Through a glass, darkly: Chinese, American, and Russian anti-satellite testing in space

Source: Space Review

On May 13, 2013, China launched a rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province. The Chinese Academy of Sciences stated it was a high-altitude scientific research mission, but unofficial U.S. government sources say it was actually a test of a new ballistic missile related to China’s anti-satellite (ASAT) program. This article uses open source information, including commercial satellite imagery purchased fromDigitalGlobe, to assess these claims. It also compares what is known about current Chinese ASAT testing in space with American and Russian ASAT testing in space over the last five decades.

Remaining silent risks sending the message to China and other countries that developing and testing hit-to-kill ASAT capabilities is considered responsible behavior as long as it does not create long-lived orbital debris.

While there is no conclusive proof, the available evidence strongly suggests that China’s May 2013 launch was the test of the rocket component of a new direct ascent ASAT weapons system derived from a road-mobile ballistic missile. The system appears to be designed to place a kinetic kill vehicle on a trajectory to deep space that could reach medium earth orbit (MEO), highly elliptical orbit (HEO), and geostationary Earth orbit (GEO). If true, this would represent a significant development in China’s ASAT capabilities. But it would not be the first instance of an ASAT weapons system designed to attack satellites in deep space, as the Russians developed at least the components of such a system in the 1990s. Thus it is more a signal that China is a new entrant into what is an old game, and while there is some knowledge as to what capabilities China may be developing, why they are developing those capabilities is still unclear.
In June 2013, I argued that the Obama administration should release more information publicly about China’s ASAT program and testing in space. Following China’s purposeful destruction of its FengYun 1C (FY-1C) satellite using a direct ascent ASAT weapon in 2007 and the resulting creation of more than 3,000 pieces of trackable space debris, the public information released by the United States played a major role in mobilizing international outrage about the test. This international criticism, combined with the United States’ destruction of its own USA 193 satellite the following year, arguably resulted in a change in Chinese behavior. Subsequent tests of the same SC-19 system in 2010 and 2013, characterized by China as missile defense tests, targeted suborbital targets and did not result in the creation of any long-lived space debris.
Going public about the testing of a potential new Chinese ASAT test could lead to similar political pressure on the Chinese government, particularly if they plan to conduct another destructive test in the future. Remaining silent risks sending the message to China and other countries that developing and testing hit-to-kill ASAT capabilities is considered responsible behavior as long as it does not create long-lived orbital debris. That message would likely encourage the proliferation of ASAT capabilities, increasing the threat to the space assets of all States, and thus contributing to greater political and strategic instability in space and potentially on Earth.
To date, the US government’s public response to and information about China’s ASAT testing activities has been relatively muted. The US government remained silent about 2005 and 2006 tests of the Chinese ASAT system designated SC-19 by the US government. The existence of those tests was only made public after the 2007 test of the same system. Following the 2010 test of the same system, a US government official stated that they “detected two geographically separated missile launch events with an exo-atmospheric collision also being observed by space-based sensors.” Confirmation that this was indeed another test of the same SC-19 ASAT system comes from a classified State Department cable that was leaked by Wikileaks in 2011. In January 2013, China publicly reported another “mid-course missile interception test” that many have concluded is yet another test of the SC-19 system based on the similarities of its description by the Chinese media to the 2010 test, but it has not been publicly declared as such by the US government.
The US government has provided a single official quote regarding the May 2013 launch, stating that “the launch appeared to be on a ballistic trajectory nearly to [GEO]. We tracked several objects during the flight…and no objects associated with this launch remain in space.” The 2013 report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission to Congress mentions the May launch and the claims about it being an ASAT test, but provides no new evidence to support those claims. Public statements from multiple US officials, including Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, mention increasing threats to U.S. national security space assets and China’s ASAT program but provide no details. A January 2014 hearing convened by the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) focused on the challenges China’s counterspace program poses for US national security and potential strategies for addressing those challenges, but yielded no new facts or information about the May 2013 test or China’s actual ASAT capabilities either. A March 2014 hearing convened by the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) discussed the Pentagon’s strategy to deal with the growing ASAT threat but no specific details.
The purpose of this article is to place more information about the May launch and other Chinese ASAT testing into the public domain and also in the context of other known ASAT testing activities by the United States and Russia. The hope is that this information will spur both more openness from the US and Chinese governments and spark public debate on this issue by reducing the possibility that doing so would reveal intelligence sources and methods. However, it is possible that the US government will still remain silent despite the newly available public information. That would suggest other rationales for the silence, such as not wanting public discussion of the ASAT testing to jeopardize potential bilateral discussions with China on space security issues. It may also be that the United States does not want criticism of Chinese ASAT testing to lead to a norm that testing and developing ballistic hit-to-kill systems is irresponsible, which in turn would undermine the political support for the United States’ own Phased Adaptive Approach (PAA) midcourse missile defense system, which uses the same technologies. Creating such a norm would also constrain the United States from developing its own hit-to-kill ASAT capabilities again in the future. If that is the position of the United States, it would be very troubling as it would almost certainly lead to a proliferation of more ASAT capabilities that further increase the threats to all space systems, including those of the United States, and undermine political and strategic stability in space.

Both the United States and China agree that something was launched from Xichang on May 13, 2013. Discovering what rocket was used could help evaluate what actually happened.

The first section of this article analyzes the May 2013 launch from Xichang and attempts to determine why it was characterized by the U.S. government as an ASAT test. A critical part of this analysis utilizes commercial satellite imagery and information from Chinese bloggers and the Chinese public. The second section provides a summary of American and Russian ASAT testing in space from the late 1950s to the present. This section provides important context for the Chinese ASAT testing in that it shows the ASAT technologies and techniques developed and tested by all three countries are very similar in nature, and that efforts to develop means of attacking satellites have gone hand-in-hand with the development of satellites themselves. The third and final section examines the parallels between hit-to-kill ASAT testing and midcourse missile defense and the political difficulty in proscribing one but not the other. It also examines the role that the culture of secrecy plays in the public silence over this issue, and how that may cause more harm than good over the long-term. The article concludes with a call for greater transparency and confidence building measures by all countries, and in particular the United States and China, to enhance strategic stability in space and on Earth.
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