China successfully carried out its first test of an anti-satellite weapon last week, signaling its resolve to play a major role in military space activities and bringing expressions of concern from Washington and other capitals, the Bush administration said Thursday. Only two nations -- Russia and the United States -- have previously destroyed spacecraft in anti-satellite tests, most recently the United States in the mid 1980s.
China and Russia are developing space weapons and are among several nations working on systems to threaten U.S. satellites with lasers or missiles, says the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
U.S. intelligence agencies believe that China has successfully tested an anti-satellite weapon by destroying one of their old weather satellites. The test, if confirmed, would be an order of magnitude more provocative than earlier reports of Chinese blinding lasers being used against U.S. satellites.
China is fielding information warfare units and developing anti-satellite capabilities aimed at countering U.S. military technology, according to a U.S. congressional commission.
The United States has been exaggerating China's nuclear clout in a process that could lock the two into a Cold War-style arms race, two arms-control advocacy groups said in a report on Thursday.
New alarms are sounding over signs that China may be developing space weapons, reinforcing suspicions that the People's Liberation Army is increasingly interested in the final frontier as a theater of war.
Admiral William J. Fallon, the chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific, urged closer military ties with China after an uncomfortably close encounter between U.S. warships and a Chinese submarine in the Pacific last month.
In response to the recently updated U.S. National Space Policy, the Chinese and Russian governments have issued broad threats intended to dissuade the United States from actually deploying -- as opposed to researching -- weapons in space.
China's decision to expand the functionality of its satellite navigation network could undermine the economics of Europe's nascent Galileo system, according to sources close to the project.
Gen. James Cartwright, the top U.S. military officer in charge of operations in space, says the United States has not seen clear indications that China has intentionally disrupted American satellite capabilities.