This week NASA administrator Bill Nelson warned Congress that China is bolstering its space capabilities, using its civilian program to camouflage its military objectives.
"China has made extraordinary strides especially in the last ten years, but they are very, very secretive. I believe a lot of their so-called civilian space program is a military program.”
Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of US Space Command was more forthright when he recently spoke at the 39th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, CO:
"Frankly, China is moving at a breathtaking speed. Since 2018, China has more than tripled their on-orbit intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites (ISR). And with these systems, they've built a kill web over the Pacific Ocean to find, fix, track and, yes, target US and allied military capabilities."
The Center for Strategic and International Studies released its annual Space Threat Assessment report on 17 April. The open source report analyzes the expanding anti-satellite capabilities of China and Russia, as well as the growing Western reliance on space-based systems for communications and defense. CSIS cautions friendly space systems are not just vulnerable to hostile kinetic “counterspace” weapons, but also to cyberattacks and espionage.
A report from the Costs of War project at Brown University revealed that 20 years of post-9/11 wars have cost Americans an estimated $8 trillion and 7,000 fallen US warriors. Imagine where the US would be today in the new space race with China if our blood and treasure were not expended in those “Forever Wars?”
Sources:
csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/...
www.voanews.com/…
www.space.com/…
www.spacecom.mil
spacenews.com
www.brown.edu/...