September 24, 2019—Red Storm Coming from China!

“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.” ~ Bill Gertz in an October 17, 2015 Washington Times article, “New Details of Chinese Space weapons”

Click here for my October 27, 2015 discussion of Gertz’s important article that focused on China’s anti-satellite (ASAT) systems. While those ASAT concerns remain and have grown further over the past four years — and we have done little or nothing to develop countermanding capabilities, the threat from China is NOW much larger.

In my opinion, the most competent U.S. reporter on defense matters, Bill Gertz, recently published his much more comprehensive assessment on the emerging threat from China — after writing numerous articles and several books for over two decades warning all who would listen.

That existential threat is now reaching the stage where we are actually playing “catch-up” on some key technologies. Just consider the above excerpt from 4 years ago.

Click here for information on his most recent book, Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China’s Drive for Global Supremacy, in which Gertz discusses the failure of generations of U.S. policymakers over the past forty years of assuming that trade and engagement with China would result in a peaceful, democratic state.

Pro-China policymakers, intelligence analysts and business leaders facilitated the rise of a threatening and expansionist nuclear-armed communist dictatorship now focused on weakening and destroying the United States of America — actually as an initial step in achieving global supremacy under a new world order based an ideology of Communism with Chinese characteristics.

Gertz details our collective failure to understand the nature and activities of the dangers posed by China and what the United States can do in taking needed steps to counter the threats.

It should be noted that, while Gertz’s conclusions about China’s long-standing strategy and objectives are very important, they are not new.

Indeed, click here for a much earlier, also very important, book by Michael Pillsbury who has studied China’s military strategy for even more decades. The title of his The Hundred Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower clearly demonstrates what has long been the objective of China’s leaders. And that there is no excuse for our not recognizing this threat years ago.

So, it’s past time for U.S. leaders to recognize that the Communist Party of China deceived Western leaders into believing that its system and the Party-ruled People’s Liberation Army were peaceful and posed no threat.

In fact, these misguided policies have produced the emergence of a 21st Century Evil Empire armed with cutting edge technological weapons even more dangerous than a Cold War version in the Soviet Union.

This evolution was significantly fueled by technology from American companies obtained on a massive scale through cyber theft and unfair trade practices. The losses directly supported in the largest and most significant buildup of the Chinese military that now directly threatens American and allied interests around the world. And the military threat is only half the danger because China aggressively pursues regional and international control using a variety of non-military forces, including economic, cyber and space warfare and large-scale influence operations.

These concerns are at the root of President Trump’s economic warfare strategy that involves the use of tariffs to support his negotiations — and they are well justified.

In some of these areas, we are now playing “catch up” because we abandoned the leading role our scientists and technologists played in executing President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which the Clinton administration scuttled — as then Defense Secretary Les Aspin said, he “took the stars out of Star Wars.”

Moreover, some of these most important SDI technologies were knowingly passed to China as was discussed in considerable detail by the Independent Working Group on Missile Defense — in Appendix B of the Institute for Foreign Policy’s reports on The Space Relationship & the Twenty-First Century. Click here and here for the 2007 and 2009 reports that summarized how the Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations did little to deal with the threat from China.

And of course, the Obama administration did nothing about the threat, which continued to grow. And, of course, his administration did little to nothing to advance the technology efforts that Reagan’s SDI initiated — and that the George W. Bush administration ignored even after withdrawing from the 1972 ABM Treaty that had blocked their full development.

Thus, China demonstrably began years ago exploiting SDI technology while the United States abandoned it for purely political reasons. And while we slept, the threat grew.

So now the Trump administration, aware of this threatening situation, is playing “catch-up” on some of these key technologies — as Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin has stated.

Hopefully, Congress in its current deliberations will appropriate sufficient funds to enable him to run that important race unfettered — and in particular to build the space-based defenses that the SDI efforts pioneered — now with several years more advanced technology.

Reagan’s SDI vision, especially re. space-based defenses, is really the only way to obtain the global defenses we now clearly need to deal with potentially unanticipated ballistic missile launches from essentially any location — and especially with a chance of intercepting those attacking launches in their boost phase when they are actually most vulnerable and before they achieve their greatest velocity.

Of particular note is the existential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat that is known to be included in China’s military doctrine (as well as that of Russia, North Korea and Iran). And we are very vulnerable to such a threat that China (and others) can deliver today — especially from our poorly defended South.

We continue to ignore these facts at our peril, especially now as China and others exploit modern technology that challenges and sometimes exceeds our own. Consequently, the Trump administration needs to match and exceed China’s capabilities with our own related policy, plans, programs and operations — and ramp-up those activities much faster than we have previously accomplished, still in the face of substantial political headwinds.

Just consider a bit of ASAT history to demonstrate our lethargic response to the growing threat — especially because of opposition from the arms control community — but certainly not challenges to our technological competence.

For example, the Navy demonstrated the inherent capability of its first generation Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) interceptor to shoot down a dying National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO) satellite in its February 20, 2008 Burnt Frost “hurry-up” ASAT demonstration. It employed the Navy’s earliest operating sea-based BMD capability — now deployed around the world on dozens of Destroyers and Cruisers. Their crews just must be trained and ready to accomplish such a mission.

Notionally, this intercept was like that suggested by the chart on the left below. So any BMD system worth its salt also has at least an inherent ASAT capability. On the right is illustrated an earlier dedicated F-15 lunched ASAT capability demonstrated 34 years ago. Nevertheless , the arms control community has successfully resisted our having a dedicated ASAT capability — successfully denying its further development.

The truth is that Russia almost 40-years ago had an operational co-orbital ASAT and successfully used arms control initiatives to lull the United States and Western powers to sleep — and to encourage their arms control elite to inhibit U.S. ASAT development activities. (As far as I know, Russia still retains this operational ASAT system and China reportedly has also demonstrated such a capability.)

I saw this highly political gambit up close and personal, beginning when I served as USAF Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategic and Space Systems and, among other things, oversaw the early development of our F-15 launched hit-to-kill ASAT.

Click here for a discussion of that important program, actually begun as one of the last special access directives of the Ford administration, maintained through the Carter administration and actually tested in President Reagan’s second term. Members of congress sought to block that effort when it first became known during early budget cycles during the Reagan administration.

For example, one of my first jobs as Assistant Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) for Strategic Programs in early 1984 was to lead the interagency activities in responding to the so-called Tsongas Amendment, after Senator Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.), which blocked funding unless the United States agreed to seek a comprehensive ASAT ban.

The Soviets obliged these congressional interests with such a proposal, while continuing their ASAT efforts of course. And we successfully countered their efforts.

We prepared a comprehensive unclassified report, with exhaustive classified backup, explaining that such a comprehensive ban was neither verifiable nor in the U.S. national security interest. Happily, we were successful in blocking the Tsongas amendment — and the F-15 ASAT was successfully tested on September 13, 1985 — 34 years ago.

That test certainly captured the attention of our Soviet counterparts in the Geneva Defense and Space Talks during our early rounds, when I was President Reagan’s Ambassador and led our negotiations in Geneva on these matters with our Soviet counterparts.

That “hit-to-kill” capability also demonstrated the viability of SDI concepts then being pursued — and which the Soviets could not then match. Nevertheless, for political, mostly arms control related, reasons Congress blocked any further funding for follow-on USAF ASAT developments. And, of course, the Soviets retained their operational ASAT.

Several years later — during the Clinton administration, the Army tried again by pursuing a ground-based ASAT, and President Clinton used his “fleeting” line-item veto power to block the funding congress provided for such development. Notably, he also vetoed funding for an Air Force space plane and for a deep-space probe follow-on to the Clementine effort (which space-qualified essentially all Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptor technology), because they employed “Star Wars” technology — such was the animosity for Ronald Reagan’s interest in space defenses.

And we now can expect at least some the same resistance to President Trump’s Space Force initiatives.

These political issues are still a significant problem because there is such ideological opposition to military space systems — and that opposition includes domestic and international arms control efforts more to block related U.S. development activities than to provide any effective constraint on others.

By the way, our above-mentioned 1984 Report to Congress to block the Tsongas Amendment demonstrated that it is practically impossible to verify any meaningful ASAT arms control agreement. That reality is still the case, of course.

Nevertheless, you can expect the arms control community to continue to be an obstacle against efforts to develop such systems today — including with President Trump’s Space Force initiatives.

And as discussed last week, the Washington “powers that be” are stumbling toward dealing with this important initiative, as well as dealing with his Executive Order directing them to deal with the existential EMP threat.

We await clarifying “shoes to drop” from congress, hopefully this week before they leave again with their important work unfinished. I understand they have kicked the can to the end of November with yet another continuing resolution, signaling that at least some important funding for next year is unsettled.

Such bureaucratic obstacles have produced delays that have placed and continue to place the nation at risk. Thanks to Bill Gertz, his recent book should warn all about the consequences of continuing this serious bureaucratic lethargy.

Bottom Lines.

The President recently has taken important initiatives, including one to deal with the existential EMP threat and another to build a Space Force.

Thus far, the Federal Government’s response can generously be described as being dysfunctional as it stumbles ever so slowly, hopefully toward positive responses.

As Congress and the Executive Branch deliberate on the future of both, there seems to be little that citizens can do to press their appointed and anointed leaders to do the right things. They seem to be locked in political disputes rather than dealing with the threats we are facing.

Thus, I keep coming back to the perspective that we had better understand these problems at a local level; and press our alleged leaders to address them if we ever want to see our homes and families protected.

Bill Gertz’s recent book can help us understand the Rising Red Storm from China and the consequences of failure to confront it.

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage www.highfrontier.org, for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them. I hope you will help us with our urgently needed efforts, which I will be discussing in future messages.

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