U.S. official: Chinese test missile obliterates satellite

ChineseThai SG

Same old American double standard.

dragg SG

U.S. is full of BS.

they always tell people not to do things they are continuing to do.

it is a good thing that china is standing up to them.

m113apc SG

i think the chinese should just ask the USA wat abt the star wars program that they tested in the 80s was all abt

anyways...its not a surprise the chinese are doing this..
if anything..u can say they were" inspired" by the USA rite?
i mean..the chinese just copy watever the US are doing...haha

lionnoisy SG

Relations enter a black hole, Geoff Elliott. January 20, 2007.
IN a little-reported testimony last week, a US intelligence chief warned that US satellite assets - vital to its role as a superpower - were at risk to new missile technology.

Lieutenant General Michael Maples told a congressional hearing in his annual threat address that China and Russia were the "primary states of concern" regarding military space programs.

"Several countries continue to develop capabilities that have the potential to threaten US space assets, and some have already deployed systems with inherent anti-satellite capabilities, such as satellite-tracking laser range-finding devices and nuclear-armed ballistic missiles," the director of the Defence Intelligence Agency said in his written testimony.

That was on January 11, the same day it appears China's satellite missile test was conducted.

Despite Maples's warning, the Chinese explosion caught officials by surprise, rocking the intelligence community after months of smoothrelations between Beijing and Washington.

It is reckoned that the test of anti-satellite technology is the first of its kind in two decades by any nation and raises the spectre of an arms race in space.

The US and the Soviet Union tested anti-satellite technology in the 1980s, and Washington shot down one of its orbiting satellites in 1985. Thanks in large part to the debris that results from the tests, both sides stopped the programs.

The first countries to express disquiet over the tests were involved in the Pacific's trilateral security dialogue: the US, Australia and Japan.

Chinese officials said yesterday that Washington was overreacting, but these things are not without calculation. It is another expression from Beijing of its emerging international standing.

China is big on so-called soft power but this satellite missile test raises the stakes. And it came just as there appeared to be a breakthrough between the US and North Korea on its nuclear weapons program.

According to reports out of Germany, discussions between US envoy Christopher Hill and representatives from Pyongyang had created some common ground.

Now the US finds itself at the threshold of another north Asian diplomatic maze.

"The US believes China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of co-operation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said yesterday.

"We and other countries have expressed our concern regarding this action to the Chinese."

China had already taken steps in the UN to set up an international conference to address talk that a space arms race was imminent.

Washington's national space policy, released last year, maintained the US's right to defend itself in space against any actions it considers hostile.

Mitsubishi hater SG

it is time for USA to fly kite!

Beyond Religion SG

Not likely. With the situation in Iraq, Iran and north Korea, USA dare not disturb the sleeping dragon.

While I am concerned that China's test may spark off another round of arms race, I understand and fully empathize with China's situation.... Faced with the world's foremost superpower in a clear bid to contain its development, China has no choice but to beef up its defense capabilities.

coolant SG

Its the US that is the only country constantly rejecting the ban on outer space testing in the past decades.
Its the US that is the only country insisting on putting the missile defense system that virtually militarizes outer-space.
The western world led by the bally country likening to yell Either you are with US or against US can keep mute to their masters outer-space ambition but fail to observe the same towards a country practicing its right to protect itself from the bally.
Thats all the western controlled "fair value" can teach you.

Transcript from "Count Down with Keith Olbermann"

Lets call in nuclear weapons expert Joseph Cirincione, the senior vice president for national security of the Center for American Progress, also co-author of Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Thanks for your time again tonight, sir.

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE, CO-AUTHOR, DEADLY ARSENALS: My pleasure, Keith.

OLBERMANN: Was it a mistake to turn down the Chinese and the Russians when they offered to negotiate setting ground rules for weapons in space? And might this be an attempt by the Chinese now to get the Bush administration back to the bargaining table?

CIRINCIONE: It was definitely a mistake to turn them down. I condemn the Chinese test. Theres no justification for that test. But there is an explanation. For the last six years, the Bush administration has been yelling loudly about our intentions to militarize space. Weve established a U.S. Space Command. We talk about space dominance. We have a half-dozen very expensive space weapons on the drawing boards. We have insisted that we have an unimpeded access to space, but weve also insisted on our right to knock out other countries satellites.

We have voted against efforts to have treaties that would ban these kinds of weapons. In October 2005, 160 nations at the United Nations voted for a treaty to ban weapons in space. The U.S. was the only nation that voted against that treaty. China has gotten the hint. They say, You want a race? OK, bring it on.

OLBERMANN: So if we dont get back into negotiations with the Chinese, the Russians, if we dont go along with the U.N. proposal, are we looking, realistically, at another nuclear arms race, only this one with the weapons pointed outwards?

CIRINCIONE: The race is already on. Weve been racing by ourselves. China has now joined that race. Theyve demonstrated that they have a capability, as we do, to launch a missile that could knock out a satellite. The trouble is, were the big losers in that competition. We have over 420 satellites in space, more than the rest of the world combined. China has only about 34.

We have more to lose from such a race. You have two choices here. Either you start this race, which will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and require us to harden our satellites, maneuver our satellites, have spare satellites to go into space, and develop antisatellite weapons of our own. Or you negotiate a ban on any weapons in space and stop this madness before it gets started.

OLBERMANN: Not to get too cynical from the beginning on this, but was the idea here in our refusal to be involved in this, that we should not be banning weapons in space, because whether or not they ultimately worked, developing them for this country would be forth hundreds of million dollars to American defense contractors?

CIRINCIONE: You dont have to be an Eisenhower scholar or have seen the documentary Why We Fight to know that there really is a military-industrial complex, and theres a lot of money to be made in weapons, particularly space weapons. Space is very expensive and very profitable. And what we have here is a fusion of that military-industrial complex with the ideologues in the White House that is propelling us towards a space race.

My only hope is that the next administration will come to its senses and stop this madness and negotiate a treaty that preserves the peaceful uses of space for all nations, including the United States.

OLBERMANN: Something else we have to keep our fingers crossed about through the beginning of 09. But in the short term, before that, if the Chinese are capable now of shooting down one of their own satellites in space, are there military implications for what else they might be able to do back here on the planet?

CIRINCIONE: Oh, certainly. They just demonstrated the capability to shoot whats called a low-earth-orbiting satellite. Most of our space surveillance and tracking systems are in those low-earth orbits. So they could knock out our eyes, ears, sensors in space. They could cripple U.S. military operations in any conflict.

And it opens up this interesting, unresolved question of where ones territory ends. The Chinese are saying, The space above our land is our territory. Theres no clear law on this. Thats oneanother reason to negotiate a treaty, to clarify that everyone has a right to space.

OLBERMANN: Yes, why would we ever have wanted a treaty to stop anything like that?

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