posted 02-23-2012 04:30 PM               

"China is beginning to develop and test technologies to enable ballistic missile defense. The space program, including ostensible civil projects, supports China's growing ability to deny or degrade the space assets of potential adversaries and enhances China's conventional military capabilities. China operates satellites for communications, navigation, earth resources, weather, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, in addition to manned space and space exploration missions. China successfully tested a direct ascent anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) missile and is developing jammers and directed-energy weapons for ASAT missions. A prerequisite for ASAT attacks, China's ability to track and identify satellites is enhanced by technologies from China's manned and lunar programs as well as technologies and methods developed to detect and track space debris. Beijing rarely acknowledges direct military applications of its space program and refers to nearly all satellite launches as scientific or civil in nature. "

"From the counter-space perspective, Russia and China continue developing systems and technologies that can interfere with or disable vital U.S. space-based navigation, communication, and intelligence collection satellites. North Korea has mounted Soviet-made jamming devices on vehicles near the North-South demarcation line that can disturb Global Positioning System (GPS) signals within a 50-100 kilometer (km) radius and is reported to be developing an indigenous GPS jammer with an extended range of more than 100 km. Other state and non-state actors rely on denial and deception techniques to defeat space-based imagery collection, conduct electronic warfare or signal jamming, and possibly attack ground sites for space assets. "

posted 03-02-2012 09:25 AM               

The rise of China's space program may pose a potentially serious military threat to the United States down the road, top American intelligence officials contend.

China continues to develop technology designed to destroy or disable satellites, which makes the United States and other nations with considerable on-orbit assets nervous. Even Beijing's ambitious human spaceflight plans are cause for some concern, since most space-technology advances could have military applications, officials say.

"The space program, including ostensible civil projects, supports China's growing ability to deny or degrade the space assets of potential adversaries and enhances China's conventional military capabilities," Army Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, wrote in testimony presented before the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee Feb. 16.

Burgess was delivering the DIA's annual assessment of threats to U.S. security and interests around the globe.

While the United States has at least nominally separate civil and military space programs, China's space activities are driven almost entirely by the People's Liberation Army, experts say.

posted 03-02-2012 12:13 PM            

Most of what is shown in the media gives the impression that China is merely advancing their peaceful use of space but China has never come forth in the past with what their real intentions are in regards to anything they do.

Taiwan should be nervous, and because we are an ally to them, we need to be at least a little nervous about this too.