WAR IN SPACE: NOW NEXT LEVEL

Down here on the surface, we’re largely unaware of what goes on up there above our heads, in the never ending twenty-four hour a day world of satellites

From the GPS we rely on for more than is comfortable – your daily run, your food delivery, your parcels, getting from A to B. then there’s television and communications.

Now with the advent of services like Starlink, even basic internet access, all reliant on blocks of technology flying around the planet or starring down on us, observing everything in minuscule, even creepy levels of detail. I can make out individual plants in my garden from Google Earth.

Our militaries rely on space for early warning of everything from troop movements on the ground, to nuclear attack. The entire war in Ukraine has been heavily reliant on space based assets.

We know that Russia has satellites that stalk other countries satellites. They maneuver them about and do everything from deliberately sit on top of them to block the solar panel arrays, to sticking their antennae into signal streams to intercept encrypted transmissions. They often get so close they’re as much as a meter or two away. Then they scoot off and find another target. The Russians have or can easily place, a nuclear warhead in a satellite to create an electromagnetic pulse that could potentially do vast damage, up there and down here.

Yet the real shock comes when we look at what China has achieved since 2010.

China is reaching a point where it can attack or cripple significant parts of the western alliance – especially the United States’ space systems. They have begun deploying a whole series of highly mobile satellites equipped with varying capabilities, able to fly across large parts of the GEO (geosynchronous earth orbit) satellite chains. The satellites include impact attack types, and some that are designed to pick up other satellites and fling them out of orbit, rendering them useless.

GEO is where key GPS and early warning satellites that stare down looking for missile attacks are mostly found. The Chinese actively practice such tactics and take considerable risks in doing so, endangering many nations equipment in the process.

Chinese Strategy is acknowledged as being based on, ‘He who controls space, controls the Earth’. China has made huge advances in mapping and tracking US satellites. In response the US has deployed SILENTBARKER inspection satellites to monitor what’s going on and maintain a watchful eye on China’s military build up in space.

China’s on-orbit fleet has gone from 36 satellites in 2010 to more than 1,000 this year. Beijing’s current space fleet includes 292 electro-optical and 43 radar satellites for imaging targets on Earth, and 74 signals intelligence gathering satellites. Images showing a Chinese rendering of a GSSAP (Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program or Hornet is a class of United States spy satellites) and a synthetic aperture radar image of the US naval base at Norfolk, Va.have all been obtained showing how much and how close Chinese capabilities have advanced.

China also has 60 Beidou GPS style satellites. They went from none or barely any capability in 2010 to now, when they have their own reliable GPS. 60 of them —  24 in MEO [Medium Earth orbit], three in GEO, and then another three in IXO or inclined GEO, and then one backup for each individual spacecraft, so they always have something available if one goes down.

Let’s be clear what these radar equipped satellites can do. They’re able to pinpoint US refueling tankers over the pacific as they get ready to support fighter combat operations, They can pick up US AWACS aircraft and locate US warships almost anywhere. They provide an ocean-wide ‘god view’ of US movements and force allocations across the Pacific largely regardless of weather conditions. They provide an unprecedented level of clarity and real time accuracy to Chinese commanders.

The path China has taken, to not just be prepared, but actively practice and be ready for space warfare operations isn’t lost on the Americans, and increasingly they look to counter it. But yet again, its a theater of operations that has been under resourced, and that again, China has caught up on and exceeded the capabilities of its potential primary enemy.

All of these capabilities are tied directly to the Chinese space tracking facilities in China – and the vital tracking station in Argentina now makes more sense than ever before.

The Analyst

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