China and Russia are developing weapons that could destroy American satellites in the event of an approaching conflict, a top general warned lawmakers Tuesday.
“That is integral to their strategies,” Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, the Defense Intelligence Agency director, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Ashley and National Intelligence Director Dan Coats agreed the United States has a “significant advantage” over Chinese and Russian space capabilities. But, in the short term, both adversaries intend to neutralize that inequality with anti-satellite weaponry, which would wreak havoc on GPS systems and other satellite-based technology used by the private and military sectors.
“[T]hey understand the dependencies that we have on space and so they’re developing capabilities for how to counter that, whether it’s a direct-energy weapon that is terrestrial, whether it is a co-orbital attack satellite, whether it’s jamming from the ground,” Ashley said. “So, they’re looking at strategies and how they develop really kind of a layered approach to deny us that capability because they realize how integral it is, not only for us [but] it will be integral for them as well.”
Those weapons would target not just government satellites, but “military, civil, or commercial space systems” as well, Coats specified in his prepared statement. “Russian and Chinese destructive ASAT weapons probably will reach initial operational capability in the next few years,” he said.
Their testimony sheds light elaborates on a threat that has grown increasingly alarming for U.S policy-makers in recent months. China’s regards it space capabilities as part of a bulwark against “third-party intervention” in a regional conflict, “such as a Taiwan contingency,” Ashley wrote in his prepared statement.
In other words, China could use anti-satellite weapons to keep the United States on the sidelines in a war to integrate democratic Taiwan into the communist regime.
Russia likewise sees anti-satellite weaponry as an equalizer in a conflict with the more-powerful U.S. military.
“Moscow has concluded that gaining and maintaining supremacy in space will have a decisive impact on the outcome of future conflicts and is developing counter-space systems to hold U.S. space assets at risk,” Ashley wrote.
All those developments take place in the context of diplomatic double-talk.
“Russia and China continue to publicly and diplomatically promote international agreements on the non-weaponization of space and ‘no first placement’ of weapons in space,” Coats wrote in his prepared statement. “However, many classes of weapons would not be addressed by such proposals, allowing them to continue their pursuit of space warfare capabilities while publicly maintaining that space must be a peaceful domain.”
