China's Anti Satellite Test and what the world needs to think about it

China tested an Anti Satellite Kinetic Missile early part of this year. This was quite a serious step for many reasons. (1) It was the first time that there was an ASAT test, directly 1-2-1. Even the USA has problems in achieving this. In other words, the kinetic kill missile impacted directly on the target rather than exploding in the vicinity and hoping the shrapnel will riddle the target satellite. Witness the many failures of the Star Wars missile defence system. (2) It came as a total surprise to all the world and intelligence agencies. Furthermore, many of the Chinese diplomats and other government bodies did not know either. So this intelligence failure is at par with the Indian Nuclear Tests (both sets of them) and the collapse of the USSR.

You see, if this is quite possible (and we have no reason to believe that it is not), then the USA has suddenly lost its crucial satellite strategic reconnaissance ability. Given that the USA is still building up its HUMINT ability, it is crucially dependent upon ELINT. So in case of a conflict, the threat levels can rise very dramatically. See the current American satellite footprint and the potential Chinese responses here from a recent research paper that I came across.




This situation explains a bit as to why the Pentagon is in a bit of tizzy about the Chinese buildup. Oh!, by the way, the Chinese ASAT test singlehandedly increased the space pollution footprint by 10%. Read the intro of the article, it is very interesting

In the predawn darkness of 11 January 2007, a Chinese medium-range ballistic missile lifted off from a launch site at the Xichang space facility in Sichuan province. Fired from a mobile transporter-erector-launcher, the new two-stage, solid-fuelled missile - designated the SC-19 by the US intelligence community - carried a kinetic kill vehicle that slammed several minutes later into an ageing Chinese weather satellite deployed in low Earth orbit at an altitude of some 864 kilometres. Since the satellite, the Fengyun-1C (FY-1C), was heading south at the time of its intercept, and since the azimuth from the interceptor launch point to the target was approximately 346?, the attack involved a virtual head-on collision at extremely high velocity with thousands of blast fragments ejected at speeds of up to some 2,253km per hour into various orbits ranging from 3,800km to 200km in altitude.1 As of 30 May 2007, over 1,736 objects of trackable debris, each at least 10cm in diameter, had been catalogued and monitored. And NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office has estimated that the explosion produced more than 35,000 shards larger than 1cm, justifying the judgement that this test was undoubtedly the 'worst single debris event ever'2 since it instantaneously produced a 10% increase in the 50-year total of space artefacts capable of threatening spacecraft flying in low Earth orbits.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!