U.S. Space Command Commander Dickinson said at a hearing Tuesday that China’s space power continues to grow rapidly, posing a step-by-step challenge to the United States. The Chinese Communist Party hopes to use space power to replace the United States as a global economic and military leader.
He noted that the Chinese Communist Party and Russia are the United States’ primary adversaries, and that Beijing has spent the past 20 years “trying to develop advanced technologies to erode core U.S. military advantages,” such as power delivery and rapid, global precision launches from space. Today’s space domain is undoubtedly a battlefield, with the Chinese Communist Party seeking to put U.S. space power at risk with its own space assets.
Dickinson said the Chinese Communist Party has more than 400 satellites in space, second only to the United States. Russia has nearly 200 satellites, but that could double by 2030.
The Chinese Communist Party’s space industry continues to grow and poses a huge challenge to us,” Dickinson said. They are investing heavily in space and today have more than 400 satellites in orbit. The Chinese Communist Party is rapidly building up its military capabilities in space, including sensing and communications systems and a host of anti-satellite weapons. Yet all along, the CCP has continued to maintain its public stance against the militarization of space.”
In the face of these threats, Space Command is committed to upgrading existing and developing new space situational awareness capabilities to better understand the activities occurring in the space domain, including those of potential adversaries, Dickinson said. U.S. Space Command combines satellite and ground-based assets to analyze adversary capabilities, understand threats and what they intend to do. The goal, he said, is to create a space warfare system capable of achieving full operational capability, supported by a “warfighting force that thinks and acts beyond the adversary.
Dickinson warned that Chinese satellites deployed by the Communist Party include robotic arm equipment that could approach and disable adversaries’ satellites. He said the CCP also has multiple ground-based laser systems of varying power that could disable or damage an adversary’s satellite systems.
Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said the U.S. must act to deter the Chinese Communist Party, whose covert military modernization program includes nuclear weapons and forces, from attempting to establish regional hegemony, impede U.S. power projection in the Indo-Pacific region and displace the United States as the regional security partner of choice.
The Chinese Communist Party, in particular, can no longer be considered a lesser nuclear threat,” Richard said. The expansion of the CCP’s nuclear strategic capabilities is evidence of their attempt to strategically level us within a decade. With their actions, the CCP is now capable of carrying out any possible nuclear strategic mission on a regional scale, and will soon be able to do so on an intercontinental scale. I think it is important to see what the CCP does rather than hear what they say, and where they will go rather than where they are now. I have no choice but to see the CCP as a major strategic threat.”
Richard warned that the Chinese Communist Party is modernizing its nuclear forces at such a rate that new advances can be found every week. Although the Chinese nuclear stockpile is currently smaller than that of the United States and Russia, it is undergoing “unprecedented expansion. The United States risks “losing reliability in the eyes of its adversaries” if it does not begin to invest more in nuclear defense and infrastructure.
Richard said he learned a week ago that the Chinese Communist Party now has more fast breeder nuclear reactors than ever before, which could change the upper limit of its possible options if it intends to further expand its nuclear capabilities. This, he said, is “an example of how fast the CCP is changing, or at least how quickly we are clarifying that.
A fast breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor in which nuclear fuel and fast neutrons produce more neutrons after nuclear fission, producing more fuel than is consumed. The fact that the Chinese Communist Party has more fast reactors means it may be developing more material that can be used in nuclear weapons.
While the U.S. now has sufficient missile defense capabilities, Richard said, it still needs to fund existing weapons to ensure it keeps up with the times to defend against the threats it sees today. Modernizing the U.S. “nuclear trinity” (intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and strategic bombers) will be a top priority for Strategic Command.
“For the first time in U.S. history, the United States faces two nuclear-capable strategic adversaries at the same time. Communist China and Russia’s advances are eroding our conventional deterrence,” Richard said.
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