Satellite Killer Really Aimed At Taiwan

Courtesy Of: Asia Times OnLine
By Wu Zhong, China Editor
Jan 23, 2007
http://atimes.com

HONG KONG - Apart from demonstrating its capability of engaging in a potential "Star Wars", China's launching of a ground-based ballistic missile to destroy one of its own weather satellites two weeks ago was also intended to deter Taiwan from moving toward independence.

US intelligence agencies have said China conducted a successful launch of a "killer" weapon on January 11, destroying one of its own satellites orbiting more than 800 kilometers above the Earth with a "kinetic kill vehicle" launched from a ballistic missile.

China has so far declined to confirm or deny the report.

This has surprised the international community as it is the first time that a ground-based missile has been launched successfully to destroy an orbiting satellite. In the past the US used an air-launched missile to destroy a satellite and the former Soviet Union downed a satellite from Earth orbit. But earlier attempts to shoot down a satellite from ground-based missiles had failed.

It may not be a mere coincidence that China tested the anti-satellite weapon just two weeks after its government published a white paper on national defense, saying that China's national security faces "challenges that cannot be ignored".

The biggest challenge to China's national security and territorial integrity would be a formal declaration of independence in Taiwan, especially if backed by the United States.

"The Taiwan authority has adopted a radical approach toward Taiwan independence ... posing a serious threat to China's sovereignty and territorial integrity," the white paper says. "The United States has repeatedly reiterated it would uphold the 'one China' policy, opposing Taiwan independence. But the US continues to sell advanced military equipment and to strengthen its military liaison and exchange with Taiwan."

According to China's Anti-Secession Law, passed in March 2005, China will use military force against Taiwan if the island formally declares independence. The US has pledged to help militarily defend the island from an attack from the mainland. And Beijing is also concerned that the US may encourage Japan to assist in any military action over Taiwan.

The white paper also warns of the danger of a US-led strategic realignment in Asia. "The United States and Japan are strengthening their military alliance in pursuit of operational integration. Japan seeks to revise its constitution and exercise collective self-defense. Its military posture is becoming more external-oriented. The DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] has launched missile tests and conducted a nuclear test. Thus the situation on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia has become more complex and challenging."

Reading the white paper, one can easily draw a conclusion that a major aim of China's military buildup is to prepare for war against Taiwan, with possible US intervention taken into consideration.

From this point of view, it is no surprise to see China's test of an anti-satellite weapon. According to China's strategists, the country needs its own "killer" weapons or tactics to win in an asymmetrical war.

Some analysts in Beijing say that more surprises of this kind can be expected in the near future as the hope for a peaceful reunification with Taiwan becomes increasingly slim given the current Taiwanese government's pro-independence stance.

"While Beijing wants to maintain the status quo on the [Taiwan] Strait, Taiwan leaders keep taking provocative moves in recent years to challenge the 'one China' principle," one analyst said. "[Taiwanese President] Chen Shui-bian now openly talks about China and Taiwan being two 'independent countries'. Under such circumstances, 'peaceful reunification' seems one-sided wishful thinking."

Before retiring as chairman of the Central Military Commission two years ago, former Chinese president Jiang Zemin appeared to have given up hope for a peaceful solution of the Taiwan issue, reportedly saying, "A cross-strait war is inevitable." And upon his retirement, he reportedly gave a farewell gift to each CMC member - a statue of Zheng Chenggong (aka Koxinga), a Ming Dynasty general who led Chinese troops to take Taiwan back from the Dutch in 1662.

Over the years, Beijing's leaders have learned the hard way that Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party wins votes by talking up independence and thus provoking the mainland into retaliating in a way that hands the DPP a weapon, harping on the "China threat". Missile tests in the strait also helped Kuomintang president Lee Teng-hui win re-election in 1996.

Beijing has learned a lesson and now acts with more sophistication to avoid direct confrontation, particularly with the US. In this sense, the launching of a missile to destroy a satellite could serve the purpose of deterring Taiwan without direct provocation.

A People's Liberation Army source in Beijing said this month's missile test is a logical development of China's military modernization. "China is a huge country, and we need equivalent military muscle. [Late Chinese leader] Deng Xiaoping said, 'Backwardness means waiting to be beaten up.' China can no longer sit idle waiting to be beaten up."

China is still two to three decades behind the US in military modernization. Because of the US involvement in the Taiwan issue, therefore the mainland military needs to develop its own weapons or measures to offset its disadvantages in case a cross-strait war erupts with US intervention, he said.

International Concern

The US administration publicly demanded that China explain why it had conducted a test of its growing anti-satellite capability. "We know the Chinese have conducted this test," said Tom Casey, a US State Department spokesman. "We certainly want to hear from them in a more detailed way exactly what their intentions are. We don't want to see a situation where there is any militarization of space."

State Department officials met with officials from the Chinese Embassy last Tuesday, and diplomats in Beijing met with Chinese officials on Wednesday. Casey said one question the test raised was whether this was a one-off event or part of a broader initiative. Britain, Japan and Australia joined the United States in voicing concern.

The New York Times quoted Chong-Pin Lin, a Taiwanese expert on China's military, as saying, "This is the other face of China, the hard power side that they usually keep well hidden. They talk more about peace and diplomacy, but the push to develop lethal, high-tech capabilities has not slowed down at all."

US intelligence agencies believe that China launched the "killer" rocket from its Xichang spaceport and guided it into a high-speed head-on collision.

The New York Times recalled that at an international air show in Zhuhai in November, the Guangzhou-based newspaper Information Times and other state-run media carried a short interview with an unidentified military official boasting that China had already completely ensured that it has second-strike capability. China could protect is retaliatory forces because it could destroy satellites in space.

Having a weapon that can disable or destroy satellites is considered a component of China's unofficial doctrine of asymmetrical warfare, the New York Times said, noting that China's army strategists have written that the military intends to use relatively inexpensive but highly disruptive technologies to impede the better-equipped and better-trained US forces in the event of an showdown over Taiwan.

But not everyone concedes that China has destroyed an orbiting satellite. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that talk about a Chinese ballistic missile having hit a satellite is made up of "highly exaggerated rumors. I have heard reports to that effect, and they are quite abstract. I'm afraid they don't have such an anti-satellite capability. The rumors are highly exaggerated," Ivanov told reporters in Moscow.

Retired colonel-general Leonid Ivashov, the former head of the Russian Defense Ministry's International Military Cooperation Department, was quoted as saying that the Chinese weapon was modeled on the Soviet IS-1 missile designed to destroy satellites that was developed in the 1970s.

But a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, Liu Jianchao, declined to confirm or deny that China had downed a satellite. "So far, I have not been informed about it by relevant authorities. China has always stood for the peaceful uses of outer space and against introducing weapons into outer space,'' he said.

Some experts in the US played down the significance of the test, saying China apparently used simple technology. "It's pretty low-tech. It's essentially like throwing a rock at someone," said space-security analyst Laura Grego, of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Grego said the technology required for such a test is not very sophisticated and is practically in the reach of other countries as well. "Essentially any country that can put a satellite in orbit could launch a weapon to destroy one."

She said the launch vehicle was probably just an ordinary medium-range ballistic missile, but the real challenge was to get the weapon to hit the 1.5-meter-wide target.

"Information about satellite positions from ground-based tracking alone is not precise enough to allow a missile to hit a satellite, so the missile would have needed a built-in homing device to zero in on the satellite," she said. "This could be done with a video camera that records the satellite's position, while thrusters adjust the missile's course to guide it into a collision."

(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.)