Both China and Russia have launched missile tests that had previously been believed to be beyond their capabilities, leaving the Biden administration to figure out how to respond.
China tested “a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile” that “circled the globe before speeding toward its target” over the summer, according to reports, while just days ago Russia launched a missile that intentionally destroyed a satellite scattering more than a thousand pieces of debris across space.
Both tests were the first of their kind for each country, though neither was exactly new technology altogether. In China’s case, hypersonic missile technology dates back decades, but the new developments make tracing and intercepting them much more difficult, while Russia’s test, which was a repeat of a Chinese operation in 2007, was the first time the country had demonstrated the ability to strike a satellite using an Earth-based missile, according to the Washington Post.
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“The abandonment of a credible deterrent in the United States is itself expanding the realm of possibility,” national security and foreign policy expert Jason Killmeyer told the Washington Examiner in an interview.
Condemnations and sanctions “do not alter the trajectory of dictators any longer,” he added, saying, “What I don’t hear is any understanding on the American side about how we would actually respond — how will we actually discourage this in the future? And the tools in our toolkit are sort of limited, particularly, I think, in an era of waning sanctions relevance.”
The Russian military “recklessly conducted” the “direct-ascent anti-satellite missile” test, which successfully hit a Russian satellite that had been in orbit for nearly 40 years, Department of State spokesman Ned Price said on Monday.
It sent more than “1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris and hundreds of thousands of pieces of smaller orbital debris that now threaten the interests of all nations,” according to Price, who also noted that the debris posed a threat to the International Space Station.
“Russia has demonstrated a deliberate disregard for the security, safety, stability, and long-term sustainability of the space domain for all nations,” U.S. Army Gen. James Dickinson, U.S. Space Command commander, said in a statement. “The debris created by Russia’s DA-ASAT will continue to pose a threat to activities in outer space for years to come, putting satellites and space missions at risk, as well as forcing more collision avoidance maneuvers. Space activities underpin our way of life and this kind of behavior is simply irresponsible.”
John Venable, a senior research fellow for defense policy at the Heritage Foundation, highlighted the significance of the U.S. response to Russia’s latest test as a possible litmus test to prevent further provocations.
“We have this opportunity and this need to respond to a provocation in space,” he explained. “And this administration needs to sit down and maybe pull in some experts from outside of their orbits in order to get the right response and execute that. But the option to not do anything is not there nor is the opportunity to do something that is going to exacerbate the situation.”
Tim Morrison, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and a Vandenberg Coalition Advisory Board member who was a national security official during the Trump administration, agreed that the United States should take these tests as a wake-up call to speed up military development.
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“[The Russians are] proud of it,” he explained. “They’re sending us a message, and it’s incumbent on us to figure out what is that message. But other than that, I don’t see anything new here. … This is why we set up Space Force — because we were worried at the pace with which our adversaries were developing their capability intended to target our capability. And we were worried that we weren’t moving fast enough.”
Russia’s test occurred hours before President Joe Biden met with Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping virtually. The two leaders jockeyed on the issue of Taiwan, the island nation that the Chinese mainland considers to be a part of their country — though those on the island seek independence, a topic that has heated up in recent weeks following provocations from the Chinese.
