Another advance: China’s first woman in space, Lin Yang, 34, was one of the astronauts on the docking mission. (Xinhua /Landov)
On Sunday, three Chinese astronauts manually docked their craft with the Tiangong 1 space module, which is due to be replaced by a permanent space station around 2020.
Yes, China is just repeating achievements we’ve already pulled off — but the United States can’t even launch its own astronauts these days. So the news confirms what analysts have warned about for years: America is steadily losing the race for space.
The implications are huge, especially for our national security.
China’s equivalent of NASA isn’t about scientific research or space rides; it’s an arm of the People’s Liberation Army. So, while the Obama administration has largely ceded leadership in space flight to Russia and private firms like Space X, China is gearing for something that will give the phrase Star Wars a whole new meaning.
Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, warns that China’s real goal is to find ways to “deny or degrade the space assets of potential adversaries” like the United States, while building up their own military capabilities, including beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.
In that sense, the space-docking exercise is just one more landmark in an anti-satellite warfare program that’s been aimed at us since 2007, when China successfully tested its first satellite-killing ballistic missile.
Then, in January 2011, it sent up a highly sophisticated out-of-the-atmosphere kinetic kill vehicle (or KKV). The Chinese said it was for anti-missile defense. Others, including in the Pentagon, noted that it would work well for shooting down satellites, too. Ian Easton, researcher at a Washington think tank that tracks Chinese military trends, said then, “The implications of this test are potentially huge” in expanding China’s ability to render our satellite-based Global Positioning System useless.
GPS works by transmitting signals from satellites to receivers on earth, which then automatically coordinate signals from several satellites to give the user information on his location, speed, bearing and more. The more satellites, the more exact the data.
Our Defense Department needs its 30 or so GPS satellites to keep exact track of ships, planes and units scattered around the globe — and also to provide the data feed that delivers our precision guided munitions, from ICBMs and JDAMs to Tomahawk missiles, right to target. If some — say a third — of those 30 satellites were knocked off line, our forces would become effectively blind and impotent.
People’s Liberation Army hackers have been working on doing that via software for years; these satellite-killing missiles allow for a complementary “hardware” approach.
Meanwhile, China is also working on its own GPS, the Beidou Navigation Satellite System; it will have 16 satellites up and running by year’s end, with more coming.
We lack any significant anti-satellite capability. So, in the event of a future conflict, the Beidou system would let Beijing independently identify, track and target our forces even as its hackers and missiles deny us the power to do the same thing. Navy subs, aircraft carriers, even B-2 bombers and Stealth fighters would become sitting ducks, and blind ones at that.
Manned Chinese space vehicles might even be able to hijack our satellites, with a future space station overseeing the entire operation. Farfetched? So was the idea that tanks could outmaneuver the impregnable Maginot Line — and the idea that airplanes could sink an entire battlefleet at Pearl Harbor.
America has been so used to leading in space that we haven’t had to think of an effective countermeasure to this kind of attack. We did successfully test our own anti-satellite missile back in 2008 — but at a lower altitude than what the Chinese can do. And a steadily shrinking defense budget isn’t going to leave much money to pay for today’s conventional weapons, let alone the space weapons of tomorrow.
Still, it’s time to start some serious planning for the New Star Wars—before the race for space turns from a noble dream into a hideous nightmare.
Arthur Herman’s latest book is “Freedom’s Forge.”