China and Russia seek weapons to hit US satellites, Pentagon says
- China has multiple ground-based laser systems and may field higher powered ones as early as the middle of the decade, says a report by a US defence agency
- Russia, meanwhile, perceives the US dependence on space as America’s ‘Achilles’ heel’ and is pursuing counterspace systems
China and Russia continue to develop and deploy weapons that can attack US satellites even as they increase their own fleets of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance space vehicles, according to the Pentagon’s intelligence agency.
Although the updated report issued on Tuesday by the Defence Intelligence Agency is based mostly on news accounts and declarations from Chinese and Russian officials, it is a useful summary of the threats that the US says are driving major investments in the Pentagon’s proposed fiscal 2023 defence budget, specifically for the US Space Force and Space Command.
“China has multiple ground-based laser weapons of varying power levels to disrupt, degrade, or damage satellites that include a current limited capability to employ laser systems against satellite sensors,” the intelligence agency said.
“By the mid- to late-2020s, China may field higher power systems that extend the threat to the structures of non-optical satellites” as well.
China’s own fleet of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites keeps expanding. As of January it included more than 250 systems – “a quantity second only to the United States, and nearly doubling China’s in-orbit systems since 2018,” according to the report.