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.

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

— Donald

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

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.

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.

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

Yes. As I noted in my TCSDaily piece, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.