February 4, 2020—Playing Catch-up with China in Space!

We are late in forming a Space Force. Russia has been pursuing space force variants since the 1980s—when Soviet leaders so vehemently opposed President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Perhaps of even greater importance, the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Liberation Army has been pursuing a Space Force technological juggernaut responsible for space, cyber, electronic, and psychological warfare called the PLA Strategic Support Force.

Thus, it is hypocritical, to say the least, for China to claim the “new U.S. Space Force is threat to space peace and security.” Click here for John Bowdon’s December 23, 2019 The Hill article with that precise title. He quotes Chinese officials stating that the U.S. Space Force would overly weaponize outer space and endanger peaceful missions.

“Overly” . . . as compared to China’s maturing efforts that weaponize space, you think?

He also claimed, “The relevant U.S. actions are a serious violation of the international consensus on the peaceful use of outer space, undermine global strategic balance and stability, and pose a direct threat to outer space peace and security,”

Then, click here for a concurrent Associated Press article reporting, among other things, that China’s foreign ministry spokesman told reporters that Beijing is “deeply concerned” and “resolutely opposed” to the Trump administration’s establishment of the sixth branch of the U.S. military.

Too be sure, all crocodile tears!!!!

These and related Chinese claims give me a sense of déjà vu since they are the same claims that Soviet leaders voiced immediately after President Reagan’s March 23, 1983 speech that launched his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). And I spent five years in Geneva negotiating with the Soviets, rejecting their claims that SDI would “militarize space” and lead to an unbridled “arms race in space.”

At the time, they already had an operational co-orbital anti-satellite (ASAT) system — it had been operational for years. (Click here for a discussion of a modern Russian version designed to snuggle up to today’s satellite systems.)

Meanwhile our ability to test an antisatellite system forty years ago was opposed by congress and the arms control community, parroting the same concerns about militarizing space as then chanted by the Soviets.

Indeed, I co-chaired with Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Richard Pearl the interagency efforts that helped overturn congressional restraints (The so-called Tsongas Amendment) that had prevented testing of our advanced technology ASAT system designed to be launched from an F-15. Then after that September 13, 1985 successful test, congress blocked further US ASAT development activities.

As someone said, “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Nevertheless, it turned out that such tests and a variety of SDI technology demonstrations showing the viability of space-based interceptors gave us (in our Geneva negotiations) enormous negotiating leverage because the Soviets could not (at least then) compete technologically with the United States — and that negotiating leverage led to major reduction in US and Soviet/Russian strategic and intermediate range nuclear forces.

It took Democrat opposition in Congress and then the Clinton administration to accomplish what the Soviets could not — by abolishing the most important SDI technology and associated programs. As then Defense Secretary Les Aspin famously said in early 1993, he “took the stars out of Star Wars.”

Indeed, and such efforts have remained dormant (at least in the United States) ever since, in both Democrat and Republican administrations. And it remains to be seen if the Trump administration will be any different.

The answer will, in my opinion, be most important in addressing the growing, even accelerating, threat being posed by China’s Space Force threat. And so far, the signs are not promising.

In particular — while we have been idling since the SDI decade (1983-1993), China has been moving ahead, as Retired USAF Lt. General Steven Kwast has written and I reported last week. Click here to reread my last week’s report and click here for Kwast’s article on “The Urgent Need for a US Space Force.” Consider the following except from his important article:

“America’s greatest competitor for the high ground of space is Communist China, which is already fully engaged in building effective space capabilities. America is not, and unless it gets off the mark soon, China will dominate the economy and domain of space.

“Our Air Force today can be compared to a race car that has been winning every race for the last 70 years by averaging 100 miles an hour. We are still in the lead, but China is gaining and averaging 150 miles an hour. The Chinese will quickly surpass us if we do nothing — and when they do, they will set up roadblocks that will make catching up difficult if not impossible.”

Then consider Kwast’s pertinent most important metaphor:

“Today, while America is building lighthouses and listening stations that can see and hear what is happening in space, China is building battleships and destroyers that can move fast and strike hard — the equivalent of a Navy in space. China is winning the space race not because it makes better equipment, but because it has a superior strategy. The Chinese are open about their plan to become the dominant power in space by 2049, the centennial of the end of the Communist Chinese Revolution and of the founding of the People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong.

“If China stays on its current path, it will deploy nuclear propulsion technology and solar power stations in space within ten years. This will give it the ability to beam clean energy to anyone on Earth — and the power to disable any portion of the American power grid and paralyze our military anywhere on the planet. America is developing no tools to defeat such a strategy, despite the fact that we are spending billions of dollars on exquisite 20th century military equipment.

“Over the past two centuries, we have seen that technology drives economic prosperity and that economic prosperity is essential to sustaining national security. China’s plan is to profit from the multi-trillion dollar space marketplace while simultaneously acquiring global domination. We are capable of forestalling China’s plan, but only if we begin to build a Space Force soon and on the right plan. To do this, we must first understand China’s strategic goal, which is to dominate the sectors of economic growth that historically have held the key to world power: transportation, energy, information, and manufacturing.”

Notably, China has also been pursuing space exploration while American efforts have been anemic, to say the least.

Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969, only 8-years after a standing start with President Kennedy’s historic speech to a Joint Session of Congress on May 25, 1961, which challenged our technologists to land a man on the Moon by the end of that decade.

Now, for many years we have relied on Russian technology to launch systems to support our space operations.

And China also has its eye on the Moon. In late 2013, the unmanned spacecraft Chang’e 3 landed on the lunar surface. (See the illustration below.) That event made China the third nation (after the United States and the former USSR) to reach the Moon. Click here for a Wikipedia summary discussion of China’s lunar exploratory efforts.

And now we find ourselves in a race with China to land a man (or woman) on the Moon by 2024. Click here for an important article with the appropriate title, “50 Years After Apollo, Can NASA Return to the Moon by 2024?” In late 2013, the above unmanned spacecraft Chang’e 3 landed on the lunar surface, making China the third nation (after the United States and the former USSR) to reach the Moon. Click here for a recently updated discussion of that important event.

I hope we can remember how to do things faster than we have demonstrated in recent years.

And there are signs that we are just waking up to the fact that our space systems are vulnerable. Click here for the February 1, 2020 Space News report entitled, “Pentagon report: DoD needs to test how satellites would perform under attack,” which begins with an ominous statement:

“The Defense Department’s director of operational test and evaluation warns in a new report that the military today is not able to assess the durability of its satellites if they came under attack.”

Then another discouragingly revealing statement:

“We therefore must thoroughly understand how our systems will perform in space, particularly when facing man-made threats. . . . Yet, the DoD currently has no real means to assess adequately the operational effectiveness, suitability and survivability of space-based systems in a representative environment.”

Other than that Mrs. O’Leary, how goes it with our space programs?

Remember Mrs. O’Leary? Her cow kicked over a lantern that set the barn on fire and began the famous 1871 fire that spread throughout Chicago. Seemingly small things can have devastating consequences.

And the vulnerability of our space systems is no small thing. Nor are our anemic space defense efforts, which leave us vulnerable to the space forces of our adversaries, particularly in China.

Lest you think that I am exaggerating, click here for Rich Matlock’s very descriptive Defense News article and see if you can find his reference to space-based defenses. Rich is a well-informed, now retired senior ballistic missile defense (BMD) official who knows where many skeletons are buried, from the SDI era forward.

I partially agree with Rich’s title: ”The drive to advance missile defense is there, but there must be funding.” But I strongly disagree with his omission of support and funding for the most important space-based interceptor technology that was maturing three decades ago and scuttled when SecDef Les Aspin “took the stars out of Star Wars.”

Bottom Lines.

President Trump’s national security officials are still ignoring the most important innovation of President Reagan’s SDI era. I wonder if he knows that sad fact?

And that this situation is probably because too many influential Defense Officials, in Congress and his Administration, probably agree with the Chinese and Russians and their propaganda about not pursuing space based defenses because they would “militarize space” and “provoke an arms race on space.” The arms control community also is a problem with its echoes of these false claims.

President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was on the verge of demonstrating the viability of needed space-based interceptors 30 years ago, when congress and the Clinton administration killed those efforts — that have since remained dormant through both Democrat and Republican administrations. If we had proceeded with such a development and deployment of that then available defensive capability, I think hypersonic threats now being deployed by Russia and China would likely have been deterred.

It’s long past time for a revival, and we are playing “catch up” in some important areas. However, we have been in this position before and Americans have come through when it was needed. And it is needed now.

We need to ignore the siren calls of our adversaries and the echoes from the arms control community and empower a needed truly independent Space Force ASAP!!!

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