U.S. criticizes Chinese weapons test; missile destroys old weather satellite

WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States is criticizing China's anti-satellite weapons test in which an old Chinese weather satellite was destroyed by a missile. The U.S. administration has kept a lid on the test for more than a week as it weighed its significance. Analysts said China's weather satellites would travel at about the same altitude as U.S. spy satellites, so the test represented an indirect threat to U.S. defence systems.

"The United States believes China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of co-operation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area," U.S. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Thursday.

"We and other countries have expressed our concern to the Chinese."

CBC reported Thursday that Canada was among those other countries expressing concern.

In his annual threat address to Congress, the head of the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency, Lt.-Gen. Michael Maples, said last week China and Russia are the "primary states of concern" regarding military space programs.

"Several countries continue to develop capabilities that have the potential to threaten U.S. space assets and some have already deployed systems with inherent anti-satellite capabilities, such as satellite-tracking laser range-finding devices and nuclear-armed ballistic missiles," he said in his written testimony Jan. 11, the day China's test was conducted.

The test, first reported by Aviation Week magazine, destroyed the satellite by hitting it with a kinetic kill vehicle launched aboard a ballistic missile.

In October, President George W. Bush signed an order asserting the United States' right to deny adversaries access to space for hostile purposes. As part of the first revision of U.S. space policy in almost 10 years, the policy also said the United States would oppose the development of treaties or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access to or use of space.

"Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power," the policy said.

"In order to increase knowledge, discovery, economic prosperity and to enhance the national security, the United States must have robust, effective and efficient space capabilities."

Precisely what drove China to act now remains a mystery. But the United States has to figure out how to respond, said John Pike, a satellite expert at globalsecurity.org.

Since the mid-1980s, the United States has been able to take down satellites but the Chinese do not have satellites worth attacking, Pike said. The United States may have to develop an alternative to its current spy satellites, perhaps stealth satellites or unmanned aerial vehicles, which are harder to detect than the current well-established U.S. satellite network.

Reconnaissance satellites in low-Earth orbit - "eyes in the sky" - are essential to how the United States fights wars.

"Our space assets are the first asset on the scene," Pike said.

"They are absolutely central to why we are a superpower; a signature component to America's style of warfare."

The U.S. Department of Defence would not comment on the test.

It came as Admiral William Fallon, chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, has spearheaded a major push to revive exchanges with the Chinese military. Relations soured after a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter in 2001.

Fallon has pushed ahead with the program, despite criticism inside the U.S. Defence Department. He believes Chinese and U.S. officers need to understand each another better to avoid disastrous miscalculations.

Bush nominated Fallon this month to take over command of troops in the Middle East.

© The Canadian Press, 2007