Orbiting Debris Endangers U.S. Satellites One Year After Chinese Antisatellite Demonstration

China’s successful antisatellite test conducted one year ago has created an orbiting “mess” of debris and has spurred U.S. military officials to address ways to protect satellites from future Chinese threats, a senior U.S. Space Command official told the Washington Times (see GSN, Jan. 19, 2007).

In the Jan. 11, 2007 test, China used a converted ballistic missile to destroy one of the nation’s aging weather satellites.

“Essentially what it did was increase the amount of space debris orbiting the Earth by about 20 percent,” said Air Force Brig. Gen. Ted Kresge, Space Command’s director of air, space and information operations.  He estimated the debris field would threaten spacecraft for up to 100 years and reported that U.S. controllers altered the trajectories of two nonmilitary satellites last year to avoid satellite parts.

China’s antisatellite capability has forced U.S. military officials to begin more serious consideration of developing satellite defenses, Kresge told the newspaper.

“We have embraced the notion that we now operate in a contested domain,” he said.

By 2010, China could manufacture an antisatellite capability sufficient to knock out all U.S. low-Earth orbiting satellites, according to the Times (see GSN, Aug. 15, 2007).

Congress rejected one Bush administration effort to address the antisatellite threat last year.  Lawmakers provided no funding for a plan to arm submarine-launched Trident missiles with conventional warheads (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2007).

Such a weapon could be used to strike antisatellite weapons before they are used, proponents argued.

Critics have expressed concern that U.S. nuclear adversaries would have trouble determining if a Trident missile headed at them contained a nuclear or conventional warhead and might therefore assume the worst and launch a nuclear retaliation (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, Jan. 11).

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