BOSTON --
The House and Senate Armed Services committees will get classified briefings
Friday about the destruction
of a Chinese weather satellite by a Chinese-launched ballistic missile, an
incident that is being widely interpreted as the test of an anti-satellite
weapon.
Gordon
Johndroe, the National Security Council's (NSC) chief spokesman, said in a
statement supplied by an NSC press official that the Chinese used a
ground-based, medium-range ballistic missile to knock out an aging Chinese
weather satellite orbiting the Earth
at an altitude of about 537 miles (865 kilometers). Johndroe described the
incident as a kinetic strike.
"The United
States believes China's
development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of
cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area," Johndroe
said. "We and other countries have expressed our concern regarding this action
to the Chinese."
Jeffrey
Lewis, executive director of Harvard's Managing the Atom Project was among the
first to disclose the incident Jan. 17 in a blog he writes for the Web site
armscontrolwonk.com.
Lewis said
in a Jan. 17 telephone interview that an analysis of orbital data that is
gathered by U.S. Air Force space surveillance systems and posted online at
Space-Track.org and Heavens-Above.com indicated that the Chinese FY-1C weather
satellite, which was launched in 1999, disappeared from view about Jan. 11. In
an interview Jan. 18, Lewis said the satellite reappeared Jan. 12 in a different
orbit and in multiple pieces. Lewis said the orbital tracking data strongly
suggested the satellite was struck by a missile fired from the Chinese
mainland.
"This is an
enormous mess they [the Chinese] have created. There is no excuse for what is a
reckless, stupid and self-defeating decision on their part," Lewis said.
"Space-Track
is showing about 40 pieces of debris, which is probably just the tip of the
iceberg," Lewis said. Space-Track.org is the U.S. Air Force Web site that
provides public satellite tracking data.
There may
be one piece of good to come of the Chinese action -- improved debris field
modeling. "Our models of debris spread are quite speculative, so this event
should help improve our models," Lewis said.
Phone calls
to the press office at the Chinese Embassy in Washington were not returned by
press time.
In his
press briefing yesterday, White House spokesman Tony Snow indicated it was not
yet clear exactly what China's intentions were but echoed Johndroe's comments:
"we are concerned about [the incident] and we've made it known."
Joan
Johnson-Freese, chair of the Naval War College's department of national
security decision making and one of the country's top experts on Chinese space
issues, said she doubted there will be much long-term impact. "I think there
will be a lot of very vocal rhetoric, but I don't think it will have a
substantive impact. There are just too many reasons for both of us to work
together on so many issues."
China was
listed alongside Russia as "the primary states of concern regarding military
space and counter-space programs" by U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Maples,
director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in written testimony submitted to
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Jan. 11, the same day the incident
occurred.
"Several
countries continue to develop capabilities that have the potential to threaten
U.S. space assets, and some have already deployed systems with inherent anti-satellite
capabilities, such as satellite-tracking laser ranger-finding devices and
nuclear-armed ballistic missiles," Maples said in his written testimony.
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