Get Ready, America: Russia and China Have Space Weapons

It was a grave mistake for America to halt Reagan’s Star Wars space program almost 30 years ago. It’s now 2016 and a rapidly-gaining Sino-Soviet axis is attaining first-strike capability on the United States, all while it suicidally disarms and holds the belief that it’s taking the “moral high road”. If it were to restart the program tomorrow, it would still be years behind its adversaries.

 

 

Russia and China are increasingly pursuing the ability to attack America’s space-based assets, but is there anything the Pentagon can do to thwart Beijing and Moscow’s ambitions?

While it is sometimes treated as an afterthought here on earth, space-based capabilities like GPS, communications and reconnaissance satellites are the sinews that hold the U.S. military together, allowing American forces to operate across the globe. That’s a fact, however, that has not gone unnoticed in Beijing or Moscow.

China’s new space threat and the justification of US pre-emptive self-defense

The US has long been avoiding the sensitive issue of pre-emptive self-defense in space, which is exercised before a space attack has actually started. However, facing a new game-changing threat under development in China and Russia, the US must address the issue and let the world know its position now. Bringing the issue up on the eve of pre-emption would be too late and could lead to a war both sides would want to avoid.

New details of Chinese space weapons revealed

A forthcoming report by the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission provides new details of China’s space-weapons programs, dubbed counterspace arms, that are aimed at destroying or jamming U.S. satellites and limiting American combat operations around the world.

“China is pursuing a broad and robust array of counterspace capabilities, which includes direct-ascent anti-satellite missiles, co-orbital anti-satellite systems, computer network operations, ground-based satellite jammers and directed energy weapons,” a late draft of the commission’s annual report states. “China’s nuclear arsenal also provides an inherent anti-satellite capability.”

China military planners expect to use a combination of kinetic, electronic and cyber attacks against satellites or ground support structures in a conflict.