China seeks war footing in space

China is surging ahead in the race to weaponise space, completing 50 orbital launches this year.

The Shenzhou-12 spacecraft launches in June with three Chinese astronauts onboard at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Jiuquan, Gansu province, China. Picture: Getty Images

China is surging ahead in the race to weaponise space, completing 50 orbital launches this year as it looks to gain military advantage.

The successful Chinese satellite deployments, up from 35 last year, outstripped those of the US, which carried out 43 mainly commercial launches this year.

Australian space industry firm LeoLabs has been closely tracking the Chinese launches, along with 3000 already-in-orbit satellites, and more than 18,000 pieces of space junk.

“The US hasn’t surpassed 50 launches since 1967 – the height of the Cold War,” LeoLabs president Terry van Haren told The Australian.

Mr van Haren, a former air force commander and fighter pilot, said about 70-80 per cent of Chinese satellites were believed to be either for military or dual-use purposes.

They included orbiting anti-satellite systems, intelligence and surveillance satellites, advanced communication and ocean reconnaissance systems, and GPS-style navigation satellites.

Mr van Haren warned that in the event of a conflict, China’s offensive space capabilities would be able to knock out Western communications systems, navigation and timing reference systems.

“What is space war? It’s actually like a big game of chess,” he said. “What you do is you deploy all your pawns before you start a conflict. You need to have all your pawns ready to defend and ready to attack.

“A lot of this suspicious activity is mostly related to their preparations for a potential space conflict.”

Mr van Haren said it was vital to “distrust and verify” all Chinese launches, initially by radar and later by telescopes and other sensors. He pointed to the October launch of an alleged “debris mitigation” satellite by China, known as Shijian-21, which was sent into geostationary orbit, where debris isn’t a concern.

“When it arrived in orbit, it then produced a sub-satellite, which is also a very suspicious satellite,” he said. “It is probably a co-orbital ASAT – an anti-satellite weapon system. When we talk about debris management in space it means we can manipulate another object in space; and if you can manipulate another object in space you can disable that object.

“And if (that object) is hypothetically an allied satellite, that’s a way to degrade or destroy that satellite.”

About 70 per cent of Chinese satellites are launched south towards Australia, offering a chance at early detection by Australian-based radar.

LeoLabs is constructing a new radar facility in Western Australia to help monitor such launches, and plans to build another in the Northern Territory in addition to its already-operating New Zealand based radar. “Between the three of those sites, once they are all built, we will be able to capture everything that China launches in our direction, on first orbit,” Mr van Haren said.

Early detection has become an even greater priority since China’s August test of a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System – a weapons delivery platform with a hypersonic glide vehicle payload designed to re-enter the atmosphere at more than five times the speed of sound before manoeuvring to its target.

The missile missed its intended target by a wide margin, but it’s feared the weapon could be an early version of one that could be pre-deployed in space to be used in a future conflict.

US officials conceded the launch came “very close” to being a “Sputnik moment” – a reference to the USSR’s 1957 satellite launch that showed the Soviets had stolen ahead in the space race.

There is growing concern that such a weapon, launched on a southern orbital route to the US along the Western Australian coast, around the South Pole, and north to the American mainland, would completely evade US missile defences.

“The biggest worry there is that all of the Americans’ anti-ballistic missile systems face north. They were designed for the Cold War,” Mr van Haren said.

“The sooner you pick up (the launches) you can start processing them and verify what they are. Time is now of the essence.”

Russia also raised the stakes in space this year, testing an ASAT missile that destroyed an old Soviet satellite, creating a huge cloud of space debris that threatened lives on the International Space Station, and will imperil space assets for years to come.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton condemned the Russian test as “a provocative and dangerous act that demonstrated the threats to space systems are real, serious and growing”.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s senior space analyst, Malcolm Davis, said China’s space program could soon rival that of the US, further escalating the military space race.

“They are starting to challenge the traditional dominance of US military space capabilities, at least in terms of what they have up there,” Dr Davis said. “And the Chinese space program is largely run by their military. Although it has a civilian face, most of the key staff at the Chinese National Space Agency are from the People’s Liberation Army. “In addition, the PLA have a space arm, the PLA Strategic Support Force, that predates the US Space Force by about three years.”

Dr Davis said China’s attempts to produce a functioning Fractional Orbital Bombardment System was a “highly significant” development that could transform the US’s threat calculus. He said Australia needed to develop additional ground-based sensors to track such threats, and work with the US and UK under AUKUS to develop space-based early warning systems.