China regrets ASAT test?

From Aviation Week

China Appears To Regret Asat Test

May 12, 2008

By Frank Morring, Jr. and Amy Butler/Washington

China's leaders miscalculated the international reaction to the country's antisatellite (Asat) weapon test last year, and likely regret that they let their research-and-development bureaucracy carry it out, says a top U.S. expert on the Chinese space program.

"The Chinese took very careful aim and shot themselves in the foot with that test," says Joan Johnson-Freese, chairman of the National Security Decision-Making Dept. at the U.S. Naval War College. "I think they now are now recognizing that the international condemnation due them was actually moderated."

Testifying before the Senate Commerce space, aeronautics and related sciences subcommittee, Johnson-Freese said it is impossible to know exactly what motivated the test, given the layers of Chinese government secrecy. But she says an emerging consensus among China-watchers holds that it was the logical outcome of an Asat-weapon development program started in response to the U.S. program that tested an air-launched satellite interceptor against a defunct weather satellite.

Military research and development is heavily "bureaucratized" and "very stovepiped," Johnson-Freese says, emphasizing that she is speaking for herself and not her government employers. "The engineers who were in charge of that technology development program put it forward as 'it's time to test,'" she says.

"I think they severely underestimated international response. I think they now regret underestimating that response."

While observers in Beijing believe that Chinese President Hu Jintao authorized the test, they doubt that he had a clear understanding of the threat it would signify for other spacecraft below the 537-mi. altitude of the target Feng Yun 1C spacecraft, which was also an outmoded weather satellite (AW&ST Jan. 22, 2007, p. 24; Feb. 12, 2007, p. 20).

"They characterized the debris as an overall increase in debris rather than looking at it in terms of the risk to spacecraft," she says of the test, which was described as the worst satellite fragmentation event in the 50-year history of spaceflight. "It was a lot of bad decision-making on their part."

Once the outcry started, government authorities there canceled a planned meeting in China on space-debris mitigation because they didn't want to face the "harsh" condemnation they expected and felt they deserved, Johnson-Freese says, suggesting "they are now deeply regretting the situation that they brought on themselves."

A big element of that situation is the ammunition they have given to their military counterparts in the U.S. and elsewhere, who point to the test as evidence of China's aggressive military-space policies.

Lt. Gen. Kevin Campbell, director of the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Command, says he's concerned China may be able to declare its antisatellite system operational in the "near-term."

Since the January 2007 test, the U.S. government, including the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, has been planning how to counter such a threat. A first step, say Campbell and a chorus of other military leaders, would be improved space situational awareness.

The U.S. Air Force Space Command is forming a plan to field new ground-based space observation capabilities designed to catalogue the satellites in space. The command also intends to launch a new Space-Based Space Surveillance System in early 2009.

Along with these initiatives, the Pentagon is trying to find a way to link the powerful sensor network operated by the Missile Defense Agency for anti-missile tests to the Air Force's operational systems designed to monitor spacecraft.

The Air Force also hopes to field a program by 2011 that will provide enough warning of impending missile attacks to ground operators to allow them the time needed to maneuver a satellite around an interceptor. Air Force officials acknowledge that satellite maneuvering is an option of last resort--moving satellites in space eats up precious onboard fuel--but they contend that this capability is mandatory as a defensive option.

Johnson-Freese says China's military-space efforts are just half of "a very deliberate, incremental, yet ambitious plan" for space operations that also includes a civil element. The upcoming launch of another Shenzhou spacecraft this fall (AW&ST May 5, p. 28) will likely lead to a small space laboratory and eventually a space station, she says, but not to a human landing on the Moon.

Despite reports to the contrary, she points out, China has never said it plans to send humans to the Moon, and when it does, it will do so with an eye to moving beyond that satellite to gain the technology advantages that come from a cutting-edge space program.

"I think their civil component is largely based on reading the Apollo playbook, and all the benefits that the United States got from it," she says.

Although members of Congress have touted a growing space-race between the U.S. and China, Johnson-Freese says based on today's capabilities the U.S. remains the clear leader in spaceflight.

"Personally I hate to see the U.S. and China's space programs characterized as competitive," she says. "They fly two manned space flights over a five-year period and are perceived as beating the U.S. space program. That's just wrong."