By Mure Dickie in Beijing, Stephen Fidler in London and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
China’s test this month of an anti-satellite weapon, which Washington says was used to destroy an ageing Chinese satellite, is likely to carry a cost for Beijing, according to military analysts.
It is sure to raise further US suspicions about Beijing’s intentions, heightened by previous launches in the past three years. Between September 2004 and February 2006, a US official said, China launched three rockets capable of destroying a satellite.
A senior US official said the Chinese had developed an anti-satellite system in which they had a “great deal of confidence” and which could “conceivably degrade or cripple key [US] systems”. He said the weapon was based on an existing system that could be deployed with little warning.
The development appears to be the latest example of China surprising the US over the extent of its military capabilities.
The Pentagon last year warned that China was “pursuing” anti-satellite systems but concluded that they could only destroy or disable satellites using nuclear-armed missiles, which could carry “many risks”.
The US is sensitive to any potential threat to its space-based systems, as shown by Washington’s complaint that the development and testing of such weapons is “inconsistent with the spirit” of Sino-US civil co-operation in space.
In the absence of any Chinese public statement, the motivation for the test remains unclear.
“China is committed to military modernisation and if it wants to modernise its military then it has to develop some limited space capability,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international politics at Beijing’s Renmin University.
Andrew Brookes of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said: “China has a big space launch programme and they’re talking about going to the moon. It may simply be a military department competing for its budget share by demonstrating its capability.”
The senior US official said Beijing probably wanted to test its capabilities while demonstrating the progress it had made to the US.
Whatever the motivation, the consequences may be significant.
The US military is heavily dependent on satellites for surveillance, intelligence gathering, weapons guidance and communications.
While the Chinese test successfully demonstrated a technology that the US and the Soviet Union mastered more than two decades ago, it is likely to increase pressure from hawks in Washington for the US to spend more on the defence of its space assets.
That might include pressure to base defensive weapons in space – for example so-called space mines. However, A 2004 report from the Federation of American Scientists concluded that the US could equally well use a number of alternative defensive approaches that would avoid basing weapons in space.
The test is likely to bring calls from another direction too: that it is time for an international treaty to stop the use of space for military purposes. China and Russia have been pushing the US to agree to a pact banning the deployment or use of weapons in space.
The US responded that a treaty was unnecessary because no country was deploying or using weapons in space. The senior administration official yesterday said the US did not agree with the way China defined space weapons. “They want to define arms in space very broadly to include ballistic missile defence,” he said. “That is not the way it is going to go.”
Some analysts said the equation had now changed. “We just got our arms race,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at Harvard University.
“The US has refused to engage in negotiations and this may be why the Chinese did this,” said Theresa Hitchens, an expert on space militarisation at the Center for Defense Information.
The US and Soviet Union stopped testing kinetic anti-satellite weapons in the 1980s, partly because they were concerned about the physical impact of space debris on their own satellites, and partly due to the potential ramifications for the nuclear balance. Both sides feared that the destruction of a satellite by space junk could cause the other to conclude that a nuclear attack was about to occur.
Military analysts say China has been worried by the possible US deployment of space-based weapons such as “rods from God” – hyper-velocity bundles of tungsten bars that would destroy earth-based targets.
But Mr Lewis says China has misread the US political landscape, saying the White House would use the test to argue that China was not serious about preventing an arms race in space.
While the US has not used an anti-satellite weapon for two decades, it has continued to work on them. Congress is funding the kinetic energy anti-satellite programme started during the Reagan years and the air force is thought to be developing weapons using lasers and microwaves that could obliterate satellites with minimal debris.
The US space policy unveiled last year asserts the right to deny access to space to anyone deemed “hostile to US interests”.
“Compared with traditional US space policy, the hegemonic flavour of the new version is less disguised and betrays an intense determination to exercise control over space,” wrote Teng Jianqun, deputy head of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association.
China’s first satellite kill, however, will make it harder for it to claim the moral high ground on the demilitarisation of space.
