Tag Archives: space weapons

The Chinese evidently plan on targeting our unguarded satellites according to Gordon Chang

Important Takeaways:

  • “Communist China has now taken war to the heavens, to low earth orbit, and very likely, will take war to the moon, Mars, and beyond. The heavens are no longer safe for the democracies.” — Richard Fisher, International Assessment and Strategy Center, to Gatestone, March 2025.
  • “Rising powers, notably China and Russia, saw how reliant we were on space—and how poorly defended our systems were. Our access to the strategic high ground is now more threatened than ever before.” — Brandon Weichert, author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, to Gatestone, March 2025
  • China is making fast progress in building space weapons. “The Chinese ISR”—intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—”capabilities are become very capable,” said Gen. Guetlein. “They have gone from what we used to call a ‘Kill Chain’ to a ‘Kill Mesh.'” A Kill Mesh combines ISR satellites with an array of weapons systems.
  • The Chinese array appears impressive. As Fisher points out, the People’s Liberation Army has developed ground-based ASAT—anti-satellite—interceptors to destroy satellites in both low earth orbit and much higher medium earth orbits. At the same time, China, as Guetlein’s comments make clear, is working on “co-orbital” interceptors, satellites that can follow, approach, dock with, or use robotic arms to grapple other satellites into useless orbits.
  • For the future, Fisher reports, China is developing large, unmanned space planes that can re-enter the atmosphere to maneuver toward a new orbit and then relaunch into space to deploy energy and missile weapons. The PLA also appears to be working on large combat platforms that can attack satellite targets in multiple orbits. Expect the Chinese military also to deploy clusters of combat satellites to attack the Lunar and Martian satellite networks of the future.
  • “The recent demonstration of Chinese ‘dogfighting’ capabilities in space is an indicator that Beijing means to use force on earth. By targeting sensitive U.S. military satellites, the People’s Liberation Army can render us deaf, dumb, and blind, long before it strikes.” — Brandon Weichert, to Gatestone, March 2025.
  • The Chinese are evidently planning to blind not only America’s military but also America’s civilian society, which is heavily dependent on space assets. Almost nothing modern in America will work when the Chinese are finished attacking in the heavens.

Read the original article by clicking here.

U.S. warns on Russia’s new space weapons

The sun reflects off the water in this picture taken by German astronaut Alexander Gerst from the International Space Station and sent on his Twitter feed July 17, 2014. REUTERS/Alexander Gerst/NASA/Handout via Reuters

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United States voiced deep suspicion on Tuesday over Russia’s pursuit of new space weapons, including a mobile laser system to destroy satellites in space, and the launch of a new inspector satellite which was acting in an “abnormal” way.

Russia’s pursuit of counterspace capabilities was “disturbing”, Yleem D.S. Poblete, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, told the U.N.’s Conference on Disarmament which is discussing a new treaty to prevent an arms race in outer space.

A Russian delegate at the conference dismissed Poblete’s remarks as unfounded and slanderous.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, at the Geneva forum in February, said a priority was to prevent an arms race in outer space, in line with Russia’s joint draft treaty with China presented a decade ago.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled in March “six new major offensive weapons systems”, including the Peresvet military mobile laser system, Poblete said.

“To the United States this is yet further proof that the Russian actions do not match their words,” she said.

Referring to a “space apparatus inspector”, whose deployment was announced by the Russian defense ministry last October, Poblete said: “The only certainty we have is that this system has been ‘placed in orbit’.”

She said its behavior on-orbit was inconsistent with anything seen before, including other Russian inspection satellite activities, adding: “We are concerned with what appears to be very abnormal behavior by a declared ‘space apparatus inspector’.”

Russia’s pursuit of counterspace capabilities “is disturbing given the recent pattern of Russian malign behavior,” she said, and its proposed treaty would not prohibit such activity, nor the testing or stockpiling of anti-satellite weapons capabilities.

Alexander Deyneko, a senior Russian diplomat in Geneva, dismissed what he called “the same unfounded, slanderous accusations based on suspicions, on suppositions and so on”.

The United States had not proposed amendments to the Sino-Russian draft treaty, he said.

“We are seeing that the American side are raising their serious concerns about Russia, so you would think they ought to be the first to support the Russian initiative. They should be active in working to develop a treaty that would 100 percent satisfy the security interests of the American people,” he said.

“But they have not made this constructive contribution,” he said.

China’s disarmament ambassador Fu Cong called for substantive discussions on outer space, leading to negotiations.

“China has always stood for peaceful use of outer space and we are against weaponization of outer space, an arms race in outer space, or even more turning outer space into a battle field,” he said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Richard Balmforth)