China tests ASAT

This is certainly in interesting development. One thing I'm not clear of though is that the article that was first posted described a "kill vehcile" launched aboard a ballistic missile, but others i've read claimed it was just a missile with a warhead.
And from what I here it was a medium-range ballistic missile, implying that it wasn't a specialised A-sat weapon, but a regular missile fired towards the target. Does anyone have info related to what missile it was? DF-21 perhaps?
Also I think that this is only a small step forward to Chinese space weapons. A-sat is probably the most basic space weapon. China has yet to put armed "killer satellites" in orbit.

peterc said:

So far I only see this move by the Chinese as a defensive measure, and I don't think this is consider as "weaponizing space".

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The US won't see it like that. From now on the US will aim to be able to do exactly the same thing to Chinese satellites, and the comments Bush made last year will be put into effect.

This was a very bad move on China's part, because this time it cannot say it was responding to anyone else.

has this news been confirmed. It may well be some speculation when the US lost track of one of the Chinese satellites - they lost track of one of their own after all.

amorphous said:

has this news been confirmed. It may well be some speculation when the US lost track of one of the Chinese satellites - they lost track of one of their own after all.

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China seems to have gone very quiet over this. Although the usual bunch of nationalist are cheering about something they don't really understand, official media has suddenly clammed up. Yesterday there were articles in various English-language newspapers - suddenly the links don't work, and I can't find any replacements.

I wonder if the government has ordered the media to keep quiet, to buy time because they didn't expect the backlash. I would have thought they'd have reassured the world they didn't do it if the US had just made a mistake.

Its a positive move. There was never any doubt the US was able to target satellites in space. There was a lot of suggestions that China was able to do so too, but with very little confirmation. This confirmed it. In a case of a war, nations were likely going to use satellites for gps guidance, and spying. And it was obvious these satellites would be brought down in case of a confrontation. Now its mutual.

Somehow I can't imagine the americans will be satisfied with "no it's mutual", since it affects one of their most vital assets.
Not saying China shouldn't have done it, and technologicly it's a great thing. I just believe that we'll now see many more advances in that arena.

I agree, there will always be people who cant accept the proposition that everyone remains on equal footing. China has no control over other people's desire for military supremacy. At the very least, China can continue spending in areas that vital to her national defense.

Macbeth said:

Its a positive move. There was never any doubt the US was able to target satellites in space.

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I dispute that on two grounds:

1. There is no evidence the Americans still had a viable weapon they could use - what they had in the past would have decayed by now. Proposals and speeches don't make a weapon. However with this test they are sure to change that.

2. It will now be almost impossible to stop space becoming part of a future conflict - I doubt any treaties will result from this, just more confrontation.

Plus trying to blind someone may result in an unpredicted reaction - that's another way countries could sleepwalk into a larger-than-expected conflict.

Scratch said:

Somehow I can't imagine the americans will be satisfied with "no it's mutual", since it affects one of their most vital assets.
Not saying China shouldn't have done it, and technologicly it's a great thing. I just believe that we'll now see many more advances in that arena.

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I can see right now military leaders around the world rubbing their hands in glee and dusting off old proposals for space weapons. I'm sure that the U.S. could have an operational ASAT system in a relatively short period of time. I doubt that they've been doing no work at all on ASAT's since the mid 80's. There has probably been a research team doing the theoretical work ever since and we now may be about to see the results of that work. I wonder if we'll see an ASAT variant of Trident? In my opinion, it would make a lot of sense militarily. Instead of waiting for the satellite to fly into range of your ground based fixed launching point, you could sail the ASAT, undetected, to a remote point in the ocean underneath the satellite's orbit and then you could ambush the satellite at a time and place of your chosing, probably when it was out of touch with it's controllers and they might never know what had happened to it!

Disagree. The ability of knocking down satellites had already been tested. Whether they are aging or not, which is a mere point of speculation, still shows they could have been deployed in a relatively short period of time. And the Satellites themselves which destroy valuable military and civil assets is enough reason to want to neutralize in a case of a conflict.