Description

If there is a great power war in this century, it will not begin with the sound of explosions on the ground and in the sky, but rather with the bursting of kinetic energy and the flashing of laser light in the silence of outer space. China is engaged in an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons drive that has profound implications for future U.S. military strategy in the Pacific. This Chinese ASAT build-up, notable for its assertive testing regime and unexpectedly rapid development as well as its broad scale, has already triggered a cascade of events in terms of U.S. strategic recalibration and weapons acquisition plans. The notion that the U.S. could be caught off-guard in a “space Pearl Harbor” and quickly reduced from an information-agemilitary juggernaut into a disadvantaged industrial-age power in any conflict with China is being taken very seriously by U.S. war planners. As a result, while China’s already impressive ASAT program continues to mature and expand,
the U.S. is evolving its own counter-ASAT deterrent as well as its next generation space technology to meet the challenge,
and this is leading to a “great game” style competition in outer space.