen not to detonate the warhead and satisfy themselves with a fly by. Surely their radar and telemetry would tell how close they got.
They could have launched a target in low earth orbit , then if they must have a bang, the debris would be much less troublesome.
If they must have the big bang in the orbit they used, they could have issued a “mariner’s alert”, much like its done on earth when rockets are flying across the oceans.
They didn’t do any of this. Instead what we see is pure intimidation on a big scale. The message is if China is crazy enough to do this, what else is she crazy enough to do? A few thoughts come to mind. She has territorial disputes with Japan, Phillipines, Korea, Russia, India and of course Taiwan. Each of those countries surely are paying closer attention.
As for the US, I bet the US Navy and Airforce won’t be sailing or flying casual anywhere near China anymore. Sail a carrier without engaging in anti-sub protocols? Good way to end a career. Flying spy planes with no backup, good way to end a career.
I know that some like to spin the Chinese as crazies. I think we do ourselves a real disservice by that kind of simplistic thinking. I suggest that we assume that the Chinese are smart, rational, and that they care about national security. Ask yourself, “If I was a Chinese leader, and smart, rational, and was personally responsible for, and committed to, national security, what would I do?”
I have done this thought experiment.
Based on this approach, I agree with Dr. Day. China executed a long-term development program of an ASAT, and tested the ASAT, because they want an ASAT.
But “Why?” you might ask.
Because there is GREAT value from the Chinese national security perspective in having an ASAT capability. Since Chinese leaders care about their national security, just like we in America care about U.S. national security, it is eminently logical they should want this capability. Let me further explain why.
Iraq has proven the utility of asymmetric attacks against the U.S. in front of the entire world. At the same time, it is obvious that you should not take on the U.S. in a frontal assault.
Instead, we should expect that potential adversaries will learn the Iraqi lesson and intentionally design asymmetric approaches as fundamental to their national security strategies. To assume otherwise is to assume that other nations — which might end up on the wrong end of our tank cannons — are stupid.
For at least the last 15 years, since the end of the cold war and the first Iraq war, we have been designing our armed forces around the existence of precision guided munitions (PGMs). PGMs are great force multipliers, and there is a lot of benefits to this approach at the strategic level.
The downside of this approach is that U.S. forces today are very dependent on “space superiority”. We will be (so to speak) “dumb, deaf and blind” after an asymmetric attack takes out (or otherwise neutralizes) our military space assets. Furthermore, since our military force structure no longer effectively supports the pre-space combat ops that we used to have — 15 years ago — we will be in a much weaker position in many ways than we were 15 years ago.
If I was on the Chinese side — I would call this deterrence. If the U.S. is really worried about asymmetric attacks from China, then the U.S. will be much more careful about taking aggressive action against China.
Any war with China, that is contemplated by the U.S., now will be projected to be much more messy, with huge numbers of potential casualties (this will not be a war of watching videos of smart bombs), and the outcome will be much more doubtful.
China wants us to have this doubt.
As Sun Tzu writes “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”.
– Anon
anon, excellent analysis.
to assume that other nations . . . are stupid.
The problem is, we almost always make just that assumption — as in Iraq — and no one performs the type of analysis that you’ve done above. We assume (often unconsciously, but far too often fully aware of what we are doing) that our way is the only correct way (or if we’re slightly more thoughtful, just the best way), and that anyone who doesn’t do things exactly the way we do is stupid, or simply wrong. This, more than any other factor, is why we (and in particular the current Administration) are so supremely bad at foreign policy. I could be wrong, but I think it was the Chinese who also pointed out that when you go to war, you have already failed. We go to war entirely too easily and often.
None of this is intended as a defense of China’s actions. China needlessly inflamed the situation, and, if they were going to do this test, they should have done it in a way to minimize debris.
— Donald
China executed a long-term development program of an ASAT, and tested the ASAT, because they want an ASAT.
Yes. As I noted in my TCSDaily piece, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
To both “anon” and to Rand — well done.
When Dr. Day, Don Robertson, and Rand Simberg all agree on something … maybe we are getting somewhere.
I also agree with Rand’s writings at TCS that the solution to the problem is already in sight … and that it is called Operational Responsive Spacelift. The existence of a proven ORS capability (on the U.S. side) will be a major deterrent to China every using its ASAT capability in practice. If we pop up replacements in days or hours, they will have all the downsides of starting a war with the U.S. but few of the military benefits from the asymmetric attack.
A quote from Albert Einstein is appropriate at this moment –> “Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”
ORS is a different level of thinking for the U.S. national security bureaucracy.
Sometimes you need to be forced to do the right thing. The upside is that we may acquire Cheap Access to Space, with all the civil and commercial industrial benefits that everybody here wants, as a bonus.
– Al
Anon, my statement about crazy was a poor choice of words. Unpredicatable is better. I would never ascribe crazy, as in stupid, to Chinese leadership. Far from it, they have managed since the Great Leap forward to bring about 100 million people into a lifestyle lots of Americans would appreciate. Thats genius.
“and no one performs the type of analysis that you’ve done above.”
I take exception to this comment. The national security community does indeed do this type of analysis. If the policy makers choose to ignore or cherry pick the analytical findings, it is hardly the fault of the bureaucracy.
> The national security community does indeed do this type of analysis. If the policy makers choose to ignore or cherry pick the analytical findings, it is hardly the fault of the bureaucracy.
Sometimes it is the fault of the bureaucracy, at least in large part. Most of the reason our imaging reconnaissance satellite constellation is small and vulnerable can be traced to the NRO and its various components.
True, in theory higher levels in the Executive branch and Congressional oversight committees could have corrected the situation. But that never came close to happening, and I have no confidence that things will change in the foreseeable future.
Chance: If the policy makers choose to ignore or cherry pick the analytical findings, it is hardly the fault of the bureaucracy.
I’ll certainly accept your correction. The fault (certainly in Iraq) lies almost entirely with the Administration. Before we went to war, the Administration was repeatedly warned by many knowledgeable sources in both the intelligence community and the military that today’s outcome was likely. They chose to ignore those findings, apparently so that Donald Rumsfeld could attempt to demonstrate his military theories with somebody else’s children and his boss could settle old scores. For that, we have probably made the VSE (of any flavor) unaffordable, and with it a near term future in the Solar System.
— Donald
Sorry, Donald, but the only thing that makes VSE unaffordable is NASA’s chosen plan to implement it–it has nothing to do with Iraq.
Rand, while I agree with your implication that we should not be developing yet another medium class launch vehicle, and that the VSE would be in at least somewhat better shape if we weren’t, none of that lets the Administration off the hook for their other budgetary disasters. Even if the VSE cost half, or a quarter, of its current estimates, I expect that it would still almost certainly be at great political and financial risk at this time. Obviously, the higher VSE cost does not help, but playing empire is a very, very expensive game, and it is not going to get any cheaper. . . .
— Donald
According to government sources, quoted in the Washington Times, this was the 4th test of this particular Chinese ASAT weapon, with the first 3 ending in failure.
see
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20070124-121536-8225r.htm
U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports said yesterday that three previous tests were unsuccessful. All four tests involved the launch of a commercial rocket booster carrying an anti-satellite (ASAT) warhead that would separate from the booster in space and seek to crash into the satellite about 530 miles above the earth.
The same story also carried some other anecdotal evidence that will almost certainly picked up by conservative news sources.
The report also stated that three books written by Chinese colonels in 2001, 2002 and 2005 contain “proposals for covert deployment of antisatellite weapons directed at U.S. assets.”
One author, Col. Jia Junming, stated in his 2002 book that Chinese space-weapons development should be covert and “intense internally but relaxed in external appearance to maintain our good international image and position.”
The 2005 book, “Joint Space War Campaigns,” by Col. Yuan Zelu, calls for deploying an orbiting network of strike weapons that “will be concealed and launched only in a crisis or emergency” to “bring the opponent to his knees.”
– Al
“I suggest that we assume that the Chinese are smart, rational, and that they care about national security.”
As long as we also remember the Chinese government rules by coercion and is eager to extend that power over a free people (Taiwan). So it’s foolish for the United States to ignore the threat to national security from China, a threat which extends from Chinese planning to attack American forces, to the large-scale hacking attacks on American computer networks and the attempts to buy American influence with illegal campaign contributions.
Possession of an ASAT alone may be ‘smart, rational and show care about national security’, but the method of the Chinese ASAT test spoke volumes. We still can’t be certain that the Chinese military was acting under the supervision of Chinese civil authorities considering the bewildered response of the Chinese diplomats. And the test itself was amazingly irresponsible to all space-faring nations because the Chinese used the worst-case method of producing orbital debris. The collosal amount of debris the Chinese littered LEO with will present a danger for decades to come or even longer because of the high orbit of the debris. That secret ASAT test demonstrated reckless behavior on the part of the Chinese, not ‘smart and rational’ behavior.