WASHINGTON — China’s continued pursuits of space technologies as a strategy to gain military superiority are once more highlighted within the Pentagon’s latest annual report on “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China.”
The congressionally mandated report, released Oct. 19, articulates why DoD considers the People’s Republic of China its “pacing challenge.”
While this 12 months’s report doesn’t contain major revelations, it underscores the Pentagon’s view of China as America’s top strategic competitor.
With regard to space, the report notes that China is closing once-wide gaps with U.S. space capabilities, increasing the likelihood it could gain the advantage in a future conflict through attacks on American satellites. The Pentagon sees this as a serious challenge.
Amongst China’s anti-satellite weapons that DoD worries about are ground-based missiles and high-power lasers, satellites with robotic arms capable of grab other satellites, cyber-attack capabilities and other systems that might jam, blind, or disable U.S. satellites.
China views space superiority, the power to regulate the space-enabled information sphere and to disclaim adversaries their very own space-based information gathering and communication capabilities, as critical components to conduct modern “informatized warfare.”
The People’s Liberation Army continues to speculate in improving its capabilities in space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, satellite communication, satellite navigation, and meteorology, in addition to human spaceflight and robotic space exploration.
The PLA continues to amass and develop a spread of counter-space capabilities and related technologies, including kinetic-kill missiles, ground-based lasers, and orbiting space robots, in addition to expanding space surveillance capabilities, which may monitor objects in space inside their field of view and enable counter-space actions.
Defense Department’s 2023 Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China
The annual report has been mandated by Congress since 2000 as a strategy to help inform Washington’s policy debates about China’s military growth and modernization. This 12 months’s version repeats lots of the concerns raised in previous reports, at the same time as tensions between Washington and Beijing have sharply escalated over Taiwan and other flashpoints.
A significant point of concern raised within the Pentagon’s assessment is China’s continued reluctance to have interaction in military-to-military communications with the US. This lack of transparency from the People’s Liberation Army, based on the report, sows mistrust and increases the risks of a conflict emerging from miscalculation.
DoD said Chinese military leaders have rejected attempts to enhance radio communications protocols, and to conform to rules of behavior for air and maritime encounters with U.S. forces within the Pacific region. U.S. Space Force officials have warned that a scarcity of transparency about space activities fuels the chance of misunderstandings and miscalculations.