China is developing space technologies aimed at blocking US military communications and destroying its ability to win conflicts, according to a report commissioned by a panel created by the US Congress.
“China’s improving space capabilities have negative-sum consequences for US military security,” the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) said in the report.
Its progress requires “the US to prepare to confront an adversary possessing space and counter-space technologies,” the report said.
The report, released on Monday in Washington, comes as the US Congress debates US President Barack Obama’s request for a Department of Defense budget increase of 7.7 percent to US$534.3 billion and ways to align defense strategy and spending.
The top US intelligence official and the commander of the US Strategic Command both warned last week that China’s space program threatens US military communications.
The program is part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) “China Dream” strategy of strengthening national power and reshaping the Asia-Pacific political environment into one in which its interests are given greater attention.
“China’s goal is to become a space power on par with the United States and to foster a space industry that is the equal of those in the United States, Europe and Russia,” according to the report, which was prepared for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
“With improved military capabilities, and the potential for growth in the commercial aerospace industry, China’s development” of space technologies will allow it to “more effectively wield international power,” the commission said in a statement on Monday.
Chinese military analysts consider that space-based information will become a deciding issue in future wars, that space will be a dominant battlefield, and that in order to achieve victory on Earth, one must first seize the initiative in space, the institute said.
“This will require China to achieve space supremacy, defined as the ability to freely use space and to deny the use of space to adversaries,” according to the report, titled China Dream, Space Dream: China’s Progress in Space Technologies and Implications for the United States.
The assessment that space is the dominant battlefield has led the People’s Liberation Army to conclude that war in space is inevitable, the institute said in the report led by Kevin Pollpeter, deputy director of the Study of Innovation and Technology in China at the IGCC.
If the current trajectory of China’s space program continues, by 2030 China will have a new line of advanced launch vehicles, a robust, space-based command and control network and more capable electronic intelligence communication satellites, the report said.
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